New movie review: BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

Daniel Jimenez Cacho in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Bardo.

Alejandro González Iñárritu, it seems, is truly a director’s director. I read and listen to a lot of critics, and the general consensus going back to at least Babel in 2006 is that his film’s are undercooked, overlong, and indulgent. His peers, on the other hand, have always been vocal in their love for him and his art. This goes a long way toward explaining why Iñárritu is one of only three directors ever to win the Best Director statue at the Oscars two years in a row. He is the only one to accomplish this feat in the past 70 years.

His new film, BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (which we will be calling Bardo from here on out), may be the peak example of the divide between the critical and artistic communities. It deals with an artist and, like Birdman before it, features a scene with a thorough dismantling of a critic. Take that for what it is worth, but Bardo has within its generous running time enough to chew on for detractors and devotees, alike.

Consider me among the devotees. I have always found a certain brilliance within each of his films, and though Bardo is not his most accomplished feature – that probably remains the Best Picture-winning Birdman – it is probably his most fascinating. Like the celebrated later work of Federico Fellini, the film is not merely dreamlike, rather it is dreaming itself. 

Still, Iñárritu’s film is much more than a Mexican 8½ – though, at times, it is that, too. It explores Fellini’s pet themes of classism, the extravagances of wealth, and the political storms that often serve as a backdrop to everyday life, but Iñárritu is also interested in deconstructing his own privileges and prejudices. For good reason, Fellini stuck to a strictly Italian milieu. Bardo offers up the insights of a director who is straddling two cultures, neither of which truly has a place for him.

Daniel Jiménez Cacho stars as Silverio Gama, a former journalist and director of “docufiction” films. His art seeks to bring reality to life through invented historical scenarios that get at a deeper understanding of society, what Werner Herzog might call “ecstatic truth.” He depicts himself in imagined conversations with significant cultural figures such as Hernán Cortés, interrogating the conquistador about his crimes against humanity. We hear about this encounter early in the film, long before we actually see it, and we have a pretty good idea of the kind of artist Silverio is.

Not coincidentally, he is similar to the kind of artist Iñárritu is. The film, from a script by Iñárritu and Birdman co-writer Nicolás Giacobone, exists in two worlds. There is the real world, in which Silverio is receiving honorary awards from organizations in Mexico and the United States and must come to terms with what this recognition means and is worth, if anything. Then, there is the dream world, which is woven seamlessly into the fabric of the story. It jumps backward and forward in time, sometimes by years. Space collapses in on itself. There are ghosts. It operates on a logic unique to the unconscious.

It may help here to offer a brief rundown of what Iñárritu has been up to in the seven years since his Oscar-winning The Revenant – another movie I loved that was not particularly critically acclaimed but found champions within the industry. In 2019 alone, he received an honorary doctorate from the prestigious National Autonomous University of Mexico, he was made a commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and he became the first person of Latin American descent to serve as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. 

He was already the first Mexican filmmaker to receive the best director award at Cannes, the first Mexican nominated for either Director or Producer at the Academy Awards, and the first Mexican to win Original Screenplay and Best Picture at the Oscars. His place as a modern master in the international cinema landscape is assured. Bardo finds him grappling with all of this success while also recognizing that much of it is built on the back of his much lauded debut feature, Amores Perros.

That film depicted the harsh realities of Mexican life and the often brutal nature of humanity. It was also Iñárritu’s last film, until Bardo, to be set primarily in Mexico. In Bardo, Silverio appears conflicted over finding global acclaim for showing the messiness of his homeland. Is it honesty or exploitation? After all, Silverio and his family actually live in Southern California now, though they maintain a home in Mexico City.

Silverio’s wife, Lucía (Griselda Sicilliani), has no trouble pointing out the contradictions and hypocrisies in his varying stances. During an excellent breakfast table scene, after Silverio argues with his son, Lorenzo (Iker Sanchez Solano), Lucía spells it out plainly. He chooses to live in Los Angeles, and though he expresses nostalgia for Mexico, he portrays it in a harsh light. Yet, if anyone else dares to speak of that harshness, he vehemently defends the country’s culture and people. He is lost, caught between worlds. Of course, we learn this is what “Bardo” means: Limbo.

It is not, however, solely a creative and cultural purgatory in which Silverio finds himself. It is also the purgatory of grief. In the film’s fanciful opening passages, Lucía gives birth to Mateo, a son who whispers to the doctor that he would like to return to the womb. His reason: The world is “too fucked up.” Hard to argue with that logic, and the doctors return Mateo to whence he came. The moment itself is comically absurd, but its tragic underpinnings could not be more clear. Later, Silverio reveals that Mateo lived for just a day before dying. They keep his ashes by the bedside, and his memory haunts them, literally and figuratively.

For all of the flights of fancy and surrealist touches in the film, by opening with this scene, Iñárritu is grounding the audience in the emotional reality of the story. Silverio is moody and difficult and pretentious, yes, but he and his family have quietly mourned the loss of Mateo for years. That loss colors everything they do and do not do. How does one move on from this kind of pain? Can a family run from the ghosts of the past? Can a nation?

Among the common complaints of this film is its running time (2 hours, 40 minutes), though it is 20 minutes shorter now than when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September. I could have lived in the world of Bardo forever, but if I have a criticism, it is this: The resolution of the Mateo storyline, which I will not spoil here, is the emotional high point of the film. There are another 20 to 30 minutes after that, all of which are important in wrapping up the themes of the movie, but it never gets better than the quiet catharsis of a family letting go.

Bardo undoubtedly is a lot of movie, and that is without touching on its many technical achievements. Chief among them is the gorgeously fluid cinematography of frequent Woody Allen and James Gray collaborator Darius Khondji, whose work here perfectly evokes the tone and purpose of each moment in Iñárritu’s film. The score, a collaboration between Iñárritu and Bryce Dessner, is equal parts melancholy and anarchic, like a circus at the end of the world.

The director’s greatest achievement, however, comes in the blending of these impressive crafts with a complex, compelling story and a thematic richness found in the work of too few filmmakers. Bardo is a self-portrait painted in big, bold strokes, risky in a way that is both energizing and inspiring. It is no wonder fellow directors such as Lulu Wang and countryman Guillermo del Toro came out immediately with the highest of praise for the film. Of course other talented, inquisitive artists can appreciate everything that is going on here. Maybe someday, the rest of us will catch up.

See it? Yes.

New movie review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Letitia Wright as Shuri in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Sequels are hard. Sequels in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are harder still. Making the followup to what was once the most successful standalone superhero film of all time in the wake of your leading actor’s tragic death: near impossible. But the gears of corporate movie making grind away, demanding the next big thing.

Director and co-writer Ryan Coogler gives it his best shot, and while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is not a perfect film, nor does it quite rise to the level of its predecessor, it is the best anyone could have done under the circumstances. Wakanda Forever is smart, subversive, and filled to the brim with excellent performances by a game cast who deliver comic book exposition like it is Shakespearean verse.

The missing cast member, of course, is Chadwick Boseman, whose absence looms over the whole film. Boseman died of colon cancer in August 2020 at the age of 43, leaving a whole in the hearts of family, friends, and fans alike. Though it was likely considered, there was no replacing Boseman, who put his stamp indelibly on King T’Challa and the Black Panther. 

Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole would have to adjust their plans and rewrite a sequel that was already in the works. They would have to address the tragedy directly. There could be no quickly moving on from one of the iconic characters of modern times. After all, the first film is the highest-grossing live-action film with a black lead of all time. It was a cultural event with meaning that far outstripped its place in the MCU. It became the first superhero film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, where it won three Oscars. And it made Boseman a hero to a generation of black audiences that had been and remain historically underserved by big-budget Hollywood movies.

The film opens with the offscreen death of T’Challa, as we watch his sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), in her lab, desperately seeking a cure for his unnamed illness. Her idea: to create a synthetic version of the purple heart-shaped herb that Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger destroyed the last of in the first film. Her mother, Quen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), arrives to tell her she is too late. T’Challa is dead.

What follows is the first of the film’s many gorgeously crafted sequences – a lengthy Wakandan funeral that is equal parts reverent and exultant. It is intended as an opportunity for the audience to grieve Boseman as much as it is an opportunity for the Wakandans to grieve their king. It works on both counts and sets up one of the central themes of the film: How does a nation, a people, move forward without its protector and patch the hole in its soul?

We quickly learn that world powers see Wakanda as weakened and the loss of the Black Panther as a chance to pilfer the nation’s reserves of vibranium, thought to exist only in Wakanda. However, we soon discover there is another source of the precious metal, deep in the Atlantic Ocean, in the heretofore unknown underwater kingdom of Talokan. The Talokan people, led by the centuries old mutant Namor (Tenoch Huerta), defend their territory from the mining operation, which leads to increased international scrutiny of Wakanda.

If this sounds like a lot already, it is, and Wakanda Forever’s greatest sin is that it is overstuffed with side characters and plots meant only to service the greater MCU story. This is not the fault of the filmmakers, necessarily, but rather one of the burdens of operating within the massive Marvel machine. Among these side characters, we get the return of Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA Director de Fontaine. We are also introduced to Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a brilliant MIT student who invents a machine for detecting vibranium.

Thorne is great in the role, and I enjoyed much of what the Riri character brings to the movie, but along with the CIA plot, it is one thing too many in a movie that already has so much to deal with. We also get a side plot with Danai Gurira’s Dora Milaje general Okoye as she grapples with her place in the new Wakandan order. And the always-great-to-see Lupita Nyong’o is back as Nakia, a former Wakandan spy who now runs a foundation for children in Haiti.

As great as Gurira, Nyong’o, and Thorne are, it is all too much. The film is at its best when it focuses on its three central characters: Queen Ramonda, Princess Shuri, and Namor. It helps that Bassett, Wright, and Huerta give the three best performances in the film. Bassett, in particular, is just stunning in her power and control. When they all meet on a river bank about a third of the way through the film, the fireworks are instantaneous and the key conflict of the story is set into motion.

At the end of Black Panther, T’Challa reveals Wakanda’s power to the world, ending centuries of isolationism. This inadvertently places Talokan at risk due to the world’s newly born hunger for vibranium. Namor insists that Wakanda form an alliance with Talokan and go on the offensive to protect their nations from any would-be invaders. Like Killmonger in the first film, he wishes to burn the world to save his people. If Queen Ramonda refuses the partnership, Namor says he will destroy Wakanda as a show of strength and go on to burn the world anyway.

Namor and the Talokan people are clearly Latin coded, descended from Mayans who took to the seas to avoid destruction and enslavement at the hands of white settlers. They do so using a plant that bears similar properties to the heart-shaped herb of the Black Panther. One can easily see the seams where Namor would have been set up as a mirror to T’Challa – superpowered protectors of their people with differing views on what protection means. Instead, Shuri must fill this role, and it becomes a story of the destructive power of vengeance and the need to work through grief.

Similar to Killmonger in the first film, Namor makes a good point. It is highly likely that (probably white) invaders will come to destroy his people in order to steal their resources. We have already seen similar attempts on Wakandan resources. It becomes a matter of whether these two nations of color will come to war with each other over their disagreement on how to deal with outside forces beyond their control.

These are heady, fascinating dilemmas, and no one but Coogler is infusing the big-budget Hollywood machine with these kinds of radical discussions and ideas. The reason Coogler’s antagonists – neither Killmonger nor Namor is a “villain” in the traditional sense – are the best in the MCU is because they are complicated and in many ways correct. They have a point of view. They are not kill-crazy mad men lusting for power. Their goals stem from real cultural and political ideologies that come into conflict with Wakanda’s sense of justice.

Other MCU films do not ask these kinds of questions. They are mostly about their protagonists learning to be heroes and dealing with the responsibilities of what that means. Though the plots often involve world-altering stakes, the themes are generally quite small in their ambitions. Among the rest, only Captain America: Civil War really even attempts to look outward and consider the political and social ramifications of these narratives.

Maybe that is a lot to lay at the feet of a piece of blockbuster ephemera. But more than any other director working in the MCU, Coogler seems to understand that these stories need not be ephemeral. Superhero movies are the westerns of our time – the dominant cultural force, encompassing both the film and TV worlds and crafting the iconography of the era. They feature larger-than-life heroes operating against clear villains in worlds of strict moral codes. The thing about westerns, though, is that most of them are forgotten, or at the very least not particularly well remembered.

The ones that stood the test of time were those that dealt with themes that resonate beyond the screen. Films like High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident last because they are unafraid to delve into the murkiness of real life and the gray areas in which most people live. For whatever flaws the sequel has, both Black Panther films share this essential trait. So as other superhero flicks fade from memory, Coogler’s willingness to engage the audience in meaningful moral debate ensures that we will remember Wakanda – forever.

See it? Yes.

New Movie Review: TÁR

Just being mad does not make one a genius, nor does genius require that one be mad. Case in point: writer-director Todd Field and his latest creation, Lydia Tár. Field’s third film should leave no doubt that he is a genius of the cinema, but he is far from mad. Rather, in interviews, he comes off as humble and humbled by his unusually protracted Hollywood journey. Whereas for the titular protagonist of TÁR, portrayed with equal parts ferocity and precision by Cate Blanchett, her madness seems to grow as her genius comes into question.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves, and if there is one thing TÁR exudes, it is patience. So let’s begin at the beginning. We are introduced to Lydia Tár during a New Yorker conversation on stage in front of hundreds of – it would not be a stretch to call them – worshippers. Worshippers at the altar of high society. Worshippers at the altar of classical music. And worshippers at the altar of the great composer who claims before them that she controls time itself. As she will find, however, there is no more dangerous place to be than placed upon a pedestal.

Immediately after this, Lydia indulges the fawning of a fan in the lobby. In fact, she revels in it, both in the attention of a beautiful woman and in the flattery of her own brilliance. For Lydia, the two go hand in hand. She is hurried away by her assistant, Francesca (a perfectly seething Noémie Merlant), who has seen this act before. The maestro (not maestra, we are informed in the opening scene) is needed at lunch with a wealthy benefactor who hopes to learn her artistic secrets. He fancies himself an amateur conductor and wishes to see her notes. She refuses and suggests he lacks whatever alchemy produces great artists, an alchemy which she, of course, is certain she possesses.

Within three scenes, Field and Blanchett have established so much about their main character. She is a gifted self-promoter who feeds off the adoration of the crowd. She needs their love, but beyond that, she absolutely believes she deserves it and has earned it through her “genius.” And, possessed of this genius, she also feels it is hers to share with the crowd or withhold from a benefactor. With all of this firmly in mind, Field delivers the coup de grâce of his film’s first act.

Lydia delivers a guest lecture to a conducting class at Juilliard. A student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender conducts a piece by an unknown modern, female composer, of whom Lydia is instantly dismissive – most likely in the very manner the classical music establishment would have first dismissed her. She suggests the student give a try with some Bach. He demurs and says that he cannot in good conscience conduct a piece by a composer whose personal life was so reprehensible. She seems personally offended on Bach’s behalf, and what follows is a lengthy treatise on an age-old debate: Can we – and more importantly, should we – separate the art from the artist?

Of course, this is Lydia’s class, and she holds all the power. In front of a packed house – her favorite – she pokes, prods, and belittles the student who dared question Bach’s place in the pantheon. Her position: simply that it would be infantile to deny or disregard someone’s obvious genius based on his questionable personal life. Would not the student, she asks, want to be judged on his work and not his own private life? At this, he has had enough and angrily storms out of the classroom. Perhaps in Lydia’s eyes, she has won. But won what, and at what cost?

The rest of the film will engage with and deconstruct this argument, using Lydia Tár herself as the subject. We will come to learn of accusations of impropriety from a former protégé. We will witness acts of petty deceit and staggeringly poor judgment. We will see her treat those closest to her, including her partner, Sharon (a wonderful Nina Hoss), with coldness and ingratitude. We will watch her act in ways that would have future students refuse out of principle to engage with her work.

This would be fascinating enough to watch in and of itself, particularly with Blanchett’s wrecking ball of a performance at its center, but it would be somewhat trite. The argument between art and the artist, by now, is shopworn and a little boring. The trick of the film and what makes it a masterpiece is that Field is not interested in debating whether artistic genius excuses personal failings. He seeks to interrogate whether genius itself is a myth, and this becomes far more exciting to explore over the course of the film.

For the purposes of this investigation, it is immaterial if Lydia Tár is guilty of the specific charges levied against her, and Field smartly leaves it up to the audience to decide how much is true, how much is fabricated, and just how much we can believe any of the stakeholders. During a conversation with a retired composer and former mentor of hers, Lydia is told that these days, an accusation is as good as a conviction in the court of public opinion. The film’s final hour bears this out.

As Lydia’s world unravels, we learn more about what it took to fashion the mystique that surrounds her, and we begin to question how much is real and how much is smoke and mirrors. It is not by accident that in her moments of greatest self-doubt, Lydia lights a pair of candles to stare into her own reflection. In a late, standout scene that features Blanchett and Hoss going toe to toe to great effect, Sharon asks if Lydia remembers the politicking and maneuvering it took to place the conductor in her position of power.

You see, Sharon is the first chair violinist of the Berlin Philharmonic, which Lydia conducts. We learn in the film’s opening conversation that historically, orchestras once were led by the first chair violinist, something which Lydia deems highly illogical – of course, the conductor is vital to the orchestra! But, without Sharon, could Lydia have reached the heights she has? Indeed, without the musicians who sit before her, what would there be to conduct?

It is here that we should note Field’s fascinating opening gambit. Before that New Yorker conversation and before anything else, the film begins with its end credits played in reverse, culminating in the title card, “Written, produced, and directed by Todd Field.” Field has been coy in interviews as to the exact meaning behind his decision to start the film this way, but it certainly foregrounds the reality that it takes hundreds and hundreds of people to mount a movie. Field’s name may be most prominent in the credits, but his film could not exist without all the names that come before it.

It is a metatextual act of humility on Field’s part, the kind of humility Lydia Tár would be incapable of displaying. This humility is well earned and very real for Field, who has been out of the game for the better part of 16 years. Though he has directed many commercials, he has not had his name on a short, a documentary, an episode of television, or a feature film since the equally brilliant, though vastly different Little Children in 2006.

He has been attached to numerous projects over the years alongside fellow luminaries such as Joan Didion, Cormac McCarthy, and Jonathan Franzen, among others, but nothing ever came to fruition. If you ask Field how it is that TÁR came to be the project that finally made it happen, he will tell you he is just as surprised as anyone. The vagaries and whims of Hollywood, he suggests.

Whatever it was that brought Field back and TÁR to the big screen, the cinema is better for it. If genius exists, then Field has it, propped up as he is by the tremendous actors and many fine craftspeople – Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir foremost among them – who helped make this film happen. If, on the other hand, genius is a myth, then Field is doing a damn fine imitation.

See it? Yes.