Critic Reviews

Throughout the film’s warranted nearly-three-hour runtime, Iñárritu writes the cinematic verses of an oneiric love poem to an ever-incongruous homeland while simultaneously investigating his own perceived hubris, insecurities and fractured identity.

It’s high minded stuff, but Iñárritu, has a knack for wrapping these ideas in movies that are well crafted and exciting to watch.

A deeply moving cinematic experience that entangles threads of Mexican history with one man’s surreal odyssey through life, death, success and grief.

What interactions are “real” and what is imagined or symbolic is left to us to sort through, or just to decide it does not matter. Each moment is presented to us with vibrance and wit.

“Mexico for me is a state of mind,” Iñárritu has said, and Bardo is his own idiosyncratic vision of it. It is a handsomely produced creation in which the director has clearly exercised great control and his stamp is to be found on almost every credit.

As an all-in-one viewing experience, Bardo is undeniably uneven, often maddening, and seems to have approximately 17 endings. Still, the movie is a marvel in its own way, dotted with pure cinephile delights and small unexpected pockets of profundity.

The brilliance of what Iñárritu does here is that, if you watch any scene in “Bardo” for 30 seconds, you will keep watching. But you have to be willing to give him those 30 seconds at the start of each scene. You have to work with him a little.

It’s impossible to deny the strength of the startling array of thoughts and concepts which Inarritu has brought to life and, ultimately, brings together, although the impact is clearly diluted by his unwillingness to cut.

It is an exercise in self-punishment disguised as self-aggrandisement, by a director powered by confident resignation and – for those unlucky enough to have experienced the gaping hole of yearning for home – it is entirely worth the self-indulgence.

When it’s all said and done—the technical marvels elucidated, the stylistic flare appreciated, the wide-eyed self-reflection given a fair shake in retaliation to the all-too-easy critique of self-indulgence—I can’t help but wince a little at the thought of a second watch. If it’ll be great to revisit certain sequences, the thought of stomaching all three hours again so soon is grueling.