Review | Venice 2022: Bardo movie review – Alejandro G. Iñárritu is back with an exhausting yet exhilarating meditation on … nearly every topic in the world

Politics, national identity, sexuality, the media, history – you name it, Bardo covers it in a story ostensibly about a disillusioned journalist and filmmaker

The Revenant director’s Felliniesque movie isn’t for everybody – it is egotistical, sanctimonious and self-referential – but has some jaw-dropping filmmaking

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A still from Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Photo: Limbo Films; courtesy of Netflix

Published: 1:00pm, 2 Sep 2022

4/5 stars

Mexican maestro Alejandro G. Iñárritu is back with his first major work since his Oscar-winning epic The Revenant.

Playing in competition at the Venice film festival, this Netflix-backed tale is an exhausting but exhilarating three-hour meditation on politics, media, history, national identity, sexuality and more.

At the epicentre of Bardo – whose full title is Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths – is Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a journalist and documentarian, and a man increasingly detached from the ideals that drove him to begin with.

“Success,” he says, “has been my biggest failure.”

The hot take on Bardo is that Iñárritu has delivered his own 8½, Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterwork about a disillusioned filmmaker. Certainly the phrase Felliniesque feels appropriate for a film that soaks up life’s rich tapestry.