Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

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Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
File:Bardo 2022 film poster.png
United States official release poster
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Produced by <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
  • Alejandro G. Iñárritu
  • Stacy Perskie Kaniss
Written by <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Starring <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Music by <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
Cinematography Darius Khondji
Edited by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Production
company
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  • M Productions
  • Redrum
Distributed by Netflix
Release dates
 <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
  • September 1, 2022 (2022-09-01) (Venice)
  • October 27, 2022 (2022-10-27) (Mexico)
Running time
 159 minutes
Country Mexico
Language <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
  • Spanish
  • English

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Spanish: Bardo, falsa crónica de unas cuantas verdades), or simply Bardo, is a 2022 Mexican epic black comedy-drama film co-written, co-composed, edited, produced, and directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.[1] The film stars Daniel Giménez Cacho alongside Griselda Siciliani, and follows a journalist/documentarian who returns to his native country of Mexico and begins having an existential crisis in the form of dreamlike visions. It is Iñárritu's first film to be fully filmed in Mexico since Amores perros in 2000.

Bardo premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival in competition for the Golden Lion on September 1, 2022, and was released in theaters on November 18, 2022, then streamed on Netflix on December 16, 2022. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances of Cacho and Siciliani, as well as Khondji's cinematography and Iñarritu's direction, but criticized the writing and runtime. It received a nomination for Best Cinematography at the 95th Academy Awards.

Plot

Silverio Gama is a Mexican journalist turned documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles with his wife, Lucía, and teenage son, Lorenzo. His work has become increasingly personal and subjective as he has grown older; his latest film, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, is a work of docufiction with autobiographical elements. Silverio and Lucía are happy together, but they are haunted by the death of their first son, Mateo, a day after his birth. The two keep Mateo's ashes and feel unable to move on from his loss. Silverio experiences much of his day-to-day life in surreal fashion, with dreams, memories, and fantasies playing out alongside his activities. When he meets America's ambassador to Mexico at Chapultepec Castle, for instance, he envisions the events of the 1847 Battle of Chapultepec and the suicides of the Niños Héroes around him.

Silverio learns that he will be the first Latin American to receive a prestigious American award for journalism. He speculates that he is only receiving the award to ease tensions between the United States and Mexico (inflamed by negative perceptions of U.S.–Mexico migration as well as Amazon's attempts to purchase the Mexican state of Baja California), but nevertheless tries to deal with a wave of media scrutiny in his home country. He cancels an interview on a popular talk show at the last minute, reminisces about his time as a husband and father, and tries to strike a balance between attacking the problems he sees with the Mexican state and defending its people from stereotypes. Secretly, he feels guilty over emigrating to the U.S. when so many other Mexicans cannot leave.

Silverio and his family attend a party held in his honor. He reunites with his siblings and extended family, to whom he is indifferent, and his adult daughter, Camila, who he lavishes with attention. When the talk show host scathingly criticizes Silverio's work, the filmmaker responds by insulting the host personally. Silverio eventually flees into the restroom, where he imagines reconciliations with his deceased father and mother. When he leaves his mother's apartment, he sees symbolic representations of historic atrocities in Mexico: hundreds of people signifying those kidnapped or killed by organized crime collapse in a commercial district, and Hernán Cortés sits atop a pile of corpses in the Zócalo, lecturing Silverio about the indigenous genocide.

Before travelling back to Los Angeles, Silverio and his family vacation in Baja California, just as Amazon buys the state. Camila tells Silverio that she will quit her job in Boston to move back to Mexico, which Silverio tentatively welcomes. The family decide to scatter Mateo's ashes in the ocean before leaving for the U.S., where they are treated with contempt by a Hispanic-American customs official.

After Lorenzo reminds him of a time when his pet axolotls died, Silverio buys some as a surprise gift. On the L.A. Metro ride from the pet store (in a repeat of an earlier scene), Silverio has a violent stroke and is left unattended on the train for several hours. He languishes in a coma, and it is revealed that the events of the film so far have been his comatose brain's attempts to process his life experience. Camila accepts the award in Silverio's absence, and she and his other family members and friends sit by his bedside, holding conversations and playing songs or television broadcasts that have inadvertently affected his dreams.

In a near-featureless desert within his mind, Silverio reunites with his dead family members and ignores projections of his living family. He sees a copy of himself, which mirrors his movements for a short time before walking away. The film ends as it began, with Silverio imagining himself flying through the desert. It is unclear if he has died, reawakened, or learned to live with his baggage.

Cast

Production

Development

On March 22, 2020, it was reported that Alejandro G. Iñárritu would write, direct and produce a new film, to be shot in Mexico, Bradford Young as cinematographer, and Patrice Vermette as production designer.[2] On March 9, 2021, Griselda Siciliani joined the cast,[3] with Grantham Coleman that July.[4]

Filming

Principal photography began on March 3, 2021 in Mexico City, with Darius Khondji as cinematographer and Eugenio Caballero as production designer.[5] Five months of filming were planned in other locations in the Capital and the Estudios Churubusco.[6][7][8]

On March 4, 2021, during filming in the historic center of Mexico City, a passerby was arrested for striking a production security member.[9] In September 2021, it was reported that the film had completed production.[1]

Post-production

Iñárritu continued editing the film after its premiere. The version that screened at the 70th San Sebastián International Film Festival in late September 2022 runs 152 minutes without credits, 22 minutes shorter than the one screened at Venice and Telluride.[10] The final runtime was set at 160 minutes (including credits).[11]

Release

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2022.[12] It had its United States premiere at the 2022 AFI Fest on November 3, 2022.[13] It was released in theaters in Mexico on October 27, 2022, then a limited release in United States theatres on November 4 and on Netflix on December 16.[14][15][16]

Reception

Critical reception

The film has received mixed reviews from critics, with many criticizing it as self-indulgent and pretentious. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 59% of 148 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "As deeply personal as it is demanding, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths unsteadily walks the line between brilliance and sheer self-indulgence."[17] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 53 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[18]

Accolades

Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Venice Film Festival September 10, 2022 Golden Lion Alejandro G. Iñárritu Nominated [19]
UNIMED Award Won [20]
Chicago Film Critics Association December 14, 2022 Best Foreign Language Film Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths Nominated [21]
Best Cinematography Darius Khondji Nominated
Alliance of Women Film Journalists January 5, 2023 Best Non-English Language Film Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths Nominated [22]
Georgia Film Critics Association January 13, 2023 Best Cinematography Darius Khondji Nominated [23]
Critics' Choice Movie Awards January 15, 2023 Best Foreign Language Film Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths Nominated [24]
AARP Movies for Grownups Awards January 28, 2023 Best Foreign Film Nominated [25]
Satellite Awards February 11, 2023 Best Motion Picture – International Pending [26]
Set Decorators Society of America Awards February 14, 2023 Best Achievement in Decor/Design of a Contemporary Feature Film Daniela Rojas Mont and Eugenio Caballero Pending [27]
Art Directors Guild Awards February 18, 2023 Excellence in Production Design for a Contemporary Film Eugenio Caballero Pending [28]
Golden Reel Awards February 26, 2023 Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Foreign Language Feature Martín Hernández, Nicolas Becker, Ken Yasumoto, Alejandro Quevedo, Jaime Sainz, Carolina Santana, Alitzel Diaz, Daniel Douglass, Valeria López Mancheva, Raynier Hinojosa, Omar Blanco, Oscar Victoria, Pietu Korhonen, Alan Romero, Heikki Kossi, Alan Romero Pending [29]
American Society of Cinematographers Awards March 5, 2023 Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases Darius Khondji Pending [30]
Academy Awards March 12, 2023 Best Cinematography Pending [31]

See also

References

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External links

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