Synopsis
A renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to his native country, unaware that this simple trip will push him to an existential limit.
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Cast
- Daniel Giménez CachoSilverio Gama
- Griselda SicilianiLucía
- Íker Sánchez SolanoLorenzo
- Ximena LamadridCamila
- Luz JiménezMamá
- Luis CouturierPapá
- Francisco RubioLuis Baldivia
- Andrés AlmeidaMartín
- Clementina GuadarramaHortensia
- Jay O. SandersAmbassador Jones
Recommendations
- 100
TheWrap
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. - 60
The Guardian
It is made with real panache – so much panache, in fact, that you can forgive much of the film’s outrageous narcissism. Iñárritu could, if he chose, tell us an equally painful but less grandiose and auto-mythic story about his own life – but he has exercised his prerogative as an artist and given us this confection instead. It is certainly spectacular. - 60
Total Film
Though ambitious and visually stunning (gorgeous cracked deserts, beautiful beaches, houses filled with sand), it’s willfully elusive and unwieldy to the point of frustrating. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
Audiences’ staying power for this meandering existential exploration of personal, professional and national identity — as tragicomic as it is rueful — will vary, depending on their interest in the artist or their appetite for the film’s aesthetic beauty. - 58
IndieWire
With “Bardo,” Iñárritu delivers a cartoonishly indulgent film about the fact that he makes cartoonishly indulgent films — a rootless epic about a rootless man who’s been unmoored by his own self-doubt. - 58
The Playlist
For all of the visual treats on display and for the moving moments that are better left unspoiled, nobody thought to withhold this director’s greater indulgences. And that is a shame — because when ‘Bardo’ hits the softer note it strives for, it’s really something to behold. - 40
Vanity Fair
Iñárritu has a lot on his mind here, weighing the sins and graces of personal and public history, and attempting to atone for some of it. But as Bardo stretches on and on and on, the film narrows into something solipsistic and meta. - 40
Variety
So why is “Bardo,” for all its skill, reach-for-the-stars aspiration, and majestic sweep, such a windy, confounding, and — okay, I’ll just say it — monotonous experience? The movie is full of good things, but it’s three hours long and mostly it’s full of itself.
