I don't want to comment on how successful or not as a film Bardo is so soon after having seen it. Instead, I just want to assert the truism that calling a film too long is not a valid criticism, and I find it regrettable that Inarritu cut his film by 25 minutes following its reception at the Venice film festival. I think that since Bardo debuted as a 3 hour film, it was intended and designed as a 3 hour film, and what we have now in a 25 minute shorter cut must feel truncated in some places, deficient in some story or character development where it wouldn't need to be, not to mention just general integrity in terms of flow and narrative shape. Inarritu is capable of delivering a high level of moment-to-moment enjoyableness--ex. The Revenant is not a plot heavy movie for its length. Bardo is not an exception in this regard.
Capsule review: Bardo is not a Roma-inspired Hand of God, Belfast, The Fabelmans, Armageddon Time; nor is it a case, like that of Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir movies, of an artist making a splash belatedly with a polished gem of honed autobiographical reflection. It is, rather, a fairly spontaneous 'dispatch from the psyche' autofiction by Alejandro G. Inarritu--and also a dispatch from Mexico. The film actually resembles Birdman a lot in the manner of the storytelling. While Bardo's Inarritu stand-in, Silverio Gama, played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, is not engaged in an all-or-nothing career reinvention in the film in the way that Bridman's Riggan Thomson is on Broadway, Inarritu himself, in returning to Mexico to make a Mexican film for the first time in twenty years (for much of which he has also not lived there), is in fact engaged on a project of similar stakes. As an emigrant, does he still know his country in the granular detail required to tell a representative, authentically Mexican story? But Inarritu is himself a kind of conquering hero. A certain scale is expected. And in saying that, it's already clear that autofiction--putting himself and his own most subjective experiences front and centre--is the inevitable means of approach.
Capsule review: Bardo is not a Roma-inspired Hand of God, Belfast, The Fabelmans, Armageddon Time; nor is it a case, like that of Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir movies, of an artist making a splash belatedly with a polished gem of honed autobiographical reflection. It is, rather, a fairly spontaneous 'dispatch from the psyche' autofiction by Alejandro G. Inarritu--and also a dispatch from Mexico. The film actually resembles Birdman a lot in the manner of the storytelling. While Bardo's Inarritu stand-in, Silverio Gama, played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, is not engaged in an all-or-nothing career reinvention in the film in the way that Bridman's Riggan Thomson is on Broadway, Inarritu himself, in returning to Mexico to make a Mexican film for the first time in twenty years (for much of which he has also not lived there), is in fact engaged on a project of similar stakes. As an emigrant, does he still know his country in the granular detail required to tell a representative, authentically Mexican story? But Inarritu is himself a kind of conquering hero. A certain scale is expected. And in saying that, it's already clear that autofiction--putting himself and his own most subjective experiences front and centre--is the inevitable means of approach.