‘Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths’ Review: Alejandro G. Iñárritu Has Made a Felliniesque Epic of Soulful Midlife Navel-Gazing

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” is a movie longer than its title, and maybe even more pretentious.

It’s the first film that Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman,” “The Revenant”) has made in his native Mexico in 22 years, and you feel, in every scene, the sweat and ardor of his ambition.

He wants to make an epic statement — about life and death, fiction and reality, history and imagination. He wants to make a confessional autobiographical fantasia about the fears and dreams hidden behind his façade as a famous and celebrated film director.

He also wants to complement and compete with his fellow filmmaker and transplanted countryman Alfonso Cuarón, who in 2018 returned to Mexico and drew on his own life to make “Roma,” the world’s artiest Oscar-bait movie, getting it bankrolled by the deep pockets of Netflix. (“Bardo” is, if possible, an even artier Oscar-bait movie, also bankrolled by the deep pockets of Netflix.) More than any of that, Iñárritu wants to create an onscreen hero who, for all his scruffy relatability, is less a conventional dramatic character than a walking conduit, a figure who becomes a projection of anything the filmmaker wants him to be.