Mexican theatres will soon be showing Alejandro G. Iárritu’s latest film, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, which received a new trailer from streaming service Netflix before its national release. The new trailer is just as surreal as the first one, but it discloses a little more of the plot through conversation. Although we haven’t finished exploring Iárritu’s surrealist passages, this excerpt provides further context for the film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime as an existential epic. The Oscar-winning filmmaker of “Birdman” and “The Revenant” now offers something very different and outlandish from his previous efforts. Written in collaboration with Nicolás Giacobone, Iárritu’s latest film Bardo appears to be an introspective journey into the director’s own psyche as it follows Silverio Gacho (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a renowned Mexican journalist and documentarian who has made his home in Los Angeles for the better part of two decades.
When Silverio returns to Mexico after obtaining an honourable award, he feels like a fish out of water and has trouble reestablishing his sense of belonging. Because of his mental predicament, Silverio and the audience are taken on a fanciful and terrifying trip through his fears. Unlike the original trailer, which served primarily as a stunning music video, this new teaser features more of the introspective themes Iárritu addresses in the narrative. The film opens with the question, “Where are you?” and Silverio’s ennui-inducing response, “I don’t know,” before descending into the silliness and magical realism the filmmaker employs to depict the universality of that feeling.
We then return to Silverio’s psychedelic dissociative episodes, when he watches fantastical creations unfolding around him as if they were a dream. It’s as if the director’s visions are merging with reality, showing us enormous desert landscapes, dark and cramped nightclubs, and flooded trains. This preview shows more of Silverio’s struggle with his own identity and the profound sense of isolation that drives Iárritu’s film. Iárritu has directed seven films since his Oscar-nominated breakthrough movie Amores Perros (2000), which starred Gael Garca Bernal. The filmmaker has collaborated with several Hollywood heavy hitters over the course of his career, including Sean Penn and Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the critically acclaimed films 21 Grams and Babel, respectively.
Iárritu’s first trip back to Mexico since Amores may have informed the film’s central themes of identity and impostor syndrome in Bardo. In contrast to the grim and severe tone of his other films (such as The Revenant and Biutiful), Bardo has a more intimate feel and allows the filmmaker to indulge in some self-deprecating comedy. Cacho, a Mexican actor, leads the cast, which also features Griselda Siciliani as Lucia, Ximena Lamadrid as Camila, and ker Sánchez Solano as Lorenzo. The producers are Iárritu and Stacy Perskie Kaniss, while the executive producers are Mary Parent and Karla Luna Cant. On October 27th, Bardo: A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths debuts in cinemas across Mexico, followed by a limited release in the United States on November 4th, and a worldwide streaming debut on Netflix on December 16th.