Bardo, for Buddhists it is a place of transit
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
I never thought to publish an article on the first day of the year, so I toast to that and to the words that are born with it, hopefully the ones that describe 2023 are good. For now, for me it starts happy because soon I will meet you at the presentation of my first book.
Meanwhile, I recommend you see Bardo by Alejandro González Iñarritu. If they ever recounted their life lying on a couch, surely the psychoanalyst asked them to tell him what they felt instead of what they thought, just that is what this filmmaker born in the Narvarte neighborhood of the then Federal District does in Bardo. This invitation is made in the film in the voice of Silverio Gama, who is himself: “I’m tired of saying what I think and not what I feel.”
He does this by circling in the right direction with long-range pirouettes to find his actors. He sometimes bumps into them at a casting or at a hair salon because he believes that if he’s wrong in the process, he’s wrong in the movie. But in Bardo it did not happen. In an interview with Cristina Pacheco, he recounts that when choosing an actress, he asked her to take a pillow and caress it as if it were her son, so Iñarritu tells and excites. In his stories, and this is no exception, he makes us see the migrant phenomenon, which he himself knows because he has lived in Los Angeles for twenty-one years.
He does it in a different way than the rest of many of his compatriots, but in exile, even if he is privileged, he can see himself better because he is far from what he loves and what defines him. In short, González Iñarritu has shot and done it well, from radio to commercial singles, from Guillermo Arriaga (who wrote the scripts for his first three films) to Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro. Once installed in that trio, he has not stopped walking the red carpets of the most important film festivals in the world, thanking golden statuettes such as the Oscar.
In these cycle changes, as he calls them, Iñarritu has mutated. As a young man he went on a cargo ship to Spain and when he returned he began to study communication at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In 1985 he dropped out and directed WFM. Until he came to the cinema to confront the viewer. But in Bardo he also speaks to a generation that recognizes the studies of Channel 8, when there were also only those of 5, 2 and 13… There it was reported differently.
Instead, he moves from reality to dreams and then to heartbreak. Mateo, his son who died twenty-five years ago, appears and putting him on stage may have cured him a little. It also shows us the Historic Center of the CDMX and we listen to the noise of the footsteps of those who share the sensations that only remained in their memory. Little by little the others appear and the scene is filled with life and death.
We also feel the smells of the carnitas, and there, in the midst of the heartbeat of the country that he left behind, our tragedies rebel, like that of the disappeared and the military standing up like Gods watching… ask for the help of the police while the bells of the church ring church is useless. This is, among other things, Bardo. You have to see it to find out the rest.
#Bard #Feel #life