Bardo, False Chroncile of a Handful of Truths: A Review - Inarritu's Head Up Inarritu's Ass

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, self-righteous, and self-indulgent…not to mention pretentious, piece of crap.

In case you’d forgotten, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has won two Best Director Academy Awards – for Birdman and The Revenant, which puts him in some very rarified air. To put into context, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have one Best Directing Oscar each, and Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman have none.

I readily admit that I enjoyed Birdman (2014) and thought it was clever, and in hindsight its critique of superhero culture was spot-on and before its time, but I also thought the film badly bungled its ending.

I thought The Revenant (2015) was a flawed film but was deeper than it appeared on the surface and became much more interesting when seen through Jungian dream analysis rather than through the pop culture lens.

Except for those two films, Inarritu’s filmography is littered with some truly abysmal and pretentious pieces of work. For example, Inarritu’s 2006 shlockfest Babel may be the worst ‘taken seriously’ movie of the 21st Century…and its main competition is another Inarritu movie, 2003’s 21 Grams.

Which brings us to Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Inarritu’s newest cinematic venture, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Bardo, which was a Netflix production and hit the streaming service October 27th, was written and directed by Inarritu and stars Daniel Giminez Cacho and Griselda Siciliani.

The movie, which describes itself as an epic black comedy-drama, is a fictional, pseudo-autobiographical story that chronicles Silverio Gama – a sort of stand in for Inarritu himself, as he navigates his life as a big-time journalist and documentarian who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S.

Gama wrestles with his career success, his critics, his artistry, his family, his grief, and his past, as well as the past of Mexico and his guilt over having left the country of his birth. Of course, these are all the same things with which Inarritu grapples.

Bardo, which runs two hours and forty minutes, is another in a bevy of films this year made by auteurs examining their own lives in feature films. For example, I recently reviewed Armageddon Time, James Gray’s dismal autobiographical effort, and I’ve yet to see Spielberg’s The Fabelmans or Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light.

I will say this about The Fabelmans and Empire of Light…it is absolutely impossible for them to be worse than Bardo. Bardo is bad-o. Really bad-o. Like excruciatingly bad-o. Like so bad it makes the awful Armageddon Time feel like Citizen Kane.

Bardo, which has a grueling two-hour and forty-minute run time, is somewhat remarkable as it’s simultaneously self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, self-righteous, and self-indulgent.

The problem with Bardo is not cinematic incompetence on the part of Inarritu. If Inarritu is anything it’s competent. He knows how to shoot a film and make beautiful images – and he’s aided in this effort by cinematographer Darius Khondji (who…curiously, also shot Armageddon Time – poor bastard). What Inarritu doesn’t know how to do is turn off his ego and turn down his adolescent maudlin impulses in order to tell a coherent and compelling story.

Bardo is supposed to be infused with magical realism but is devoid of magic and allergic to realism. In their stead Inarritu injects an extraordinary lack of subtlety and pronounced heavy-handedness as well as a steaming hot serving of middlebrow bourgeois bullshit philosophy.

This movie is, without exaggeration, literally a director bitching about how persecuted he is by critics, how envied he is by jealous less successful people, and imagining how devastated everyone will be when he dies. This is more akin to something a petulant teenager would dream up as they cry in their bedroom after their parents refused to buy them a sports car for their sixteenth birthday than something an adult filmmaker should put in a feature.

To give you an indication of what an absolute shitshow Bardo is, consider this…the film features a graphic scene where a baby is literally pushed back into a vagina, and another scene where Gama’s adult face is CGI’d onto a little kid as he has a discussion with his father in a sort of dream like sequence. Did I mention it was heavy-handed? Yikes!

In addition to all of that self-serving navel gazing, Inarritu also throws colonialism and anti-Mexican racism shit against the wall to see if any of it sticks…and none of it does.

Then there’s the virtuoso filmmaking stuff, like the extended, one-shot dance scene, which I was supposed to be impressed by but which I wasn’t impressed by.

What’s astonishing about Bardo is that Inarritu has made himself the hero of the story but only succeeds in exposing himself as being relentlessly unlikable. The Inarritu character Gama is one of the most punchable people to have graced the silver screen this year, and maybe this decade.

Even the film’s more interesting visual sequences, like when people start dropping dead in Mexico City, is derivative. I saw the same sequence done better in a Radiohead music video nearly thirty years ago.

Speaking of derivative, it seems to me that with Bardo Inarritu was trying to copy/emulate his fellow Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron’s film Roma (2018), and maybe even Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups (2015). Roma is a brilliant, magical realist, autobiographical story about growing up in Mexico, and Knight of Cups is, in my opinion, a dreamlike masterpiece about navigating the hell of Hollywood and moviemaking.

The problem though is that Inarritu is no Cuaron and no Malick. He lacks their deftness, their depth and their profundity. Inarritu is an artistic poseur. A pretentious pretender who thinks cinematically pouting and preening is equivalent to being profound.

What is bothersome about Inarritu’s failure on Bardo is that we are witnessing the end of the auteur era at Netflix. The streaming giant in recent years made the decision to throw money at auteurs and let them do what they want. In the case of Cuaron, David Fincher and Martin Scorsese, that decision was cinematically fruitful as it gave us Roma, Mank and The Irishman. This year the two auteurs blessed by Netflix’s desire for prestige were Noah Baumbach and Inarritu, and they delivered the excrement filled dump-trucks that were White Noise and Bardo. It should not be a shock that Netflix announced this year that they will no longer throw money at auteurs…thanks Baumbach and Inarritu.

The bottom line is that Bardo may finally expose Inarritu for the philosophically trite filmmaking fraud that he is. His elevation to the heights of Hollywood success is more a testament to the buffoonery of the movie business than to the artistic genius of Inarritu.

Whatever one may think of Inarritu as a filmmaker, there is simply no denying that Bardo is an artistic catastrophe of epic proportions. This movie is nothing but a vacuous, vapid and vain exercise in cinematic masturbation. Avoid it at all costs.

©2023

The Vast of Night: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A well directed film that starts slow but once it gets going is well worth the wait.

The Vast of Night, written and directed by Andrew Patterson, is the science fiction story of two teenagers, Fay and Everett, and the very strange night they experience in New Mexico in the 1950’s. The film stars Sierra McCormick (Fay) and Jake Horowitz (Everett).

I had not heard of The Vast of Night until my podcast co-host Barry told me to give it a watch. I had no expectations and even less information about the movie before I watched it on Amazon Prime streaming…but boy am I glad I did watch, as it is a little gem of a movie.

To be clear, The Vast of Night isn’t going to change your life, and it isn’t a perfect movie…but it is an exceedingly well made one that highlights a confident filmmaker with a distinct vision and the skill to pull it off.

The movie is set in a small town in 1950’s New Mexico and perfectly captures the rhythm and pace of that time and place. One of the struggles of the film is that the pace of the first half hour is very deliberate, and that may be off-putting to some viewers conditioned on the more frenetic style of modern day entertainment. I would recommend viewers who feel this way stick with the movie…it ends up being worth it.

Speaking of the modern day, the movie is very effective in re-creating the sense of community but also the palpable isolation of the 1950’s, particularly in a rural area, due to the lack of technology. Patterson plays up this dearth of technology by having Fay work the switchboard in town and preferring to run from place to place rather than drive. She also reads science magazines with predictions of the future’s technology (where is my flying car by the way?) and has an acute interest in tape recorders - which seem horrifyingly primitive to us iPhone addicted fiends but that were marvels in their time.

Part of what makes the The Vast of Night so compelling is that it is visually so striking. It is absolutely stunning that this film was made for $700,000, as it looks like it has a budget a hundred times that.

They used a small town in Texas to shoot the film and it is just the perfect set, and the costumes and the props are equally fantastic as every detail in the film is deliciously specific.

The film also looks more expensive because of the clever and courageous Andrew Patterson uses complex camera movements and extended scenes that are remarkably well-done. In multiple sequences Patterson does extended and elaborately choreographed camera movements that cover vast swaths of ground and large numbers of actors and movement. It is really something to behold, and anybody who has ever worked on a movie will appreciate the extraordinary technical difficulty of what Patterson pulls off.

Patterson also extracts outstanding performances from his cast of unknowns.

Sierra McCormick in particular is outstanding as the switch board operator Fay, who is plugged into the town and maybe the truth. McCormick has some extended scenes where it is just her in a close up talking on the phone…and they are mesmerizing. She is able to perfectly embody the clash between the innocence of 1950’s youth and the burden of adult responsibility thrust upon her.

Jake Horowitz plays Everett, the hot shot radio guy, and does terrific work as well. There is one scene in particular, which I won’t give away, where he enters the scene with one distinct expectation and then you watch him transform as his expectation is met, yet he is left unsatisfied. It is a stunning scene to watch and he is complex work in it is outstanding in it (you’ll know the scene when you see it).

Gail Cronauer has a small, but pivotal, role and she is utterly magnificent. Cronauer (and Patterson) make the wise choice to embrace a centered stillness in her scene, and she fills this stillness with a vibrancy and dynamic inner life that is palpable.

At times this movie felt like a gloriously bizarre amalgamation of The Last Picture Show, a Robert Altman movie and a Twilight Zone episode. That cinematic stew was mostly well executed, but there were a few minor bumps. For instance, the Altman-esque scenes of overlapping dialogue were done with aplomb but the dialogue in them was not as technically crisp (in part due to Horowitz having a cigarette in his mouth) as it needed to be and thus was a bit muddled. Also, The Twilight Zone part of the this cinematic science fiction concoction was a storytelling device that Patterson uses throughout, that frankly I felt didn’t work particularly well and could have been eliminated entirely.

That criticism though is just splitting hairs, as once the movie got rolling it was entirely engrossing and really a joy to behold as Patterson uses multiple savvy maneuvers to wring as much tension, suspense and drama out of his story as possible.

Andrew Patterson is obviously a director to watch, and could very well be the next big thing. If he can pull off what is essentially a stage play, in such a visually intricate and dynamic way with such a tiny budget, then goodness knows what he can do when Hollywood opens the coffers for him.

One can’t help but worry though that he will get sucked into the Hollywood machine and end up swimming up stream in a river of shit on some big budget Jurassic World sequel or something, where the studio suffocates his creativity while filling his pockets.

My hope is that Patterson will, like Darren Aronofsky before him, turn his small budget success into a mildly larger budget, with bigger names, for a film that still speaks to his vision. Aronofsky followed up his indie hit Pi, with Requiem for a Dream. Requiem for a Dream wasn’t a box office smash, but it was a cinematic statement that cemented Aronofsky’s status as an artistically powerful filmmaker who told original stories in a unique way. I hope Andrew Patterson is a similar type of creative force with an equal amount of artistic integrity.

In conclusion, The Vast of Night was a glorious little cinematic surprise to stumble upon in these dark days of retreads and repeats. The movie is not perfect, and its slow opening pace may feel impenetrable to those not accustomed to it, but it is well worth the wait if you can stick with it. If you are desperate to escape the suffocating madness of our current moment and want to go to a seemingly simpler time that wasn’t quite as simple as we think it was…then you should escape to 1950’s New Mexico via the delightfully intriguing The Vast of Night.

©2020

Blaze: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Skip it in the theatre, as the film never rises to its artistic ambitions, but see it on cable or Netflix to catch Ben Dickey’s charismatic performance.

Blaze, written by Ethan Hawke and Sybil Rosen (based on Rosen’s book “Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze") and directed by Hawke, is the story of enigmatic musician Blaze Foley. The film stars Ben Dickey as Blaze Foley and Elia Shawkat as Sybil Rosen, and features supporting turns from Josh Hamilton, Charlie Sexton, Sam Rockwell and Steve Zahn.

Blaze director Ethan Hawke is an intriguing character for having been the symbol of a sort of intellectual artist in the film business for nearly thirty years. Hawke’s attraction to the real-life Blaze Foley, a legendary but mysterious country music figure, is no doubt born out of his respect for Foley’s commitment to artistry over commerce.

Blaze is Hawke’s love letter to Foley and in a sense, a bit of projection, as Blaze Foley is what Hawke wishes he could more genuinely be…a tortured artist. While Hawke is certainly an artist, he is not a tortured one. Hawke has, by every measure, had a very successful, dare I say, comfortable life, first as the poster boy for Gen X ennui then as the symbol of intellectual literacy in a film industry that can barely read.

I was excited to see Blaze because as I have gotten older, I have grown to appreciate and respect Ethan Hawke more and more as an actor and also as a presence in our culture. Hawke may be a bit pretentious (as am I) and may be a bit of a poseur (as am I), but at the very least his pretensions and his pose are attempting to fill the cavernous void in American culture where stupidity is translated into relatability and intellectualism is maligned as elitism.

Sadly, Hawke’s Blaze misses the mark for a very surprising reason…it is suffocated by the orthodox conventions of the genre. Blaze is a standard bio-pic wearing an art house jacket. Hawke makes the unwise decision to hold to the traditional conventions of bio-pics, and thus neuters the story and the film of any and all cinematic vibrancy. For Blaze to have succeeded, Hawke needed to eschew the format of the bio-pic and commit to a pure arthouse exploration.

Yes, Hawke does sprinkle in some artistic homages to Robert Altman, and gives his actors a strong dose of freedom in front of the camera, but ultimately he confines his own vision into the straight jacket of the bio-pic, and that vision loses its artistic mind struggling to break free of such a stultifying form.

Bio-pics are, by nature, hagiographic, but the very best ones (Raging Bull, Malcolm X) at least give you a glimpse into the genuine person behind the myth. In Blaze, Blaze Foley is reduced to being a tall tale told for effect, not a quest for the truth at the center of the man. Blaze Foley is never revealed in this film, and by the end he is just as big a mystery, if not bigger, than he was when it began.

Blaze Foley is a mythical creature, like a guitar playing Sasquatch, and Hawke’s film of his life is a campfire story recounting that time someone saw a glimpse of a shadow in a dark forest and could swear it was Bigfoot.

There were some bright spots in the film, namely the magnetic performance from Ben Dickey as Blaze. Dickey has an ease and charm about him in front of the camera that is undeniable. He is also a magnetic screen presence with a palpable air of meloncholy and mischief about him, and because of that he lights up every single scene he inhabits.

On the down side, Elia Shawkat, who plays Foley’s wife, Sybil Rosen, is just not up to the task. Shawkat, who comes across as younger than she ought to be, underwhelms in a pivotal role, and it undermines the film even further.

Charlie Sexton, who plays Blaze’s friend and musical compatriot Townes Van Zandt, is also problematic, and feels stilted and unnatural on screen. The interview scenes of Townes that pepper the film, bring any sort of narrative or creative momentum to a screeching halt every time they pop up.

While there are some solid scenes and some directorial flair, such as an Adam and Eve scene where Sybil convinces Blaze to pursue glory, even feeding him an apple in the process, or a scene where Kris Kristofferson, playing Blaze’s father who barely speaks, is visited by Blaze, the rest of the film is basically recounting things that happened, which never gives us insight into the man.

At the end of the day, Blaze is a bit of an indulgent and unfocused film that needed a stronger hand and a more coherent cinematic aesthetic from its director, Ethan Hawke. As the film reveals to us, Townes Van Zandt is a mannered, self-serving liar, and Blaze Foley is an unabashed truth-teller, Ethan Hawke the director, lies somewhere in-between.

©2018