bardo (w&d iñárittu, w nicolás giacobone)

Iñárittu is a showman and Bardo is nothing if not a show. From the opening, a delirious, icarus-esque swooping over the desert, segueing to an underwater sequence on the LA subway, to a bravura non-interview in a Mexican TV studio, to the close, the film is composed of vivid, sometimes delirious sequences where the camera jockeys for position with text and actors. Once again Iñárittu frequently uses a fish-eye lens, as though he is trying to cram as much information into the screen as it can take. The nods to other filmmakers, in particular Tarkovsky, are explicit. Like many a gaudy show, it is in danger of outstaying its welcome once the bells and whistles become predictable, even repetitive. We know when we enter the gents in a vast Mexican club that we’re not going to go out the same way we came in, that this is just a portal to another cine-set which is waiting behind the next door.

This is undeniably an imperfect film, but perhaps all the better for being warts and all. The themes the filmmaker addresses are interlocking: family, fame and Mexico. It probably helps to know something about Mexico and its relationship with the USA to get the most of the film, which opens with the conceit that Amazon is going to buy Baja California and a vast set-piece sequence about the Mexican-USA war of 1845. The protagonist, Silverio is a Mexican filmmaker caught between two worlds, just like Iñárittu, struggling to retain his Mexican identity when he has made his career in Hollywood. The typography of the credits alludes to the Mexican flag, and the times when the film becomes most discursive is when characters address the dichotomy between being Mexican and remaining in Mexico, or leaving it. It should be remembered that it’s not just the director who heads North. In large swathes of Mexico much of the population has crossed the border to find work. In this sense, the Silverio/ Iñárittu journey reflects that of much of the nation, even if the majority of those exiles’ arguments about their reasons for having left might be less recondite.

At the same time, the film is a telling celebration of the capital, DF. Most of the film takes place in its streets and there are times when Bardo captures the glorious dissonant energy of Mexico DF with real aplomb. This is a very different DF to Cuarón’s ode to the city in Roma. (In Bardo the indigenous maid is refused entry to the beach, so she wouldn’t be able to save the children if they were in danger of drowning, a telling indictment of the country’s classist society). Iñárittu’s Mexico is wild, sweaty, drunken, consumed by family and friends, petty jealousies and deep loyalties. The very messiness of Bardo, its incompleteness, feels completely authentic to the culture it is seeking to portray. Down to the complexity of Mexican identity, as noted by a scene where Cortes claims to be the first Mexican on top of a pile of indigenous bodies in the Zocalo (another ‘spectacle’), or when Silverio is mocked in a fictitious interview for his ethnicity. Mexico is a melting pot and has been for thousands of years, the Spanish just added more blood to the mix. Bardo grapples with the multiple contradictions of Mexico and being Mexican with more than enough vigour to compensate for the director’s self-indulgence. 

the revenant (d. iñárritu; w. iñárritu & mark l smith)

What a curiously hollow film, from Iñárritu. Spectacular, wrapped up with the most gorgeous wrapping paper ever made, but inside, nothing more than a bauble. There’s a moment towards the beginning when you think that there might something going on in the use of subtitled Pawnee and its depiction of the native American Indians. The Rhee chief delivers a forceful speech to the French militiaman about theft and colonialism which hints at a subtext. Perhaps the Mexican will break through the stereotypes and succeed in inveighing the indigenous population with the protagonism they deserve. But the mute, affected Native Indians remain bit-part players who fulfil their expected roles. Glass’ widow speaks words of pantheistic wisdom; the witchdoctor Indian saves his brutalised body with the use of an effective sauna technique, whilst not being smart enough to outwit the drunken French militia; the Rhee plod along towards their destiny with implacable expressions and an iridescent violence. This review is already giving them more focus than the movie. Had it been made fifty or over twenty five years ago, perhaps the “authenticity” might have impressed, a trick Costner pulled off with Dances With Wolves, but in the end this is no more than another gringo Western, with a lame revenge narrative as its motor. The simplicity plays to the market; you don’t have to think too much whilst watching this movie; it’s a visceral ride. Macho film-making at its least subtle, a point consolidated by the cliched sub-Malick flashback scenes of the dreamy moments when Glass and his bride lived an idyllic life full of arcadian beauty. Like the Native population, women are a marginalised element whose presence in the narrative would only get in the way of men doing their thing. All of this is redeemed to a certain extent by the wonder of Lubezki’s camera. Iñárritu’s erstwhile partner, Arriaga, who wrote a much more complex, intriguing Western, must be smiling ironically to himself, like Moctezuma, at the way the gods distribute their favours. 

biutiful (d iñárritu; w iñárritu, armando bo, nicolas giacobone)

Back in the cinema. Lights dimmed. Big screen. Ten pounds. Three hundred pesos uruguayos. Having experienced cinema within a purely digital form (casi) of late, this was a return to the old routine. There's another conversation to be had about the merits or demerits of how you watch cinema, and what this implies for the cinematic form, but that's a conversation for another day.

One thing Iñárritu has shown no fear of within his career, for better or for worse, is the potential of cinematic narrative. Oddly, I now remember sitting with Ana's niece at one point in 2009 in San Jose, watching a pirated version of the Japanese club scene in Babel and enjoying it for 20 minutes before retiring. There's another club scene in Biutiful, Inarittu likes a bit of bling, and this is also well filmed. In isolation it would make for a compelling sequence. Biutiful has a whole range of isolated sequences which stand out as bravura filmmaking. The opening; the first scene where we meet Marambra; the arrest of the Africans. Among others. Unfortunately for Inarittu, the real art of cinema is not merely the creation of remarkable moments, but how those remarkable moments are then strung together. This is where one wonders if Arriaga's true talent was understanding Inarittu's limitations. A fractured narrative papers over the narrative cracks in a way a linear one cannot. Biutiful is the work of a talented filmmaker, but all the same a filmmaker who doesn't know how to edit.

As a result, in spite of Bardem's remarkable performance, (finally persuading me that he's more than just a craggy face), Biutiful sags in too many places. When the film's central tenet is that the leading character has cancer and will die, it's probably going to be grim. I enjoy a grim film more than your average punter, but even for me this was pushing it. Furthermore, there's something about Inarittu's flair as a filmmaker that seems counter-productive for the material. Although the narrative is grim, the style of the film isn't. There are too many sexy moments. Even the club scene, which should be a kind of descent into the underworld, feels lush and eminently watchable. There's also too many seemingly clever touches which aren't really developed and smack of "Script Development". That Bardem's modern day saint should happen to talk to the dead; that the Chinese sweatshop owner happens to be gay; these details feel like add-ons, the gilding of the lily.

It's tempting to say that Inarittu has cooked his goose as filmmaker, that he peaked with his debut, and its been glamour and downhill ski slopes ever since. I'm not sure that's true. In twenty minute chunks he's about as good as it gets in terms of dynamic, visceral film-making. He just needs to find the right writer to help him string these episodes into a functioning narrative. And learn how to edit.

+++

babel (dir. Inarritu)

They’re at it again, Inarritu and Arriaga. Replicating the formula. Only the formula’s getting bigger and the canvas broader.

So it’s not a surprise that a certain amount of bagginess is creeping in. Amores Perros was set within a single city. 21 Grams was set within a single country. Babel is set within a single globe.

The title itself seems to recognise the risk of hubris. On a thematic level, the word 'Babel' acts as an indicator of the perils of miscommunication. A child is mistaken for a terrorist. A kindly nanny is mistaken for a child-snatcher. A deaf girl is mistaken in all kinds of ways. Language holds the key to enlightenment, but also confusion and alienation. However, Babel was also a tower, a structural edifice, and this film’s sense of ambition incurs the risk of the thing collapsing, the ideas outpacing the content, the semiotic meaning drowning out the narrative.

To what extent this occurs remains a subjective judgement. It seemed to me as though the film didn’t quite manage to juggle all the balls in the air. There’s the basic unlikelihood of lightening striking twice at the core of the movie, with Blanchett and Pitt’s children being subjected to a tragedy which is completely independent of the one the parents are undergoing. Despite the neatness of the chronological rupture (the tragedies do not occur simultaneously, in spite of the fact they have to within screen time), this seemed too much like the vagaries of Greek tragedy for such a realistic (use of the) medium. Had they gone the whole way and the third strand of the storyline compounded this, it may have worked better. But as it was, this strand was only tenuously linked to the other two stories. The Japanese material – a teenage virgin desperate to get laid – seemed out of keeping with the measured psychology of the Calexican and Morrocan tales.

The movie flared and then faded. The first third of the movie – the promise of what kind of a movie this might become – was the strongest section. A movie which might encompass so much of this turbulent, globalised village. It set out its ambition, and then, like the tower, failed to fulfil it. It might be that the Japanese daughter killed her mother with the same gun that shot Blanchett, but this seemed too arbitrary a pillar on which to build a film that spans the world.

It’s impossible not to admire Inarritu and Arriaga’s ambition. Babel is aspiring to things that other movies have never even heard of, let alone dreamt of. The influence of Amores Perros on cinema has been substantial. It may be that it’s time for its creators to step out of their masterpiece’s shadow. Babel seems to follow the architecture of that movie to a logical, grandiose end. Perhaps it had to be done, but it would be interesting to see how the filmmakers’ cinematic dexterity might now work on a more intimate, humane scale.