Bar­do, False Chron­i­cle of a Hand­ful of Truths

“My home­land has many palm trees and the thrush-song fills its air; no bird here can sing as well as the birds sing over there” Brazil­ian poet Antônio Gonçalves Dias famous­ly uttered in ​‘Exile Song’, a poem writ­ten in 1983 dur­ing his time as a stu­dent in Por­tu­gal. The words are sim­ple yet fit­ly com­mu­ni­cate the burn­ing ache that is home­sick­ness – the roman­tic con­vic­tion that no feel­ing can ever be felt as deeply as when at home, no food can ever taste as good, and no music can ever be played as beautifully.

Dias’ approach to dis­place­ment echoes heav­i­ly through­out Ale­jan­dro G Iñárritu’s Bar­do (or False Chron­i­cle of a Hand­ful of Truths), which fol­lows Mex­i­can jour­nal­ist and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Sil­ve­rio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) in the lead-up to the cer­e­mo­ny that will see him take home the fic­ti­tious Alethea Award for Jour­nal­ism Ethics, an hon­our giv­en by the Amer­i­can Jour­nal­ism Soci­ety. Being the first Mex­i­can – and Latin Amer­i­can – jour­nal­ist award­ed the pres­ti­gious lau­rel bears a heavy weight on Gama’s shoul­der and atten­u­ates a cul­tur­al and geo­graph­ic dis­con­nect that has plagued the man since he made the deci­sion to move his fam­i­ly from his home coun­try to the shiny hills of Los Angeles.

Yes, the bla­tant­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Bar­do is acri­mo­nious­ly self-indul­gent. But it needs to be. The pained ache of dias­po­ra can only be soothed by unbeat­able arro­gance, boast­ful­ness a way of think­ing of one­self as above ori­gins, to become an island when the crav­ing for the close­ness of Pangea is all-con­sum­ing. To set­tle the wist­ful long­ing for one’s coun­try, one needs to become their own, entire­ly detached from all sense of belong­ing – big­ger and big­ger until all that doesn’t per­tain to the self feels futile. Oth­er­wise, the what-could-have-beens become unbearable.

Vital to Iñárritu’s mus­ing on dias­po­ra is the over­bear­ing guilt expe­ri­enced by the colonised when assim­i­lat­ing the cul­tur­al and social traits of the colonis­er. Felt as if an act of trea­son, assim­i­la­tion has inter­gen­er­a­tional rip­ples, accen­tu­at­ed by the trau­ma car­ried for decades on end through the poten­cy of blood­lines. Here, guilt is turned into a spec­ta­cle, as flam­boy­ant­ly and self-impor­tant­ly depict­ed as all else, Sil­ve­rio at once Judas and Jesus, trai­tor and sav­iour. Bod­ies line up the cob­bled streets of Mex­i­co City, con­querors hov­er­ing over pub­lic plazas, the root­ed sor­row of lands usurped through blood­baths giv­en lav­ish tan­gi­bil­i­ty through the eyes of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dar­ius Khondji.

Bar­do devi­ates from your run-of-the-mill ode to home in the sense that it is not as much an ode as it is an ele­gy – a work that car­ries a dole­ful sense of final­i­ty. Iñár­ritu places him­self at the shore, watch­ing as the last boat leaves the dock, for­ev­er strand­ed. It is an exer­cise in self-pun­ish­ment dis­guised as self-aggran­dis­e­ment, by a direc­tor pow­ered by con­fi­dent res­ig­na­tion and – for those unlucky enough to have expe­ri­enced the gap­ing hole of yearn­ing for home – it is entire­ly worth the self-indulgence.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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