For Alejandro G. Inarritu, film is but a dream

Alejandro G. Inarritu has four Academy Awards to his name — three for directing, producing and co-writing 2014’s Birdman, and one for directing 2015’s The Revenant, not to mention a special achievement award for his 2017 virtual reality production Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand). His newest movie, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, is a semi-autobiographical tale of a filmmaker grappling with fame, creativity and Mexican identity. National Post film critic Chris Knight caught up with the 59-year-old director recently by telephone. The following Q&A has been condensed and edited.

Q: Can you explain the meaning of the title?

A: I named it Bardo because in the Buddhist tradition it is kind of an in-between place, between something that has died and something that will become. I wanted to find a way to describe this very difficult sensation that all immigrants share when you leave your country and you are away from your roots, from your identity, from your affections. There’s a very nostalgic, melancholic emptiness, like something that you have lost, and this dual existence that is the one you left there and the one that you have now here, and that constant reinvention of yourself.

Q: And the subtitle, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths?

A: The film navigates between reality and imagination, between the material and the spiritual, between dreams and facts. Basically this film is a walk in the consciousness of somebody, where his life is going through his mind, and not in a linear way. If you think about it, our memories are something that does not physically exist. We create them, sometimes we put pieces together, and in time they change. The truth is not really important. The film is the representation of them, a false chronicle of them. It doesn’t attempt to be true.

Q: Your films often deal with death, and Bardo is no exception. Why is this such an important theme for you?

A: People are sometimes afraid of thinking about death, and they want to detach or dismiss or forget about it, even though we know that it is the only actual factual truth, the last immigration that we will all have to go through. But to consider the equation of our lives is great, because it triggers in you a way to appreciate much more the fleeting instant that life is. To enjoy that, the perspective of life, is much more invigorating and much more valuable and much more joyful.

Q: Is Bardo your most personal film to date?

A: It’s very personal but I think for the same reason it’s very universal. It’s built of very personal things. Some of them are true, some of them are false, some of them are interpretations, some of them are fears, imagination, past, present and future. At the same time there are other aspects that are more collective, they belong to the collective memory of my country, some historical events in the past or in the present or actually fears of the future.

Q: The sound design in Bardo is fascinating, There are scenes in which people lose their voices, or are able to speak without moving their lips. Can you talk about that?

A: If you ask yourself how a dream sounds, it’s a weird question. And actually there is no answer. You remember the atmosphere and the feeling and some images, but the sound is a huge question mark. And I wanted to explore how this walk through consciousness would be sounding; what is the soundtrack of that?

Also, cinema is audio-visual, and “audio” is first for a reason, because the audio is raw and goes directly to your senses. There is no intellectualization or rationalization, it’s just purely sensorial, it’s very primitive. So we had a lot of experimentation with that.

Q: Can you talk about your choice of Daniel Gimenez Cacho to play the main character? Is the character a version of you?

A: I had dinner with him and we drank one or two bottles of mezcal, and we found after five hours a great amount of coincidence in the way we see life. We are the same generation, married, kids the same ages, and our way of seeing life is very similar.

We share so many things that I was sure that not only were his technical abilities enough for this film – because he’s a great actor technically – but I knew we were sharing such a similar way of seeing life. He was not copying me, he was actually doing his own work with himself. He was very honest and truthful, he wasn’t portraying or even acting. He was present, which is the most difficult thing in acting.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths opens Nov. 18 in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal; Nov. 25 in Ottawa; and Dec. 16 on Netflix.

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