Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Netflix | Release Date: November 4, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
22
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinKaren GordonNov 17, 2022
It’s high minded stuff, but Iñárritu, has a knack for wrapping these ideas in movies that are well crafted and exciting to watch. Read full review
100
TheWrapCarlos AguilarSep 1, 2022
Throughout the film’s warranted nearly-three-hour runtime, Iñárritu writes the cinematic verses of an oneiric love poem to an ever-incongruous homeland while simultaneously investigating his own perceived hubris, insecurities and fractured identity. Read full review
97
Paste MagazineKathy Michelle ChacónNov 22, 2022
A deeply moving cinematic experience that entangles threads of Mexican history with one man’s surreal odyssey through life, death, success and grief. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comNell MinowDec 16, 2022
What interactions are “real” and what is imagined or symbolic is left to us to sort through, or just to decide it does not matter. Each moment is presented to us with vibrance and wit. Read full review
85
The Film VerdictDeborah YoungJul 10, 2023
“Mexico for me is a state of mind,” Iñárritu has said, and Bardo is his own idiosyncratic vision of it. It is a handsomely produced creation in which the director has clearly exercised great control and his stamp is to be found on almost every credit. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 10, 2022
The brilliance of what Iñárritu does here is that, if you watch any scene in “Bardo” for 30 seconds, you will keep watching. But you have to be willing to give him those 30 seconds at the start of each scene. You have to work with him a little. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattNov 4, 2022
As an all-in-one viewing experience, Bardo is undeniably uneven, often maddening, and seems to have approximately 17 endings. Still, the movie is a marvel in its own way, dotted with pure cinephile delights and small unexpected pockets of profundity. Read full review
70
Little White LiesRafaela Sales RossNov 18, 2022
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. Read full review
70
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganSep 3, 2022
It’s impossible to deny the strength of the startling array of thoughts and concepts which Inarritu has brought to life and, ultimately, brings together, although the impact is clearly diluted by his unwillingness to cut. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubMurtada ElfadlNov 16, 2022
Dense and laborious, Bardo sometimes feels like an endurance test. Its moments of visual brilliance carry it far. Just not far enough to become essential viewing Read full review
67
The Film StageLuke HicksSep 2, 2022
When it’s all said and done—the technical marvels elucidated, the stylistic flare appreciated, the wide-eyed self-reflection given a fair shake in retaliation to the all-too-easy critique of self-indulgence—I can’t help but wince a little at the thought of a second watch. If it’ll be great to revisit certain sequences, the thought of stomaching all three hours again so soon is grueling. Read full review
63
The Associated PressJake CoyleNov 2, 2022
As with all of Iñárritu’s films, “Bardo” isn’t just deeply felt but impassioned to the max, with grand designs to not just plunge into his own soul but that of Mexico, too. For a filmmaker always pushing for more — including those titles that stretch on and on — “Bardo” is his most ambitious and indulgent film yet. Read full review
60
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonDec 22, 2022
The incomparable Daniel Giménez Cacho stars as Silverio Gama, giving an unforgettable performance that captures the intensity of the film’s concepts. While everything doesn’t always work in Bardo, Iñárritu takes his time painting a visually scrumptious tale even though it’s overly saturated with style over substance. Read full review
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekNov 21, 2022
The picture still meanders and drags, and sometimes Iñárritu’s lofty ideas come off like a hot-air balloon that deflates and gets stuck in the trees. You wish he could just move on with things already. And yet there are some magnificent visions in Bardo. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentNov 15, 2022
Bardo sees director Alejandro González Iñárritu looking at the man in the (hall of) mirrors; the result is visually sensational but sometimes lethally patience-testing. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 1, 2022
Audiences’ staying power for this meandering existential exploration of personal, professional and national identity — as tragicomic as it is rueful — will vary, depending on their interest in the artist or their appetite for the film’s aesthetic beauty. Read full review
60
Total FilmJane CrowtherSep 1, 2022
Though ambitious and visually stunning (gorgeous cracked deserts, beautiful beaches, houses filled with sand), it’s willfully elusive and unwieldy to the point of frustrating. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 1, 2022
It is made with real panache – so much panache, in fact, that you can forgive much of the film’s outrageous narcissism. Iñárritu could, if he chose, tell us an equally painful but less grandiose and auto-mythic story about his own life – but he has exercised his prerogative as an artist and given us this confection instead. It is certainly spectacular. Read full review
58
The PlaylistJack KingSep 1, 2022
For all of the visual treats on display and for the moving moments that are better left unspoiled, nobody thought to withhold this director’s greater indulgences. And that is a shame — because when ‘Bardo’ hits the softer note it strives for, it’s really something to behold. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 1, 2022
With “Bardo,” Iñárritu delivers a cartoonishly indulgent film about the fact that he makes cartoonishly indulgent films — a rootless epic about a rootless man who’s been unmoored by his own self-doubt. Read full review
55
PolygonKatie RifeNov 18, 2022
A lot happens in Bardo, much of it surreal. Elaborate musical numbers, dream sequences, alternate histories, and chronological hiccups all factor into this sprawling, whimsical, personal film. But once the lights go up and the spell is broken, all that striking imagery ends up feeling remarkably empty. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 21, 2022
There are magical moments, and brilliant sequences tossed into this ensalada of a movie. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleTrace SauveurNov 16, 2022
It’s as immersive as it is insufferable. There’s greatness packed in there, but the most lasting impression is how much time is spent trying to convince you of it. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 9, 2022
Bardo seems to be Iñárritu’s deeply personal — if hermetic — attempt to make sense of the conflicting and unresolved impulses that have animated his life and art over the past two decades, during which he’s gone from promising emerging filmmaker to Oscar-winning superstar. Read full review
50
ColliderBrian FormoSep 2, 2022
Iñárritu has always been heavy-handed but his attempt to be airier creates more areas to bloat. And it gets incredibly unwieldy at points. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 23, 2022
It is, very occasionally, brilliant: a deft reveal in the final 20 minutes ties together the disparate, seemingly unrelated scenes that came before. But with its overuse of fish-eye lenses and the quacking, whimsical brass-heavy score, it’s extremely hard work. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 18, 2022
Named for a Buddhist concept referencing the transition between birth and death, Bardo may transport the viewer to a dream space but not perhaps the one Iñárritu intended. Zzzzz. Read full review
40
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaNov 11, 2022
Bardo speaks the language of dreams, but it also speaks the language of explaining those dreams in the most boring and literal ways. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithNov 4, 2022
As the film floats on, drifting from one extravagantly engineered reverie to another, the filmmaker only occasionally succeeds in making the audience feel his sorrow, regret and alienation. More often, his flights of fancy are merely exasperating. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 4, 2022
Iñárritu has a flair for the cinematic, for bold and striking images, but he is not an experimental filmmaker. He doesn’t have that kind of deft touch, that willingness to throw ideas at the wall, see what sticks, and — most importantly — move on. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 3, 2022
Iñárritu, rather than answering them or leaving them provocatively unanswered (either one would be fine), does what he seems to do with most of his stories and ideas nowadays: He flings them around, roughs them up and rearranges them into an imposing, finally insufferable monument to his own awesomeness. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 1, 2022
Iñárritu has cooked up a personal epic of the most exhaustingly swaggery type, man-spread across three hours of screen time during which flashes of genuine, startling brilliance occasionally manage to push their way through the strenuously zany macho-visionary fug. Read full review
40
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 1, 2022
So why is “Bardo,” for all its skill, reach-for-the-stars aspiration, and majestic sweep, such a windy, confounding, and — okay, I’ll just say it — monotonous experience? The movie is full of good things, but it’s three hours long and mostly it’s full of itself. Read full review
40
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 1, 2022
Iñárritu has a lot on his mind here, weighing the sins and graces of personal and public history, and attempting to atone for some of it. But as Bardo stretches on and on and on, the film narrows into something solipsistic and meta. Read full review
39
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzNov 15, 2022
Even when the maximalist visuals grab hold – as in, by your collar with an unpleasant yank – it is hard to feel much but exhaustion. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineDerek SmithNov 8, 2022
The film signals that Alejandro G. Iñárritu, perhaps, is unable to push the limits of his own artistic expression. Read full review
30
SlashfilmMarshall ShafferSep 1, 2022
Whether talking to himself or talking at his audience as if delivering wisdom deserving of an inscription on stone tablets, Iñárritu has nothing new or interesting to say. He's established he can move a camera with astonishing fluidity as well as blur fantasy and reality seamlessly. Now what? "Bardo" is a film high on its own supply yet low on any sense of actual intrigue or intuition. Read full review
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