'Bardo...' review: Oscar winner's film is a chore to endure

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu returns home to Mexico for "Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths," an enormous project with the scope we've come to expect from the Oscar-winning director of "The Revenant" and "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)."

Iñárritu works in personal terms in his first feature in seven years, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Nicolás Giacobone, a co-author on both of those earlier projects.

The movie takes obvious inspiration from the work of Federico Fellini, in its surrealist depiction of a protagonist's inner state set against a larger sociohistorical backdrop. "Bardo" follows Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, who has returned to his native Mexico for a celebration of his work before receiving a major award back in the United States

The title references a Tibetan Buddhist concept referring to a state of being somewhere between death and rebirth. And that's exactly where Silverio seems to be both as an immigrant who does not feel completely at home in either country and as he re-experiences the joys and tragedies that have defined his life. These include his complicated relationship with his family and his parents, while also trying to reconcile his warm feelings for Mexico with his reasons for leaving.

MY SAY This is obviously a movie Iñárritu felt he had to make. The fact that he's accomplished it should be celebrated.

You simply won't find many other filmmakers getting the opportunity to pursue such an introspective and soul-baring reflection on this sort of wide scale — with scenes involving scores of extras, plus cinematographer Darius Khondji ("Uncut Gems") flexing his muscles with long, dynamic takes and prodigious use of a fisheye lens.

It's also very self-aware: When a character tears apart Silverio's documentary on-screen, deriding it as a hodgepodge of random images, the protagonist doesn't exactly disagree.

But all the formal chops and winking at the audience cannot disguise the fact that this plays like a movie for Iñárritu and relatively few other people. 

It's nearly three hours long and a chore to endure: filled with ideas that are flicked at but never fully explored; headlined by a character so defined by environmental factors that he remains an enigma from start to finish.

The thoughts and images reflect the egotistical work of the character — including a scene of one of his films in which he has a philosophical debate with the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés atop a mountain of fallen Aztec people. 

But "Bardo" never separates itself enough from them to provide the context needed. We're left suffering through a movie that looks and feels exactly like one of Silverio's movies: self-absorbed rather than enlightening.

BOTTOM LINE This is a tough sit, albeit one with a lot of beautiful imagery.