González Iñárritu presents his love letter to Mexico

With the premiere in our country of “Bardo, false chronicle of a few truths” and the presence of its director, the multi-award-winning Alejandro González Iñárritu, the 20th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival kicks off this Saturday, which will extend its celebrations until on October 29.

Hours before the opening ceremony and the opening screening of this film starring Daniel Giménez Cacho, who was also present in the Michoacán capital, a presentation conference was offered, where González Iñárritu was supported by the director of the meeting, Daniela Michel, and by the president, Alejandro Ramírez, as well as being accompanied by the production director, also an Oscar winner, Eugenio Caballero, and the costume designer Anna Terrazas, among other members of the cast and the production of this film that was chosen for star our country in the race for the Oscars.

Like “a pozole”. That was the description that González Iñárritu chose for his film, a melting pot of historical, dreamlike, experiential, surreal elements, with a letter of love for Mexico and for which, he hopes, it can be fully understood solely and exclusively by the Mexican public. .

“Going back to work in Mexico City”, said the director, “living in Mexico City, having a Mexican team, was something extraordinary for me. I have worked all over the world, with crews from all over the world, but you cannot find the passion, dedication, and unconditional support that exists in each of the members of a Mexican team anywhere in the world. And I say that not because I’m Mexican, but because I’ve talked about it with directors from many places who have come to film. There’s an energy, there’s a madness and an excitement.”

And he added: “I celebrate the contradiction that our life is constantly navigating between the sublime and the ridiculous, between the absurd and the essential. From there I wanted to make this film. There are moments and wounds that are so personal, where beauty has its origin in wounds”.

About Chapultepec Castle as one of its locations, Iñárritu noted: “it was a challenge, it is a place from where the history of the country can be told, from before the conquest, through the construction of the building by the Spaniards, to the invasion, Maximiliano, the residence of the presidents. The history of Mexico is inside that building. In addition, I had the privilege of being in the tower of the castle and I think that from there there is one of the most spectacular views that any city can have. Seeing Chapultepec from there, the dimension of that lung, with its majesty, is very exciting”.

the possibilities of art

Due to the particular style of the film, the director was asked what could be the literary and cinematographic foundations that allowed him to build his new film proposal.

“Bardo”, Iñárritu reiterated in that sense, “is a pozole of things that I have had the privilege of reading, and not only Mexican or Latin American literature, but world literature. But I want to refer specifically to the literary tradition that is so rich in Mexico and Latin America, especially in the last century.”

The tape, he said, contains a tribute to Juan Rulfo and added that Octavio Paz’s reflections were also crucial, since “no one has described the essence of the Mexican more than the ‘Labyrinth of Solitude’”.

There are also nods to the literature provided by Jorge Luis Borges, or Julio Cortázar, for example with the story “Axolotl”. “Suddenly you realize that the entire history of literature is beginning to be represented (in the play) in some way. Not to mention García Márquez. What I want to say is that for me we have a metaphysical literature. We have been very used to fragmenting time and space in our lyrics, and we easily navigate through it. That is why I hope that we Mexicans can naturally understand this film, because this is what we are, a walk through our conscience.”

Regarding the filmmakers who offered the bases for the realization of his film, the director mentioned Luis Buñuel, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Roy Anderson, Federico Fellini or Jean-Luc Godard.

From this, he assured: “when I started with ‘Amores perro’ I was capturing and interested in reality. Today there is nothing that interests me less than reality, because I realized that reality does not exist, it is what I build in my head, it is what I want to see. It is what I think of reality that is important, because ultimately it is the way I face it and how I live it. This does not mean that it denies reality.

Later, he assured: “art allows us to imagine the world that we do not have, because our world is not perfect, it can be shit, but poetry, literature, music allow us to build that world that we need. And that’s what interests me. That is why it is important that today we can have the opportunity not only to spend the whole day reflecting on the pain and make a kind of infinite cycle of the darkness that we are experiencing, but to get out of it through art and imagination and dare to do it ”.

The daring of production

For fellow Oscar winner Eugenio Caballero, “the most interesting thing about the process of working on ‘Bardo’ is that the tone had to be treated very well, a tone from the light, this absurd from the light side, but with great depth. We worked a lot on the layers and this required enormous precision”.

He added that every shot in the film was meticulously discussed and even set pieces were built “to see if our intuition was wrong.” Likewise, he pointed out that it was decided to use saturated colors to accompany the dreamlike journey of Silverio Gama, the alter ego of González Iñárritu played by Giménez Cacho, through a history of Mexico that is as universal as it is intimate.

Iñárritu added that what struck him most about the work of both Eugenio Caballero and Anna Terrazas is their obsession with detail. “This has been one of the most satisfying jobs I’ve ever had with a production design team. I benefited from the language that Anna and Eugenio have developed. To see them working on that almost neurotic level in which each one of the fabrics, the glosses, the palettes, the details, is reflected in the film. And I couldn’t be more grateful.”

“Bardo, false chronicle of a few truths” will be released on October 27 in more than 500 theaters in the country and will be available in the Netflix catalog from December 16.

ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx