55
Metascore
37 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100TheWrapCarlos AguilarTheWrapCarlos AguilarThroughout 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.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawIt 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.
- 60Total FilmJane CrowtherTotal FilmJane CrowtherThough ambitious and visually stunning (gorgeous cracked deserts, beautiful beaches, houses filled with sand), it’s willfully elusive and unwieldy to the point of frustrating.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAudiences’ 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.
- 58IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichWith “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.
- 58The PlaylistJack KingThe PlaylistJack KingFor 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.
- 40Vanity FairRichard LawsonVanity FairRichard LawsonIñárritu 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.
- 40VarietyOwen GleibermanVarietyOwen GleibermanSo 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.
- 40The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinIñárritu 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.
- 30SlashfilmMarshall ShafferSlashfilmMarshall ShafferWhether 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.