True Lies

Speaking of visually beautiful films: Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). Ms. Spenser wasn't very interested in this one, so I watched it myself - except for the axlotls.

It starts with a desert, seen from above. We see the shadow of someone jumping, almost flying over the landscape. This made me think of the first scene in 8 1/2. The next scene is in a hospital. Griselda Siciliani is giving birth to her child with journalist/director Daniel Gimenez Cacho. But the doctor indicates that the baby didn't want to come out, so they put it back into Siciliani. This becomes Cacho sitting on an LA Metro train, holding a bag of axolotls. Ms. Spenser had a pet axolotl for a while, so I called her over for this. But the bag breaks, flooding the train, as Cacho begins swimming...

Yes, it starts with a dream. But the rest of the movie is filled with dreams and apparitions. Although a member of the Mexican intelligentsia, he has been living in LA, and is about to win a major prize - the first Mexican to win this prize. He is both proud of the work he is doing, and a little ashamed of going to the US to follow fame. 

He and his wife are also still grieving the death of a child - the child who decided to back into the womb (or the Bardo). So the symbolism is largely around his struggle with success, the state of Mexican/American relations, and his family trauma. He doesn't seem to struggle with infidelity or woman troubles at all. So that breaks the parallels with 8 1/2.

However, it ends with a kind of Dance of Death, with a jaunty circus tune. So, back in Fellini territory.

It was a lot of fun watching the surreal scenes of this movie, even when there is a serious emotional background. But I have to say, the axolotls were the best. Native to Mexico, these are neotenous amphibians - they never convert from water to air breathing. They always seem to be smiling, and they have sort of feathery antennae, which are external gills. They are very cute. All in all, the movie needed more axolotls.