Netflix let Birdman’s director go as big and self-indulgent as he wanted on Bardo

This review was originally published in conjunction with Bardo’s theatrical release. It has been updated and republished for the movie’s release on Netflix.

The subtitle of Bardo, the Netflix film from The Revenant and Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, is A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. But as long as we’re attaching pretentious postscripts, a quotation from Macbeth might be more appropriate: Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing. 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
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