“Bardo, a false chronicle of several truths”, the new film by the Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu, focuses on the speech of a drug dealer behind bars.
(“Now we have millions, and you are a bankrupt country run by incompetents”).
He interviewed Silverio Gama, a Mexican journalist who stars in the story and will receive recognition for his award-winning work, listening to him as a clear ambassador of that terrified elite.
(“We have agile management methods, and you only have bureaucratic methods. We are not afraid of death… you are dying of fear”).
The short but powerful speech of the criminal confirms that sometimes only through art and fiction can we glimpse some disturbing truths.
(“We’re well armed… you have a .38. We’re on offense… you’re on defense).
In those few lines, ideas, fears and revelations about us appear that are difficult to find with such force and clarity in the isolated insula of academic analysis or in the monothematic mania of the daily commentocracy.
(“You have a mania for humanism… we are cruel, without mercy”).
For example, in the current series, the criminal has become an anti-hero, reduced to a lucrative entertainment product, while bullets whiz past our ears in shopping malls. Meanwhile, the beleaguered State, like an absurd clown improvising flashy but useless numbers, confronts the problem without confronting it.
(“You’ve transformed us into crime superstars… we have them as clowns”).
Or that class divide where a Mexican can pay 27,000 pesos to experience the adrenaline of speed, while millions, excluded from the feast, experience the adrenaline of survival every day or choose the short, long-armed route to reach the top of the pyramid.
(“The slum population helps us out of fear or love… they hate you. You are regional, provincial, nationalist, corrupt…”).
Criticism of drug use, for which the United States plays a responsible role, reminds us that the problem of drug trafficking has no borders.
(“We have 50 million dependent gringos, our weapons come from outside the gabach, we are global, we don’t forget you, you are our clients, you don’t forget even when the fear of the violence we cause passes…”).
WARNING
I will not express an opinion about the film as a work of the seventh art because I am not a film critic. I’ll just say that the best ending is after almost three hours in the seat. But the drug dealer scene was worth it.
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