Of Axolotls, Vulnerable Bodies and Transnational History Politics: Neobaroque Representation of the Mexican-American Borderland Identity in the Film Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths by Alejandro González Iñárritu

This article examines Alejandro González Iñárritu’s skillful employment of neobaroque representation strategies in his metacinematic emography Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, to present the complexities of the borderland identity of Mexican-American emigrants, and its entanglement in the legacy of the myth of the Mexican character with its axolotl symbolism. The inquiry focuses in particular on the director’s porte-parole Silverio Gama and his family. The film’s mise-en-abyme, a para-documentary False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths made by Silverio, a filmmaker of transnational reputation like Iñárritu, is considered a meta-commentary on Iñárritu’s own filmmaking and the political consequences of immersion in the mediatized reality. The para-documentary is also analysed as an example of Iñárritu’s manipulation of the tension between the major and minor strategies of neobaroque representation in order to interrogate the transnational Mexican-American history politics as well as the dreams, aspirations, and vulnerability of Mexican emigrants traversing deserts on their way to the U.S. border. The article concludes with a claim that Silverio’s identity can only be comprehended if the canon of the axolotl is considered to reflect the condition of Bardo, an intermediate state between life and death.