Alejandro G. Iñárritu: "The most important culture in the world today is that of emigration"

• Venice Film Festival Iñárritu chokes on himself in 'Bardo, false chronicle of a few truths'

• Iñárritu installation on the border

• Interview Iñárritu: 'Compassion is now a kind of weakness'

Alejandro González Iñárritu (Mexico City, 1963)

is of all living directors the one who most and best resembles Alejandro González Iñárritu.

He sounds redundant, perhaps platitude, and, in fact, is the irrefutable proof of his uniqueness.

There is only one.

And, I should add, enough.

he is one of the few directors in the history of cinema to receive two consecutive Oscars for best director.

Now, hand in hand with Netflix, he presents what is called to be the demonstration of his identity.

It is not a simple autobiographical film but it wants to be (and is) a monument to himself, to the ego, to the self, to the true Iñárritu.

For better or for worse, there is no possible answer.

Presented at the Venice Film Festival and bitterly criticized, the version that now hits the billboard before landing on the platform has suffered a 20-minute cut.

What, attentive, does not mean that it falls below three hours.

Lots of Iñárritu.

Isn't reducing a film to 20 minutes a claudication? No, essentially the film is the same one that was shown in Venice.

The truth is that '

' was finished two days after its

world.

A lot of very complex visual effects put me up against the wall.

I never got to see the whole movie and with people.

I was very involved in the whole process as an editor.

The first time I saw it in a cinema I realized that there were many things that I had to polish.

The energy of the public makes you change.

The idea was always to strengthen the internal rhythm.

It was a work of synthesis, not cutting.

On the other hand, a film is an eternal process;

a movie doesn't end, it's abandoned, it's taken away from you.

I am very maniacal and for me polishing is always extracting, but not amputating. How do you take criticism? As the film itself does with everything: with humor.

The film sails between the sublime and the ridiculous, and wants to approach supposedly transcendental themes with a sense of humor.

And what is worth for my life, well, also for everything else.

The center of the film is his own dislocated identity.

It would seem that he does not feel at home in Mexico or in the United States.

I wonder to what extent he doesn't consider that circumstance not only a loss, but the best antidote against the nationalisms that arise everywhere. I've been talking about it for some time.

I was already in '

'.

In '

' the central issue is emigration... The short film

' was an existential portrait of the emigrant's drama.

Emigrating is a restlessness that prevents the very possibility of returning.

You realize that even if you return home, you no longer return to the same place you left from.

Life changes the first time you're late for a funeral because you live abroad.

Everything is more uncertain in the consciousness of the immigrant.

On the other hand, the most important culture in the world now is the hybrid culture, that of emigration.

We are the majority in the so-called third culture of fractured identity.

In my case, this fracture is even greater because it makes it impossible for me to think of two cultures more different than those of Mexico and the United States. At a time when '

' jokes about the real possibility of a company like Amazon buying Baja California.

Is this what is happening in your opinion, that democracies are being replaced by the government of large corporations? The invasion is no longer physical as it could have been in the war of 1846, where Mexico ended up ceding half of its territory to its neighbor to the north, now the invasion is ideological.

The topic of conversation is marked by the large companies that traffic in the opinions of the world.

And we are not aware of it.

We are like David Foster Wallace's fish who are unaware of the water in which they live.

I would say more, I would say that the invasion is not only economic but biological, because it makes us doubt our conscience.

To what extent has this film not been a more or less curative therapy session for you?

Else:

' Has it changed you? I prefer to talk about satisfaction or simple catharsis.

It is a luxury to be able to release things from your conscience in front of your loved ones.

I am aware that there are many things in the film that are important to me and perhaps to no one else.

And that, I also realize, can irritate some.

I cannot presume that I have found an answer to anything.

It is not an epiphany that I have suffered.

In fact, I am left with more doubts than I had when I started, but the satisfaction is there.

It is very difficult in cinema to get something personal because there are always many people involved.

One can write his memoirs alone and without counting on anyone.

And in painting, the self-portrait is a genre in itself.

To do that in a movie, you need someone to lend you a few million dollars.

' arrives after two Oscars and more seems like a point of arrival.

What is this movie?

A farewell perhaps? This is like when you have just eaten and you consider what you are going to have for breakfast tomorrow.

Now I am saturated.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.

I have never known.

What is success for you?

In the film, the father recommends his son to take success as a poison that must be spit out quickly. It is a literal phrase from my father: "Give success a little taste, take a few swishes and spit it out, because it poisons."

And it is a wise phrase.

Success comes and goes, but it is not convenient to believe it, it is not a place of arrival.

Success always disappoints because as soon as it reaches you, it disappears. Earlier I was talking about the big corporations.

Netflix is ​​one of them.

How do you deal with the contradiction of working for

We all live in this contradiction.

When I started thinking about this movie, no studio cared about my Oscars or my success.

It was a film in Spanish, with no stars, and I refused to show the script to anyone.

I made it difficult for him, yes.

And the only company that supported me was Netflix.

It was a life or death project.

I put the conditions that I put: it is a cinematographic experience that works as a stream of consciousness... And they said yes in a completely extraordinary way.

For the rest, there is a commitment to release the film in the cinema before.

What can I say?

The life of the movie in the cinema is going to be what it would have been without Netflix, so... All movies today, whoever you make them with, end up in the same place: on a platform.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Netflix

• Mexico

• USA

• amazon

• cinema