"Film Comment Selects" Review: Lin Tay-jou's "Bardo"

The eighth edition of The Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Film Comment Selects" series, in which the editors of Film Comment bring a typically eclectic and provocative selection of recent world cinema, screens at the Walter Reade Theater from February 14 through 27. A major highlight of this year's offerings is Taiwanese experimental and documentary filmmaker Lin Tay-jou's Bardo, a 70-minute triptych about the stages of life death, and rebirth. As Lin himself explains on the film's website, the film's title is a Sanskrit word meaning "between two things." The film's subtitle, "The Lamentation of the Dying Creatures," is from a medieval text referring to Christian notions of hell, purgatory, and divine judgment. This mixture of Eastern and Western philosophies informs both the subject matter and structure of this astonishing film. The extreme images and sound design of this work are quite indelible, and amid the images of death, cannibalism, rough sex, decay, rot, and blood that flood the viewer in this film, there is also a hopeful vision of the unending cycle of life's birth and rebirth. I'll briefly explore each section of this film, preceded by the filmmaker's statements regarding each one.

Bardo Part 1:

In this merciless universe, everything is expendable.
When the stream of life is exhausted, does any humanity remain?
Time is short - do the gods have any answers for us?
If all will vanish in the end, then why these unending waves of desire?