On the question of what Alejandro G. Iñárritu is actually good at and where his films go wrong.

Iñárritu is a director whose critical reception has oscillated more than almost any other filmmaker of his generation. Amores Perros was a revelation. 21 Grams and Babel were either profound or overlong depending on who you asked. Birdman and The Revenant won Best Picture and Best Director respectively and then receded somewhat from critical favor.

What Iñárritu is demonstrably excellent at is technical orchestration: his films are visually and sonically ambitious in ways that require extraordinary production skill to execute. The continuous take in Birdman, the natural light in The Revenant, the choreographed chaos of Amores Perros — these are achievements of craft that are not in question.

What Iñárritu struggles with is the relationship between ambition and restraint. His films tend toward maximum: maximum suffering, maximum visual ambition, maximum score. The result is films that are never boring and rarely subtle. Whether maximum is the right register for the subjects he chooses is the question his critics are actually asking.