499
Brooding skies over a land in disarray watch a soldier without a name appear, adorned in ancient attire. He was once part of Hernan Cortes’ army which brutally took over Mexico City in 1521. Now this Spanish forceful man is unmanly and lost his strength of mind. The metaphysical rifts or supernatural interferences that made him end up in the same physical location called today Mexico are explicated by an unnamed, female narrator.
It can’t be just another documentary when it comes to Rodrigo Reyes’ ingenious non fiction film “499,” named after the number of years (from when the Aztec empire fell to 2020) the film has been released at festivals for the first time. From “Purgatorio” that was filmed on US Mexico border line where two countries touch to the present works where he combines fiction with observed truth, this Mexican director has often explored liminal spaces.
The conqueror, played with quiet power by actor Eduardo San Juan, journeys from one coast to another central region while walking back through his own footprints but without his voracious fellow countrymen. This movie provides an odd meditation on colonialism which is both a nightmare and a dream. Using the figure of a time traveler who is foreigner to this state but responsible for it, harsh subjects move across these pages.
And so now, exactly half a millennium after Spanish colonizers imposed their religion and planted the seeds for mestizaje a myth about racial mixing as a result of appropriation of land and enslavement Mexico finally confronts its own racism that previously existed but never named it as such because whiteness always trumped Indigenous features, language and culture throughout its history.
But yet again, even though public sentiment against long held ideas like these remains significant; it’s still only symbolic because racism continues through its association with class within an all-pervasive societal structure.
Those most vulnerable to poverty and violence today rarely look like the oppressor, but closer to those that centuries ago were also victimized. Throughout his journey, Reyes brings him only among poor people, workers, and dark people: the faces of Mexico that tourists never looked at and which are absent in local film productions and television channels.
He has nothing to say; he can only listen to their suffering. His interior speech is done through a voiceover as he thinks about what is left of him, boasting about the atrocities he did or just disapproving of the practices Aztecs had. To him everyone who comes across on his way is savage while Moctezuma’s friendship turns out to be an invitation for Spaniards’ hunger for gold.
By using such disturbing words that fit this character well, Reyes is not just criticizing him or others of his kind but leading us towards introspection ourselves as to why we too have carried these prejudices within us due to Western influence. Even though there are fleeting moments where he humanizes himself by showing little affinity for some aspects of the people and terrain he destroyed there are times when this unwelcome guest also regrets how ruthless he was.
The more pathetic he becomes since all grandeur that he thought had survived has dwindled then disappeared altogether reveals how much more pathetic became himself. Thus Reyes makes it seem that it would be better if this personification were finally eradicated as we interrogate our lives more deeply.
Many of his encounters are linked to victims and perpetrators of the violent crime wave that has swamped Mexico for over a decade. In this period, many citizens searching for their missing or murdered loved ones have unfortunately been cemented as recurring motifs in Mexican cinema, but Reyes bends this cliché slightly by how fluidly he strings these incidents. He never lingers on any one, instead planting them as a series of emotional trip mines that go off every time the defeated soldier moves forward.
Reyes’ work is often about migration and “499” isn’t an exception. This captivating visual dissonance is best summed up by an image of him sitting amidst Central American migrants while wearing some sort of uniform from another era, lost just like them but in different circumstances. The account of these migrants mostly men who leave their homelands because they fear criminal gangs reminds us much about how white man with disease and cruelty expelled aboriginal civilizations into exile or slavery.
Like the film says over and over again, it is not the destruction of oppression but its evolution which we live through his history remembrance. The monsters blocking their way are Mexican authorities and cartels for Central Americans. Once they cross over into America the tyrant only changes its name and tactics.
Besides its oddly effective premise though, “499” is also aesthetically expressionist within reality’s limits. In Alejandro Mejía’s shots the Spanish ghost seems to be an astronaut on some unexplored planet out there in those endless fields. Sometimes such settings picked as pauses for him to breathe sometimes seem to possess warped qualities such as landfills or a bridge that overlooks a sea of brake lights dealing with unflattering decay furthermore. There are no postcard-friendly vistas or landmarks.
A few stops later comes an encounter between the European traveler and an indigenous people, speaking Nahuatl language halfway through his pilgrimage journey on foot; every word uttered here in native tongue is a material resistance. They did not allow the language to die, and therefore their world view was also preserved just like that without Mexico, despite invaders’ attempts to wipe out their identity.
The people in these scenes and others, are aware of the actor’s judge involvement. However, even in those spontaneous performances, there is more internal truth brought on by this artificé, for example when one who had previously been a soldier but now an untruthful man making his living in some other way brings unexpected humor into a scene involving guns of various caliber.
Mexico City, being the metropolis built on top of the ruins of Aztec capital, is eventually reached by him. There, our minds are shaken by a shocking account of a detestable femicide that prompts us to ask how such cruel acts could be connected with the dreadful background of this society which was established through violence and self loathing.
For many people who have left Mexico to seek what their homeland denies them in terms of affluence now go noticing savagery from a safer and better off place; this country still hurts us like an amputated limb. In “499,” form, theme, and storytelling leanings merge to open up a path for history contained in textbooks against the current while thinking ahead.
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