499 (2020) Drinking Game
Take a Drink: every time someone gives a quizzical look at the walking anachronism in their midst
Take a Drink: whenever Cortes recounts another story of his improbably conquest
Take a Drink: every time someone recounts another history of violence
Do a Shot: whenever Cortes refers to someone as an “Indio”
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
I had never heard of 499 before getting a publicity email (you start to receive these quickly when you write about movies), but, talk about a killer hook for a documentary willing to push some boundaries of the form.
At the beginning of 499, an armored Hernan Cortes washes ashore on the same beach he landed on at the beginning of his conquest of Mexico. However, it’s the present day, and as he retraces his steps from the coast to the former Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, he meets with modern inhabitants with stories of the violence that still pervades the nation he helped found.
A Toast
Director Rodrigo Reyes and DP Alejandro Mejia deliver a film that is gorgeously shot with an eye for maximum irony, which, yes, is very much the hook of the film. However, this documentary is not a history lesson nor some sort of fish out of water farce. It’s goals are much more powerful than that.
As Cortes makes his way across a country that he could not begin to recognize, it’s his interactions with everyday people, some starting with artifice, like the community vigilante group that corners him out side their town, and some organically, like the woman and children selling coconuts who are very dubious of the entire enterprise, that are the backbone of the film.
It doesn’t take long to discover that all of these people have something in common- they’ve been suffered terrible losses without any justice nor hope for it. This culminates in an utterly shocking recounting by a mother of the murder of her daughter and its aftermath that stopped me cold in my tracks. I have no doubt it will haunt me for long after this.
Beer Two
The thesis of this film is very clear- the Hispanic State of Mexico began in an orgy of human destruction, and to this day has never been able to escape it. Let’s just say if you’re looking for non-depressing quarantine fare, this ain’t it.
Verdict
499 is a documentary with an ambitious style and the ambitious goal to tell the story of modern Mexican violence in the context of a history that is no less so.
