INTERVIEW: New film ‘499’ envisions colonial times clashing with modern Mexico City
Photo: Eduardo San Juan Breña stars in 499, a new film from director Rodrigo Reyes. Photo courtesy of Cinema Tropical / Provided with permission.
Winner of the most original idea of the year has to go to Rordigo Reyes’ new film 499, which recently wrapped its virtual run at the Tribeca Film Festival and is gearing up for the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival, beginning April 30.
The film is best described as a genre mashup. Reyes tells the story of modern-day Mexico City, with a fine focus on the violence and drug wars that have plagued the area. However, one of the narrative techniques he uses to tell this documentary story is the insertion of a conquistador character, who the audience watches land on the shores of Veracruz, Mexico, and head for the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City). Along the way he simply cannot believe what he finds (and perhaps what he has caused).
This means there are scenes, both jarring and fascinating, in which a real-life person is relaying news of a personal tragedy in their life. The listener, in this case, is the conquistador, dressed in period costume and fully communicating as if he were sent from the Spanish crown. This offers an interesting commentary on post-colonial societies and how historical events have informed and shaped present-day communities.
499’s release, although disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, is appropriately timed because next year marks the 500th anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and Reyes’ thesis is that those events of five centuries ago still have reverberations in today’s society.
“I think the idea as a film, it came to me while we were debating with my producer about how to tell the story of this 500-year anniversary,” Reyes said in a recent phone interview. “At that point, it was this idea of having different characters that symbolized different aspects of the Spanish conquest. Eventually it just narrowed and crystallized into one single person, but the real fascination with this just comes from hanging out with my dad as a kid and tagging along when he would take the students to museums and do tours in Mexico City, talking about this history. He was always talking about the relationship of then with now. It’s been a fascinating moment that I’ve always thought about, and I’ve always been really interested in.”
Reyes added: “What happened then is still echoing today, so once we came up with this idea of what would this character do in modern Mexico, then it became clear that we have to follow this path. We had to decide what is he going to say about Mexico today. We felt that the current wave of violence was so surreal and so nightmarish that it also matched the epic events of the past.”
This mashup of documentary with historical fiction is a somewhat risky prospect for a film project. Reyes admitted that there was much hesitation in the early days, but eventually the crew, the documentary subjects and the producers bought into the idea. And there was no looking back.
“Every single thing that you did was a coin toss,” said Reyes, whose previous films include Purgatorio and Lupe Under the Sun. “It can work or it cannot work. There were a lot of things that didn’t work, but what I decided to do really early was every time that we reached out to a real person, like the ones featured in the film, I would just explain my concept of the film as nakedly and transparently as possible, literally sit them down and talk through the concept with them, ask for their questions, take in their feedback, have a real discussion with them, which I feel like a lot of times documentarians don’t do. We don’t want to bring people into the bones of our story and the building of it, but I felt that this was necessary because what I was asking them to do wasn’t just to sit down for an interview. They were being asked to interact and to contribute to this character’s journey.”
Reyes said these conversations were constant pitches to the documentary subjects, many of them being asked to bare their souls about a family ordeal, and he thought honesty was the best policy. Conversations and openness helped everyone stay together and committed to the larger cause.
To help with the difficult task of finding appropriate subjects to document, the filmmaker relied on local journalists and fixers who knew the communities and neighborhoods intimately. They were close to the hurt and the anguish, and they were Reyes’ entry point into that world.
“[There] were the local journalists and fixers who could help us all along the route that we followed from the coast into the city, which is the actual route that [Hernán] Cortés himself took with his troops,” Reyes said. “I would continue this pitching process so that I could make sure that I would find a local partner that really knew what we wanted. They became invaluable, especially our friend in Veracruz, where we shot a lot of the first act. By the time we were done with the shoot, he understood the film completely, and he was already thinking of things that could be useful for me. He got the look and the feel of the film, and he would help me with all of the pitching and the introduction to all these characters.”
The end product is a powerful commentary on the connections between the past and the present, and Reyes is particularly pleased that 499, which he hopes will one day open in Mexico once the quarantine lifts, offers audience members a look at voices and stories that are often missing from local, national and international news coverage.
“Their voices are totally erased in the national conversation,” he said. “For instance, you would think that any one of these cases — like the one of the mom looking for her son, she’s digging through vacant lots for human remains — that that would be like national news. But it isn’t. It’s flooded. Mexico is flooded with so many cases of violence that folks like her are drowned out, and so through these local journalists we were able to get in touch. If I could call them I would, and we would talk about the film. Then once we were on location, we would visit and discuss the film. We wouldn’t just show up with our camera. We would still do this whole courtship and dialogue because otherwise it would never work. People had to really believe in the concept.”
And now it’s up to the audience to believe in the concept as well.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
499, directed by Rodrigo Reyes, recently played the Tribeca Film Festival and will next appear at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival, beginning April 30. Click here for more information.
