285. Dominican film director Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias' fourth feature film "Pepe" (2024) built on his own original screenplay: A fascinating, multi-layered cinematic work that uses a "talking" hippopotamus that is dead to present the history of African slaves in the Americas that curiously parallels the forced translocation of the hippo

 

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What an unusual treat this film offers a perceptive and patient viewer! First, it is film is narrated for a substantive length of the film's duration by a hippopotamus, who realizes it is dead (in the present world) in at least three languages: a Namibian tribal language; Afrikaans (the language of the erstwhile colonial South Africa and South-West Africa); and Spanish, a fact that this critic discovered only on subsequent viewings, as one is initially concentrating and imbibing the English subtitles. The hippo has no perception of time but is well aware that it is already dead (inversing the techniques often used by the late Chilean director Raoul Ruiz as in his film Three Crowns of the Sailor, where the narrator quirkily admits that he is the only sailor alive while all others on the ship are dead!). The hippo's narration begins with the words "I never heard the sounds that come out of my mouth. I have no memory of sound that explained things. Two certainties--someplace like this should be my home with Africa as a name. They travel in my head together. Second, I am dead.... How do I know what a word is? Above all, what did I do to be dead?"  The hippo from South-West Africa, now known as Namibia, had been captured/stolen from that African nation and taken on a ship to Colombia in South America, by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar to populate his personal zoo. Escobar was eventually killed by Colombian military forces. Pepe, the talking hippo in the film only talks to us. the viewers of the film, and refers to humans he encounters as "the two legged." 

The above poster of the film encapsulates (in Spanish) the story of Pepe brought to Colombia by Escobar at the cost of 30 million dollars, which in turn must have cost the death of some 5000 people as a consequence of  the 80% of the global drug traffic orchestrated by Escobar, only to adorn his personal zoo.

Early in the film, the director introduces us to the basic characteristics of the huge animal that originally lived in Africa. Foreign tourists in a bus in Namibia are introduced by the tour conductor to Namibian natives (the bus driver is one) and the world of hippos. The bus driver tells the tourists "The hippos always lived here and we lived together.. Each animal teaches us something.. They can run and swim faster than us...If they come silently under your boat, you should get away fast, as a hippo can break the boat in two."

The introduction to hippos and their origins in Africa
in the film Pepe and its quaint relationship
with "the two legged"

Soon we switch in time to Pepe narrating his early life in Namibia with his sibling Pablito, an alpha male hippo, who eventually drives Pepe away from the hippo family he belonged after a power struggle. Pepe, while isolated, is captured and transported to Colombia for the drug baron to procreate more hippos on his private zoo. Pablito, is a possibly a discrete reference to the drug lord Pablo Escobar, who was feared for his brutal power tactics in Colombia to become rich and powerful until he was killed by the state/military (a sequence enacted in the film). Historically, Escobar did bring four hippos to his ranch with other exotic animals from all over the world. Colombia to relocated all those animals to various zoos except for the hippos (due to their weight ranging from 1 to 4.5 tons) which now populate the marshy lands near Magdalena river in that country.  

The film is made up of sequences shot in Namibia and in Colombia using drones, hidden cameras in jungles and helicopters. 

Pepe admits he doesn't remember learning his life story.
(However, this shot of real hippos swimming underwater
in the river, is captured by a drone carrying a camera.)

Director Arias' film Pepe is not limited to the Escobar connection to bring hippos from Africa to South America. His work is first a close look at the beast in the wild at close quarters with hidden cameras and cameras capturing the animals floating in the rivers. What Pepe doesn't  to tell the viewer is that beast eats grasses, vegetables, and fruits, not meat, unless it cannot find sufficient vegetation. Arias' film shifts gears to the fisherfolk on the shores of the Magdalene river, who never encountered the African beast in their lives, suddenly upsetting their fishing activities. Hippos do not attack human beings unless they are provoked on land but do attack them in water bodies, as they regard them as intruders in their territory. Today, because of Escobar, the population of hippos in the Magdalena river has apparently exceeded 160, which is higher in density than those in pockets of Africa, where there are wild animals such as lions, crocodiles and hyenas that kill and eat hippos and thus keep their population in check. The increasing population of hippos in the Magdalena river is not just a direct threat to the fisherfolk today  but the fish-oriented ecosystem, which is threatened by the large amount of hippo waste in the water lowering the oxygen levels negatively thereby affecting the lives of fishes and the fishing community alike . Though herbivorous, some 500 deaths are attributed to hippos worldwide each year, possibly in waterbodies such as rivers and lakes  Recent information on the internet states that that two hippos are going to be sent from Columbia to a zoo in Gujarat, India, and some 10 hippos to zoos in Mexico.

Hippos can swim fast in water and hide beneath the water
surface, and what appears above the water can be mistaken
for a small piece of  floating wood

The usual part of the head and ears of a hippo seen above
water in Magdalena river, while it can submerge
itself totally at will, as shown in Pepe 

Director Arias connects the hippos with a popular children's cartoon in Latin American television called "The Peter Potamus Show" where the hero is a hippo, by showing a young boy hooked to the TV screen. That's a part of the unusual structure of Arias' screenplay--a dead hippo who suddenly realizes the noise he makes is his new found ability to talk. What he talks is not drivel but his memory of Africa, his travel across oceans which he describes as a river with a bottom we can never reach--all of which come close to the oral history traditions of Africa (ref. the driver of the tourist bus in Namibia who states that each animal teaches us something)  and Latin America (the fisherfolk lore, rarely believed, but true in the case of the hippos of the Magdalena river basin). 

However. the fisherfolk get scared of hippos and the scare gets permeated to local law-keepers and then on to to higher authorities until a German hunter is recruited to find and kill "Pepe" with the help of the Colombian army somewhat like the end of the drug lord Escobar in 1993. 

One of the many hippos that play the role of Pepe
in the film Pepe

A drone shot of Pepe shot dead by a German hunter with
the support of the Colombian army with elongated shadows
of "the two legged." In reality, the (fictional?) killing of Pepe did  
not rid the Magdalena river of hippos--they still continue to exist.

The entire story of Pepe parallels the Europeans enslaving Africans for monetary gain and selling them to colonial populations in the Americas. The African slaves in the Americas can recall their roots through oral history. They often get killed without realizing what they did wrong to get killed, just like Pepe.

Director Arias switches situations and time in the film just as Pepe's narration does. Arias introduces us to a brief beauty pageant in the fisherfolk community that mimics the Miss Universe contest format with young contestants having to state to the community what they hope to do later in life. One of them appropriately wishes to be a zoo-pathologist! The social connection is possibly related to the fact that contestants from Colombia have often been strong finalists in international beauty pageants. Then there is a village where an old railroad line is creatively used to transport the fisherfolk on roller boards, without an engine, mimicking the rowing motion of their boats . 

Finally, the amazing cinematic work Pepe of director Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias recalls multifaceted contributions of Italian director Ermanno Olmi  while making The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Like Olmi, the Dominican director wrote the complex original screenplay, provided the music, was the major co-cinematographer and a major co-sound director. Multiple viewings could be required to absorb the plethora of cinematic styles within the film that one hopes young creative filmmakers will assimilate and utilize to make films in other countries than their own, just as this director did in Colombia and Namibia and create exciting, varied parallels tales for the minds of perceptive contemporary viewers to contemplate upon. 

The film truly deserved the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival. 

Most of all, viewers should ruminate on the final flow of Joycean stream of consciousness crafted by the original screenplay-writer/director Arias emanating from the mouth of the dying Pepe towards the end of the film, while the Colombian armed militia close in on the hippo: "I saw them from afar and immediately knew who they were. They also knew, I knew, and kept moving forward. Everything was clear. The day had no secrets. They looked beautiful. I felt them close to me, and death was simply that. That's how mine arrived--there lying with my strongest pain I have ever felt in my whole life. This sound came from my mouth explaining nothing. I spoke and dreamed for the first time. Fractal movements.... What's authentic and what's false? What's serious and what's playful? To this sound, to this space, where everything is constantly related? Banishing the very idea of an annihilating transparency, which is like a curse that does not stop repeating the same story.'' 

P.S. The two films mentioned Ruiz' Three Crowns of the Sailor and Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs have been reviewed earlier on this blog. Pepe is included in the author's Best Films of 2024 list. (Click on the bold names in the post-script to access the reviews of those films)