Director: Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias
Writer: Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias
Stars: Jhon Narváez, Fareed Matjila, Steven Alexander
Synopsis: A voice that claims to be from a hippopotamus. A voice that doesn’t understand the perception of time. Pepe, the first and last hippo killed in the Americas, tells his story with the overwhelming orality of these towns.
There have been plenty of documents about Pablo Escobar’s crimes and illegal actions. But many don’t know about Hacienda Napoles (or Naples Estate in English), an estate that was built and owned by the Colombian drug lord in Puerto Triunfo. With almost twenty kilometers squared of land, Escobar made a zoo of his own, consisting of many kinds of animals not indigenous to his country–illegally transported to Colombia because he had all the money in the world to do what he pleased. He had antelopes, elephants, exotic birds, giraffes, and four hippos.
We have heard of millionaires having their strange choices for “pets” before, most notably monkeys or wild cats. (First, let’s note that it is stupid to have those types of animals in a habitat and whether they are not accustomed to removing them from the wild just to showcase power and wealth.) But Escobar had some of the weirdest selections of animals in his estate. When Escobar was shot and killed in 1993 by the police, the property had a possession war, where the family and local government were trying to seize control. The latter won. However, managing it was too expensive, and most animals were donated to South American zoos.
The exception was the four hippos, also known as Escobar’s cocaine hippos, who got so accustomed to living in that weather and terrain that they left them there. To this day, there are hundreds of hippos around Colombia, and it is all due to Escobar. Many attacks have occurred, with some of them causing rampage and killing several locals. It all seems too unbelievable. But indeed, all of this happened and continues to cause some damage. In Pepe, Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias’ followup to 2017’s Cocote, the Dominican director takes the journey of one of those hippos, both through his wanderings in the jungle and rampage elsewhere, and makes something very intriguing, yet tonally strange, out of it.
The film, titled after one of the initial hippos that Escobar brought, is narrated by Pepe (voiced by Jhon Narváez) upon his death, letting us know that he, alongside his “owner”, Pablo Escobar, has passed away via news footage and audio logs. If you don’t know anything about the history of Pepe, de Los Santos Arias does give you moments to recap how the hippo ended up in Colombia, as the film’s first strand revolves around his home in Africa, which is one of the few things Pepe recalls about his life, and how he was taken away from it, alongside the three hippos. Later, we see his life in Colombia, where he was left alone in a country that was alien to him. Yet, he has been able to live and adapt to its luck.
There’s a hierarchy within that growing community of hippos. His brother, Pablito, named after his now-deceased owner, emulates Escobar’s ruthlessness and coldness and takes over the Magdalena River. Pepe, now exiled, goes elsewhere in search of a home. However, many complications arise; his presence elicits a warning–an uncontrollable animal is on the loose. Everybody he crosses paths with runs in fear of the worst scenario. After an incident with two local fishermen, the government hatches a plant to kill Pepe, much like they did Pablo Escobar–a parallel that is not the main focus of the film, yet adds to the strange nature in which this story abides.
Every scene is before Pepe’s death, most of which is vaguely placed together and focuses on the atmosphere rather than what is happening per se. It may be a hippo crossing the Colombian plains for an hour or so. Yet the way Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias shifts this true tale from unorthodox to existentialist is ever so fascinating, even with its quirks. His vision for this is a story about the nature of life in isolation through the eyes of a sentient hippo, traveling through time and space in the events before his eventual death. The narration here is very dept, albeit a rocky one that puts the film between melancholy and exploration, both in Pepe’s doubts of his own life and the Dominican’s cinematic experimentation.
The former is reflected in his grasp of language, which he takes from his surroundings and switches dialects during the film’s chapters, and in his social observations. Pepe grows aware of the treatment of animals and the human condition in the eyes of an animal who slowly adapts to a country that hurriedly wants him gone. As Pepe looks for a sanctuary after being kicked out of his home country, the Hacienda Napoles, and Magdalena River, de Los Santos Arias examines, through the “infamous” hippo, the souls of the displaced in today’s age. He sees all these nationless people–seeking a safe place to live in prosperity–in Pepe’s philosophical conversations with this floating spirit.
Now left without a home, Pepe is down and out, beyond his climate and living conditions. He sees how the rest of the world goes on with their lives as he remains distanced from the one he previously had. This placement of being a bystander or observer of a fast-paced world reminds me of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void–the audience watches a vessel of a dream, a ghostly presence seeking a way back to the world or the beyond, go through every nook and cranny, street or club, in awe and haunted by how the world moves on without him. Some people will remain hurt by your loss. But the great majority moves around your loss almost immediately, very coldly.
Both films, Pepe and Enter the Void, shift in different tides, with Noe’s being more frantic and somewhat cruel, while de Los Santos Arias’ is more meditative and nonchalant. However, the two are tied in the breadth of placing the viewer in a trance, experiencing recollections and out-of-body (and mind) scenarios of resurrection through cinema. These characters’ spirits lead them to their destination, whether spiritual damnation or salvation. We already know the outcomes. But it is how their newly-forged notions about their life, existence overall, and society guide their bodies to the eventual death they will meet. There is something transient about the whole thing. You feel it in your gut, even when some lines and narrative choices don’t work entirely. Yet, in Pepe trying to understand the societal rotation of the world, or even death, he taps into our doubts and frustrations.
Although we don’t get that spectral camerawork by Benoît Debie in Enter the Void that feels as if a spirit itself was the cinematographer, many stylistic techniques fit in the dreamy canvas of Pepe. Another film that many will correlate with this one is Robert Bresson’s near masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar, or the weaker remake from 2022, EO. The central figures of the aforementioned films deal with a heavy burden, traded and moved around from place to place as they are stuck in the hands of people who work them harshly, coping with an internal and physical sacrifice and hoping that, one day, they will get to a safe haven.
Spiritually molds with life’s mundanity; the human characters’ theological morality meets the animals’ ethics. In Pepe, this takes a less subtle approach with the narration, which accompanies the hippo’s predicaments. Yet, you feel how this wisdom is giving way to his percipience, even in the limbo state his voice comes from. Pepe may not shake the sentimentality and spiritualness of Balthazar. However, it offers a unique, cinematic treat nonetheless. It is not set in a world of rapture, where one must travel in a purgatory-like setting, but one of curiosity, albeit isolated.
