On the Hip
Monte & Culebra
MOVIE REVIEW
Pepe (2024)
There was a major theme running through several different movies at this year’s Berlinale: restoring lost things to their rightful place and/or providing lost things with their own voice. The lost thing here whose voice was restored to it was a hippopotamus. And not just any hippopotamus, but one of the ones smuggled into Colombia by drug lord Pablo Escobar for his own private zoo. And not just any of the hippos in the drug lord’s private zoo, but the one who escaped and was the subject of a hunt by the Colombian army. He was nicknamed Pepe, and the movie is largely told from his point of view. As a concept this is insane, but so is this little story, and (big breath) writer-director-cocinematographer-editor-music-cosound designer Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias made it something big and beautiful. And Mr. De Los Santos Arias did it so well he won the directing prize at the Berlinale for it. He also threw in every possible related subplot, and while he was at it, some jaw-droppingly beautiful cinematography too. It’s a lot of weight for one creature to carry, but Pepe carries it off.
The story follows the hippo’s journey from its natural habitat in the rivers of Namibia – where German tourists in a nature reserve get a lesson on local hippo-themed folklore – to the small river towns in Colombia which had no idea what they were seeing when the escaped hippo began attacking their boats. There’s an interlude for a local beauty pageant, where the queens in their homemade costumes talk about wanting better roads and running water for their villages. The fisherman (Jorge Puntillón García) who first encounters the escaped hippo is also a drunk, meaning neither his wife (Sor María Ríos) nor the local authorities believe him when he tries to report the unexpected situation. And all this is intercut with Pepe narrating his journey as some very terrifying cargo in boats over the oceans, and then by truck driven by two pot-smoking idiots who also have no idea what creature they are carrying. Pepe as narrator muses on life and death, on the joys of being a wild creature in a strange land, and on the infinitely strange and unlikely chances that led to his strange and unlikely life. He speaks primarily in Mbukushu, a Namibian language, or Spanish, while the people speak Afrikaans, German or Spanish. The kids’ cartoon about a hippo’s silly adventures is in Spanish, too, as are the radio recordings of the army as it foolishly attempts to track Pepe in rivers at night. There’s no kitchen sink, but there is a handcar powered by a driver on a motorbike to transport people up and down a town’s high street that was built around a now-abandoned railway line. Truly, this movie has nearly everything.
The main sense from “Pepe” is that the world is a larger place than many of us realize, with an enormous amount of hidden beauty and hidden misery that we will never see. By watching this movie we learn to see the world anew as we see it through Pepe’s eyes. There are also enough shots of people on boats unaware Pepe is in the water nearby to consider how those shots were achieved, whether with practical models or C.G.I., since we all know hippos can’t act. But there are so many unbelievable things in this movie that you find yourself wondering if maybe they can and you’re underestimating everything. The drone shots of hippos swimming through muddy waters have an aesthetic beauty one wouldn’t have thought possible with this subject matter, but “Pepe” is in every way a surprise. There might be a few subplots too many; and the only real exclusion is how the narrative dodges any direct involvement re the drug lord himself. But it doesn’t matter. “Pepe” is a singular achievement, with a raw sense of the world’s mystery and the world’s mayhem, and how much work goes into any act of survival. It’s gorgeous and completely unexpected.
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