Tonight I went back to the Armer Theater at CSUN for the final Cinematheque screening of the semester, of a film called "Museo" (2018), directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios and starring Gael Garcia Bernal. On the surface it is a "heist" picture that tells a fictionalised version of an actual museum robbery in Mexico City in 1985. Thieves broke into an anthropological museum and stole 140 priceless artifacts from the Mayan era.
In the movie, the heist is not the centerpiece, which sets "Museo" apart in it's format from other classics of the genre like "Rififi" or "The Killing". Much of the plot in those films is dedicated to the planning of the crime, which must be meticulous. In "Museo", we are shown no planning at all. Garcia Bernal works briefly at the museum as a photographic assistant and has access to the layout and security procedures, but his plans are kept to himself as he loafs around his parents' house at Christmastime. He is 40 in real life, so I assume his character is meant to be roughly the same age, and he still lives at home. He spends his time playing video games with his nieces and nephews who are over for the holiday, and trading insults with his married older sister who sees him as a washout. Little does she know what is going on inside his head.
Bernal has a friend, a dog groomer who is more responsible than he, but who is also very passive. He is the one person Bernal can boss around and feel superior to. All of a sudden, on Christmas Eve, Bernal calls him up and says "it has to be tonight"! He means the museum robbery, which we have thus far only been given hints of. It has to be tonight because Bernal has just heard on the news that a renovation of the museum is set to begin the day after Christmas. Crews will be constantly on site and their caper will not be possible at that point. So it's Christmas Eve or else. The dog groomer's father is terminally ill and he doesn't want to leave him, but Bernal insists, and he badgers his friend into compliance.
The heist itself is artfully shot and edited (the movie is in widescreen), and features technical tricks that a robber would have to know how to execute in order to pry the artifacts loose from their plexiglass presentation boxes. This whole sequence is great stuff and would fit in even in a "Mission Impossible" movie. It turns out that Gael Garcia Bernal is no dumbell after all.
But he is immature, and this is what the movie is really about. The heist takes place early on. But now what? What are these two crafty but shiftless young men gonna do now that they've gotten away with their crime and have this irreplaceable loot in their possession? The heist is all over the news and the cultural community is aghast at the loss. The young men have a fence who has ostensibly agreed to help them, but he also has to be pressured to honor his commitment. The fence knows a wealthy patron of the arts who may want to buy the artifacts. Maybe.
He turns out to be a middle aged expatriate English prick with a seaside estate. The guys are in over their heads trying to do business with him. He tells them what should have been obvious, that their loot is unsellable because of the heat that has come down on the robbery.
Now what are they gonna do? The dog groomer wants to go back home to his ailing father. Bernal tries to berate him once more into continuing on with their attempt to fence the goods, but it doesn't work. The dog groomer leaves and now Bernal is on his own. Unable to work without a foil, he will retreat into a fantasy world, his dream of meeting his favorite movie star (a fading B Actress), that will bring about his downfall.
"Museo" is really a spectacular film, a road movie in a way, and in that respect it works well with Bernal as it's star because of his charisma in other road oriented films such as "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "The Motorcycle Diaries". Also, it is extremely well made in every respect. The cinematography is reminiscent of the European art films of the 1960s, the direction is well paced and the script is layered with underlying commentary on the Mexican class struggle and the whole question of whether or
not museums in and of themselves, as institutions, have the right to display artifacts from past cultures, to displace them from their original locations to show them to the public. This argument is presented with both sides given a fair hearing. Should archaeology be outlawed? If that had happened then all of the treasures discovered to date would still lie under the earth and no one would have ever seen them. We would never have learned about Egyptian culture, for instance. Professor Dianah, who hosted this semester's Cinematheque, summed it up best when she said that maybe the digging isn't the problem but rather that each culture's treasures should be held by their own countries' museums, and I agree with that.
But yes! Two Huge and Gigantic Thumbs Up for "Museo". They are gonna have to add a Fourth Amigo to the trio of Cuaron, Inarritu and Del Toro, and his name is Alfonso Ruizpalacios.
He is as good a filmmaker as the others, and I am glad I went to the Armer tonight to see his film "Museo". I give it my highest recommendation. ////
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning with much love sent as always, in between.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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