“Pepe Explores Life Through a Hippo’s Eyes”
**Understanding “Pepe”: A Cinematic Exploration of History, Identity, and Animality**
Cinema has always been a powerful medium for storytelling, but few films take the audacious leap of giving voice to an animal protagonist to delve into complex socio-political and existential themes. *Pepe*, the enigmatic 2024 Berlinale entry by Dominican director Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias, exemplifies this rare storytelling approach. With a focus on the life of a Colombian hippopotamus, *Pepe* is both a commentary on colonial legacies and an ambitious work of magical realism.
### **A Hippo’s Odyssey: The Roots of the Narrative**
At its core, *Pepe* captures the life of a hippopotamus, one of the descendants of the animals brought to Colombia by drug lord Pablo Escobar in the 1980s. Escobar’s Hacienda Nápoles housed exotic animals, among them four hippos who, after his death, escaped captivity and began reproducing, leading to a population explosion in Colombia’s Magdalena River. Today, these non-native animals symbolize ecological and cultural disruption, raising concerns about invasive species and the balance of nature.
The film fictionalizes this reality by giving voice to Pepe, an anthropomorphized hippo reflecting on his life. Born to African parents transported to South America, Pepe gains the ability to narrate his story—one entangled with themes of displacement, colonialism, and identity. His musings on being “othered” within an ecosystem alien to him parallel the struggles of marginalized communities historically displaced by colonial forces.
### **Thematic Depth: Postcolonialism through a Hippo’s Eyes**
In *Pepe*, De Los Santos Arias uses the protagonist’s unique perspective to grapple with postcolonial questions. Pepe is not just a hippo but a metaphor for those uprooted and forced to adapt to foreign cultures and environments. His reflections on language—he speaks in German, Spanish, and Afrikaans—highlight the artificiality of his imposed existence. These languages, products of colonization, symbolize Pepe’s struggle to reconcile the dissonance between his innate identity and external realities.
This thematic exploration harkens back to Paul Gilroy’s *The Black Atlantic*, which examines the diasporic experience and the concept of “double consciousness.” Like Black individuals grappling with their identities between African heritage and Western demands, Pepe exists in a liminal space—a creature out of place and time, burdened by an unnatural hybridity.
### **The Human Intersection: A Philosophical Turn**
The film takes an interesting narrative turn as it juxtaposes Pepe’s introspection with the lives of two human characters: Candelario, a fisherman obsessed with an unseen river beast, and his wife Betania, who accuses him of infidelity. While the couple’s story ties into Afrikaans folklore that links hippos and marital strife, their emotional drama risks diluting the film’s central focus on Pepe’s existential observations.
This tension raises an important question about narrative direction: should the film remain firmly entrenched in the uniqueness of its animal perspective, or is the human subplot essential to contextualize the hippo’s story within human mythos and politics? Some critics argue that the deviation detracts from the strength of the magical realism—a genre that thrives when it blurs the boundaries between the surreal and the grounded.
### **Symbolism and Formal Brilliance**
De Los Santos Arias describes *Pepe* as a work brimming with “symbolism,” prioritizing abstraction over straightforward representation. This symbolic intent is evident in the film’s aesthetics. Sweeping cinematography captures the Magdalena River as an omniscient entity, reflecting nature’s silent witness to history’s upheavals. Sound design seamlessly blends the rhythms of existence—bullets morph into drumbeats, and water becomes a narrative device—enhancing the film’s immersive quality.
The hippo’s journey symbolizes more than just environmental displacement. For De Los Santos Arias, *Pepe* represents broader themes of cultural erasure, resilience, and adaptation. Is Pepe a victim of circumstance or a survivor thriving in a foreign land? The audience remains entranced by this question even as the narrative explores philosophical tangents about authenticity, subjective truths, and what it means to exist.
### **Cultural Identity in the Caribbean Filmmaking Context**
What elevates *Pepe* from an artistic experiment to a cultural milestone is its context within Caribbean cinema. De Los Santos Arias is part of a new generation of filmmakers challenging the marginalization of the Caribbean in global cinema. His work is steeped in political intentionality, shedding light on histories often overlooked. *Pepe* is Caribbean storytelling on a global scale—a rare recognition of its unique perspectives.
Through Pepe’s reflections, the film grapples with identity as layered and multifaceted: African parents transported to South America, adaptation into a foreign land, and eventual martyrdom in the form of human perceptions of