499 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

499 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 16, 2022

Only a few films have been made about the Spanish conquistadors' invasion of Mexico, with the most famous being Henry King's Captain from Castile (1947) starring Tyrone Power. With 499 (2020), Mexican director Rodrigo Reyes makes his contribution to an important period in history that's been mostly neglected by filmmakers. Reyes has attempted an "essay film" that fuses mostly documentary with some fiction. He inserts a fictional character, who's an unnamed conquistador portrayed by Eduardo San Juan Breña, into the contemporary malaise of Mexico. Breña's soldier was a member of Hérnan Cortés's (1485–1547) army which successfully toppled the Aztec Empire in 1521. Flash-forward 499 years later and the conquistador has been washed ashore after the vessel he was aboard became shipwrecked. All of the other soldiers have perished, leaving him as the lone survivor. The conquistador has his original uniform, armor, metal breastplate, and helmet which he locates after getting his bearing on land. He's now in modern-day Veracruz and will make the pilgrimage to Mexico City, formerly the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. Beach-goers are stunned by his vintage regalia, staring at him as if a ghost sidled on the sand by them. The conquistador tries to assert his dominance with one of the groups but chokes up and turns mute. Reyes demarcates his film into seven "chapters" with each representing a particular region of the country that the conquistador visits. The old soldier encounters migrants wanting to flee the cartels, families mourning the loss of loved ones, activists, vigilantes, police officers, and a sicario.

Reyes has experimented with a relatively novel concept that narratively combines documentary subjects with a fictional historical figure. The conquistador is representative of the colonists who invaded a nation of proud citizens. Reyes shows the long-term effects that Cortés's invasion had on Mexicans that continue to plague them to this day. While the movie is often poignant, its collection of stories feel uneven as they don't coalesce that well. Reyes allows his subjects to tell their tales but sometimes the way he presents them are not that cinematically engaging. The best sequence occurs when a mother named Lorena recounts losing her 12-year-old daughter in a tortuous killing. I didn't feel that other parts of the film reached those same emotional high points. While listening to Lorena's harrowing story, I was reminded of the missing persons in Argentina that were the subject of Luis Puenzo's La historia oficial (The Official Story, 1985). But 499 doesn't have the same affective power that's sustained across a full narrative as this Oscar-winning film. 499 boasts breathtaking cinematography across the ocean, hills, shantytowns, and even a trash heap. But it's altogether less than the sum of its parts.

499 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Cinema Guild's MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer comes on a BD-25. Reyes's fourth feature overall appears in its originally composed aspect ratio of 2.39:1. Cinematographer Alejandro Mejía's color scheme predominates with green, burgundy, and gray. As you can see throughout these screenshots, the image is frequently dark in several scenes. There are no compression-related artifacts or source flaws. Cinema Guild encodes the feature at an average video bitrate of 20516 kbps.

The 88-minute film is accompanied with ten scene selections.

499 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Cinema Guild has supplied a Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (3385 kbps, 24-bit) and a Spanish LPCM Audio 2.0 Stereo downmix (2304 kbps, 24-bit). While a majority of the movie is delivered in Spanish, there's some dialogue in Nahuatl, a Uto-Aztecan language. I thought the natural sounds often came through well across the full acoustical spectrum. Rippling waves and wind rushing through trees are two prominent examples. The conquistador has a deep, sonorous voice that almost delivered an extra bass sound through the center speaker.

The optional English subtitles are displayed in a medium-sized font that are clear and easy to read.

499 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Rodrigo Reyes and Cinema Tropical Co-founder and Executive Director Carlos A. Gutiérrez - this feature-length track features Reyes in conversation with the man who operates a Latin American cinema distribution company in the US. Reyes describes the process of getting 499 made, which took him a good five years. He delves into the various subjects he interviewed for the documentary portion and what they told him. Gutiérrez occasionally has to ask a follow-up to clarify his initial question but proves an effective moderator. Reyes and Gutiérrez each speak very good English. The all-English track isn't subtitled.

• The Making of 499: The Cinematography (5:11, 1080p) - DP Alejandro Mejía talks about merging the domains of documentary and fiction, locating vintage Japanese anamorphic lenses, coming up with what he calls a reflective aesthetic, working with the director and his main actor, and reasons why it was important for him to return to his home nation of Mexico to film 499. In Spanish with auto-generated English subtitles.

• The Making of 499: Editing (7:31, 1080p) - Co-editor Andrea Chignoli says that the audiovisual makeup of 499 had an "audacity" that struck her. She observes that the film has roots in Latin-American literature and mentions a couple of important writers. Chignoli notes that the challenge for viewers is to knit the movie's two worlds together so they're part of a continuum. She addresses the time-zone differences in working on the picture (Reyes is based in the Bay Area while Chignoli resides in Chile) so they found junior editor Daniel Chávez Ontiveros to work on the assemblies. Along with the featurette where Mondragón discusses his score, Chignoli's interview is one of the best on this disc. In Spanish with auto-generated English subtitles.

• The Making of 499: The Music (8:46, 1080p) - Composer Pablo Mondragón states that he wanted his score to sound unfamiliar to viewers. He describes with enthusiasm the requiem he first came up with and director Reyes's ideas of what should be added to the score. Mondragón goes into the chorus and traditional Mexican instruments that blend in with the ocean, wind, and other sound elements. He gives an overview of the "Conquistador Theme" and a clip is followed to illustrate it. The composer also lays out the secondary themes he crafted. In Spanish with auto-generated English subtitles.

• The Making of 499: The Conquistador (6:39, 1080p) - Actor Eduardo San Juan Breña explains how 499 helped familiarize himself with the spaces of and places of Mexico. He also explicates the challenges presented to him for the role sans any script. Breña talks about how making 499 enriched him on professional and personal levels. He goes through his working relationship with director Reyes, which began virtually. Finally, Breña emphasizes the importance of listening that his character had to adopt. In Spanish with auto-generated English subtitles.

• The Making of 499: Behind-the-Scenes Photo Montage (1:20, 1080p) - a brief slideshow that displays thirteen snapshots taken of the 499 shoot in Veracruz by award-winning photographer Félix Márquez.

• Theatrical Trailer (1:57, 1080p) - Cinema Guild's original trailer for 499 presented in 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen. It has a Spanish Dolby Stereo 2.0 mix (192 kbps) along with English subtitles.

• Cinema Guild Bonus Trailers - A Night of Knowing Nothing (1:59, 1080p), Cane Fire (1:15, 1080p), Expedition Content (2:27, 1080p), In Front of Your Face (1:57, 1080p), Rock Bottom Riser (1:56, 1080p), The Two Sights (2:27, 1080p), Isabella (2:14, 1080p), and The Girl and the Spider (1:45, 1080p).

• Leaflet - a four-page leaflet containing about a two-and-a-half page essay by film critic Carlos Aguilar, who writes poetically about how the past and present of 499 are intertwined. Aguilar specifically focuses on issues such as colonialism and his own cultural displacement. The back features an appreciation of 499 by Jim Jarmusch, who contributes a short paragraph.

499 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I have no quibbles about 499's excellent widescreen photography but I feel there are some cinematic elements lacking that would have made it a more impactful experience. I believe it would have been more compelling on a dramatic level had Reyes chosen an actor to play Cortés himself rather than one of his anonymous soldiers. It would have been fascinating to see how today's Mexicans would have confronted an old nemesis. Cinema Guild has assembled a very good disc with top-notch audiovisual presentations and a pretty fine collection of extras. If you're a fan of the film, then this disc is worth picking up. But a very mild recommendation from me for 499 the movie.