Visiting the Museo

The other day, I noticed in the L.A. Times an article about a major robbery at a small French museum, located in the lordly final home of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. A pair of original Renoir paintings were taken by thieves, but the article speculated that these valuable works of art were unsellable in the world’s marketplace, because they were too well known to entice any would-be buyers to lay out millions. (See, by way of a comic contrast, the secret selling of the so-called Cellini Venus in one of my favorite romantic comedies, How to Steal a Million.)

 On the same day that I read the Times piece on the Renoir thefts, I chanced to watch a Mexican heist film from 2018. It chronicles, surely with some poetic license, an actual famous theft that took place on Christmas Eve in the year 1985. The two young robbers, both veterinary students,   snuck into Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología, and made off with a number of  priceless pre-Colombian artifacts. One of the thieves was eventually caught, though the other still, after all these years, remains at large. Thankfully most, though not all, of the national treasures they stole have been recovered in good condition..  

 The 2018 film starring the ubiquitous Gael Garcia Bernal changes various details, but remains true to the basic thrust of the actual story.  I remember particularly the striking contrast between the two young men. Juan Núñez (Bernal) is clearly the leader, both logistically and philosophically. He comes from a large and loving extended family, but seems to resent their Christmas Eve frivolity, particularly since he’s expected to take his dead uncle’s place in wearing a Santa suit and doling out gifts. By contrast, his sidekick, Benjamin Wilson (Leonardo Ortizgris) would clearly prefer to spend Christmas Eve quietly at home with his dying father. Still, at midnight, the two are on their way (in Juan’s father’s car) to the famous museum, where they remove numerous exotic treasures from their glass cases with exquisite care.

 But leaving town with their booty is only half the battle. They get some lucky breaks—like cops who pull them over but don’t realize the value of the trinkets in their possession—but it’s far more difficult than they assumed to find a buyer for priceless antiquities. Their road trip has its funny moments, including a visit to a seedy nightclub where one of the dancers is an ageing former Mexican film star. But tensions are growing between the two.

 Inevitably they end up back in Mexico City, where they need to return the car appropriated from Juan’s father. And, inevitably, the loot they’ve been spiriting around Mexico. I won’t go into detail about what happens next, except to mention a vivid moment in which Juan displays his reverence for one of the relics, the so-called Jade Mask of Pakal, as he returns it to its place of honor in the museum. It’s his salute, I feel, to the ancestors who long ago owned these treasures.

 The keepers of Mexico’s National Museum must care deeply about this story, because the magnificent museum building in Chapultepec Park is lovingly depicted on film. It’s a destination that should be part of everyone’s Mexican travel plans. And perhaps the film has the virtue of making us think, just a bit, about the complex—and sometimes bloody—history of the objects that two young men take such great pains to steal. The Aztecs and the Mayan committed their share of bad deeds, but they displayed a grandeur that these two young thieves sorely lack.