El Hombre Búfalo (2020) - full transcript

Suddenly, one day, on one of those
boring trips, I felt the full presence

of something that turned out to be
pure Greek mythology,

which I think confirms Jung’s
theory of archetypes,

there is a kind of memory of the ancestors.
Through genes and chromosomes,

they send you something that
corresponds to their time and not yours.

Thus, came out the notion of labyrinth,
the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur,

but I saw it the other way around.
In the Minotaur I saw the poet,

the free man, the different
man and who, therefore,

is the man that society,
the system, immediately locks up,

sometimes in psychiatric clinics
and other times in labyrinths,

and Theseus, on the other hand,
is the perfect defender of order,



the king's gangster who kills the poet,
he has the procedures of a perfect

fascist and kills him immediately.

Inspired by true events

I have the same dream
since I was a boy.

Suddenly, I’m a dog,

and I am covered in blood.

I don't know if I escaped
if I fought with another dog,

but I am sure they
are wounds,

I am very hurt.

I can only see the street,

I know I am going to die

but I feel very good.

The Buffalo Man

Fuck!



I got him published The Invisible Network,
which was an article about

pederasty and child prostitution.

I hadn’t seen him for a while,
he stopped writing, until

recently he showed up and said
to me that he was going to

make a come back and that
he needed money and my car,

so I gave them to him.

...it says you're driving like crazy!

No, I'm going 65 mph

Yeah, so the taste of it
depends on what you eat, right?

Really?

Yes, I think so.

But what is it?

That which you expel from
your being when you arrive

to the ecstasy of life.

But one as a man

And one as a woman too.

Yeah, sure, so you taste
like black pudding.

Gross! Black pudding!

That’s bullshit!

Thirty four.

Thanks.

How old were you when
you lost your innocence?

Old age.

Really? How many?

Sixteen.

You think that's old?

Well, in comparison to the references
that I had around, I was old.

Fifteen.

Almost the same.
Was it at your quinceañera?

Something very crazy happened to me,
like I had something repressed

because I did not feel anything,
literally, nothing.

I mean, I realized I was there
because I saw everything and

I was like: Seriously? Is that it?

Is this the whole fuss, really?

So I feel like it all
was a total shock.

You destroyed his life.

No, he’s still there insisting.

So it didn’t happen
at your quinceañera?

No, but he was my chambelan.

Those fucking chambelans
are dangerous.

I mean, if I have a daughter...
No chambelans! I'm going to

tell her: “No chambelans, kid.
No, no chambelan, no!”

But actually a quinceañera
is a party to tell society you're

old enough to get some.

I packed bags in a grocery store.

- Really?
- Yes, and she was a cashier.

I don’t know why
I follow this fucker.

He doesn’t even remember me.

I could pull out
a gun and shoot him.

What is your name?

My name's Jonah and I'm a thug,
that is I get jobs done for a living,

you do understand, right?

No,

The truth is I earn well,

and...

that’s how this country
works anyway,

if I didn’t do it someone else would.

I already knew I was a thug, that
I was going to dedicate myself to it,

you just know, don't you?
You know what your calling is

and since I was a boy I was never good
at anything, I never really had a vocation;

I was going to end up
doing this, really.

For example, my brother,

he is a car mechanic and he
works his ass off, really,

and I say to him: "What for?
Why do you work so fucking much?

You have to live, motherfucker!

You have to live, asshole!

You have to live the
good life!”

Tell me about Eric.

The thing is he already had the
bullseye on his head, right?

He was marked since we knew,

since we found out that he
was going to publish something new.

What do you want?

To talk

To talk about what, girl?

What do you want to know?

A big head requires a big hat.

I had the misfortune
of losing my wife

and I did not resign.

Eric and I had an open relationship
and we were also work colleagues.

I met him at the newspaper
where he used to write,

until one day he quit
without explanation.

I remember one time, at my
house, he was sitting on the

terrace railing

drinking a beer.

As he kept drinking, he leaned
more and more towards the street.

The first thing that
came to my mind was:

"This dude wants to die."

When I grabbed his arm
to pull him down, he looked

at me and said, real drunk:

"I feel something under my skin
that makes me vomit."

- It’s still clicking.

Yeah.

I was looking at the trailer...

I have a cousin who drives one.

He has some really cool stories.

I can imagine.

My favorite are the scary ones.

The one of the lady in white

They tell that one a lot,
don't they?

Everybody tells that story,

in which they pick up a woman...

That is really beautiful
and suddenly she is a skeleton.

Someone should make a movie like
that, a trailer driver comedy.

About trailer drivers who give a ride
to pretty women that turn into skeletons.

I pay my respects to them,
I really do.

Yeah, I know.
They work really hard.

Yes.

My name is Juliet.

Next week he came back to
the market and wanted me to

go eat tacos with him,

I said: “Ok, let’s go if you're inviting”.

So we went and he told
me that as a child

he had met a man
who took care of him

because he was alone,
he told me that the man

was half man, half buffalo.

He told me that sometimes
it would appear again.

I liked him.

This absent parents thing
made me connect with him.

We went for a few beers
and it was the last time we saw

each other until I looked for him.

I was a Physics professor.

They disappeared her,

one night she did
not come home,

I went out looking for her.

The policemen told me that
they had ratted out on her

and that she was a suspect
of criminal association.

Your fucking mother
is a suspect!

Now I think I would have
liked her not to write anything,

I went looking everywhere for her.

In dumps, in pits

They know that even if
your rage is too much,

the death of silence
will come to you.

Let them shout whatever they want!

You see?

You could not endure it,

you’re a pussy,

and because you could not stand
the beating you ratted out.

I give you your mother's letter,
you wait two hours and then you can go.

But let me tell you,

if you write again, it will
not be a beating anymore,

I myself will turn you cold.

I don't think that
I don't know, I'm not that radical.

I don’t think it’s impossible,

to be with just one person.

It is a penis and a vagina,

everything else is in our minds

and in our weird desires that
we impose on those relationships,

don't you think?

25 years of my life eating
peppers and tortillas,

and I may believe that I can feed on
that my whole life, and maybe

I can, I believe I can,

but when you try steak, cheese

Then you're like: "Oooh!"

Yeah, I don't know. Humans
are weird even more nowadays.

There are no streets
were those fuckers live.

Are you tired?

Do you have any
other family member?

No,

we were just
Helen and me.

Isn’t Eric your son?

I have no sons.

Go away. Go away!

Go away!

Go on!

Go away, go away, go on!

When I talked to Eric I thought he was
a little crazy, he wanted me to accompany

him to Oaxaca to do
his investigation,

I wasn’t scared, I know
how to protect myself,

what I thought was that maybe
he was a slacker, but he’s not like that,

in fact I think he wanted to do
something meaningful and

that made him suffer,

it made him feel powerless.

How come you are claustrophobic?

Just like that, I am.

It’s not like as a child I was
locked up or lived something harsh,

no, I just can’t get in the subway
and I can’t live in a room.

Yes, for a while it went away.

Just like that, it passed.

How did you find Eric?

Let's see...

I didn’t remember but it was
days after I chatted with Eric.

When I was a kid,
I also met the Buffalo Man,

I spent a lot of time alone
and sometimes when

night came and my mom
wasn’t home yet,

I looked at the window and from
my building I could see

the building opposite,
and there was the animal,

staring at me.

It didn't scare me.
It made me feel that I was

not the only one waiting all alone,

that it was two of us now.

That's why I decided
to look for Eric.

I have to confess that the
Buffalo Man also appeared

to me the same day
Eric was killed.

I asked what it was,
I also asked about Eric

Sometimes I think what would
have happened if I had

not given him the article.

Coincidentally, I came across an article
that I thought would be perfect for Eric.

He wasn't doing anything
at the time, so I gave it to him.

At first, he turned it down.

When I insisted he write again,
he told me he had a target on him

and if he wrote again,
they would kill him.

That's why he stopped writing.

That day, we went to bed
and did the same routine,

and then I never saw him again.

He had always disappeared for a
while, so I though it was normal.

Maybe I should've stopped being
a journalist to only be a mother,

but I couldn’t.

They're going to throw my body
somewhere, and I'm going to rot.

I can’t stop writing,

I don't care if I get killed.

Fuck you all!

When he investigated,
he transformed, he was full of life

He looked like a man with
no past oppressing him.

The reason I'm doing this
documentary is partly out of guilt.

I want to show the man
who was erased

by something invisible,

by a beast no one
seems to see

and everyone seems to avoid looking at,

because if you do, it devours you.

We have a software that
warns us when they are active

so we find out real
quickly, right?

Very quickly we found out
what he was doing,

what he was investigating,

about a mining company.

It turns out that there were
some fucking Indians

making a mess

and he was investigating about that.

The mining business involves a lot
of dough, there are many players

gambling and risking a lot of dough,
so none of them likes you to

mess with their money.
The thing with bosses

is that you can say whatever
you want, you can talk about them,

but when you mess with
their money then you’re fucked.

Right?

So when he started to investigate
and get more involved with

the mining company thing,

that’s when they sent me.

But I was only
sent to scare him.

It wasn’t me who killed him,
I don’t know who did,

I was actually just coming
back from a forced pause.

I was sick, I'm not sure
what I had, at first

I thought it was stomach
reflux or some of that shit

you sometimes get,

but then I didn’t know for sure,
the food tasted disgusting,

bitter,

the meat tasted rotten,
everything tasted

fucking gross,
tasted like shit,

I could not eat,

I went to see to the doctor,
they did not find anything

so I stopped eating,
I lost weight, I lost several pounds

and I was feeling very tired.

Well, you get used to it,
don’t you?

We get used to everything,

even to food tasting like
shit you get used to.

It started as a game
while we were having sex

he drew and drew beautifully.

So he drew stuff, right?

While doing it, and

at the beginning, it was
something new,

it was something that we both loved.

I don’t know, it was different,
it was cute, you know?

I don't know.

But no, after a while

Suddenly it began to become
more often that he drew a

Mr. Potato Head on my back
that is, lower back.

Very low?

Well, yeah.

You mean there where it's
no longer called back.

Yeah

But, how did he draw it,
at what moment?

Well there, meanwhile,
doing it.

With any... a marker, a pen,
whatever we had handy.

If he didn't draw that,
he could not come.

Damn! He was fucking
Mr. Potato Head then, right?

No! I don't like to think
of it that way, I like to

think that while I felt like

the strokes on my back, it's because
a good moment was approaching.

it's because a good moment
was approaching.

That’s cool.
But why Mr. Potato Head?

Losing one's memory is
an act of cowardice

And my father is a coward.

He says he doesn’t remember,

that he doesn’t recognize me.
but I think he's fucking around.

I am a journalist just because,

but I could’ve been a terrorist,

it’s the same.

Some of them search for one thing
and the others search for another thing,

but it’s the same.

My mother left.

She was killed,
but nonetheless she left,

that's what she decided,

she put herself in that position.

I hate my mother and
I also hate my father.

But I hate even more the
people who are motherfuckers.

Maybe that’s why I’m a journalist.

The truth must be somewhere.

I was run over when
I was a little kid.

Really? Where?

In my neighborhood,
I was 6 years old.

What?

Did you get run over when you
were 6 years old?

What happened?

I have two scars on my head.
He had already run over a lady...

...in another street,
he was drunk driving.

Oh, it is serious!

Yes, and they couldn’t get him.

I mean, when he hit me he was
already being chased,

but still managed to fuck me up
and they didn't get him in the end.

Damn, that’s too bad!

Yeah.

And the funniest thing
is that my brother

came in the house...

My mom says that he came in,

she was sewing, he came
in the kitchen, poured himself

a glass of water,
sat in the living room

and after a while he said
to my mom: "Oh, yeah! It's true!"

And my mom was: “What?
What is?”, “Eric was run over”.

So my mom came running outside.

Since then, she says that
I’m not okay, that I don’t think

of the danger and that I accept trips
just like that and that I do crazy things.

When he finished the reportage,
we agreed to meet at the university

but I didn’t arrive because
the police stopped me.

Eric lived in a paradox because
he didn’t want to follow

his mother's destiny
but at the same time

he couldn’t stop writing,
he didn’t want to.

Too bad that his new article
is not going to see the light.

Erick was my distant cousin,
he came to live with my family

when I was about 7
or 8 years old, I think.

His mother went missing,
she was also a journalist,

the party in power at the time made her
disappear in the eighties, and Ramon,

his father, went crazy
looking for her.

He started to stop sleeping in
his home for walking through the

morgues and hospitals to see if
he could find at least the body,

and he stopped washing and
eating, he had always the same

clothes on, full of stains.

He got used to the streets
and the booze.

When that happened, Eric was
about 12 years old

and before he lived with us,
he was already alone.

His father left him
a signed checkbook,

he went to the bank
every time he ran out of money.

Then, Eric went to eat whatever
he liked at the market,

then he walked back to Coapa.

Do you know how
many miles that is?

At least about 10.

I think about that and it gives
me the chills, I think that at that age

I couldn't even
sleep with the lights off.

Did he ever tell you
about the Buffalo Man?

What is that?

Rabbits are tasty.
Have you tried them?

Yes.

Do you like them?

Only the ones that
my uncle cooks.

His name was Victor, he had
a very human-like stare,

that's why it was named Victor.

...He had the theory that
it was a reincarnation,

That’s creepy!

But the rabbit grew so big
and looked so tasty

that we killed it for Christmas.

I don't remember but in a cartoon
show, there was a cow

that was a reincarnation

and had human eyes,
so my brother told us:

"See? You see that's possible?”

And we were all like
full of Victor, satisfied.

It was a very big rabbit,
very fat,

like cat meat maybe.

That's why they say, right?
To give a cat instead of a hare?

Really?

Sure.

They say the taste is similar.

An Uber driver told me
and I believed him.

So the Buffalo Man
told you to come here.

The Buffalo Man just
told me to find you,

not to bring you.

Besides, I was afraid
to come alone.

Good thing I came.

Yeah.

Why did you come?

Because you invited me and because
I like to go out and because

I had to find you, didn’t I?

You can’t speak Zapotec language,
poom! A stick to the head.

Teacher, teacher,
he spoke in Zapotec,

don’t scold us.

But now is good, is good, Zapotec.

Over there on the hill
is San Pedro.

Cajono.

On this side is San Francisco
Cajono, over here,

and ahead is San Miguel Cajonos.

So, you’re going down there?

Yes, over here by the stream.

Are they ugly?

It’s their sideburns.

No, but some like sideburns.

Some, not everyone.

No, young ladies, not the nice
sideburns, when they give

them their kisses.
The sideburns.

The sideburns.

Sideburns, yeah, they’re nice.

You see our Lord
Jesus Christ, his beard

He also had, right? At least
that’s how they portray him.

They like beards a lot,

but we are bald,
they don’t want us bald.

There’s for everyone,

Yes, there’s for everyone.

This girl likes them bald.

Really?

Here, here it is, please.

Here, a little further.

My dear friends,
how much do I owe you?

Don’t worry about it. Is nothing.

Oh, ok thanks, my dear friend,
God bless you, God keeps you,

God is going to pay you,
God is going to pay you.

Well, see you later, fare well.

I also saw him lighting up,
as if he was awakening.

Then, for like seven months,
I didn't know anything about him,

I did think about him but
I didn’t want to bother him.

If he doesn't look for me
it's because he doesn’t want

me near, right?

I don't go into this town,
there is too much death.

Alright.

Well, see you then.

Eric was found dead with
two bullets in the stomach.

Since 2000, at least 133 journalists
have been killed in the country.

Mexico was rated by the Reporters
Without Borders Organization

as the most dangerous country
without war to practice journalism,

only behind Afghanistan and Syria.