A heist movie, a real robbery and a clue to the theft of ancient artifacts

Museo, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, explores the thorny issue of protecting and preserving antiquities through the predicament of two art thieves

History repeats itself, they say.  But so, it seems, do comical attempts at the theft of history. On September 11, even as Museo, a Mexican film starring the country’s well-known actor Gael Garcia Bernal and based on the heist of priceless artifacts from Mexico City’s Anthropology Museum in 1985, was premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, police in Hyderabad cracked a week-old case of theft of valuable exhibits from the city’s Nizam Museum.

The two cases shared some similarities: both involved a pair of culprits who managed to pull off the burglaries quite easily but apparently went by the motto of ‘Steal first, think later’. In India, the two men who were arrested for stealing a gold tiffin carrier studded with precious stones and a pair of gold cups and saucers, only ended up living like the Nizams for a week, drinking tea and eating meals out of their newly acquired possessions. If only they had been able to watch Museo first, they might have learned that it’s not easy for amateur art thieves to sell their stolen goods. 

 Bernal plays Juan Nunez, the 30-something slacker son in an upper middle-class family, frequently berated by his parents, siblings and relatives for his lack of achievement or ambition. He had taken a part-time job at the museum while in college, and his plan to burgle it with help from his best friend is as much an act of rebellion as of larceny. But his research hasn’t gone much beyond casing the museum and learning its layout. He actually has to borrow his father’s car to use as a getaway vehicle. 

 The duo face one sign of caution as they approach the museum on the night before Christmas. A statue of Mahatma Gandhi placed outside the building is lit and shot from below, looming over the pair as they look up and sidle past, ignoring this symbolic messenger of morality. The guards are shown joking and laughing in the security room. The thieves make the most of their free hand, gathering several jade and gold artifacts, including a mask of Pakal, the ancient Mayan ruler, before making an easy getaway. 

 Spooked by the subsequent outcry over the theft of national treasures, they approach a tourist guide in the Mayan site of Palenque, who takes them to a savvy British art dealer in Acapulco. Their meeting with the dealer yields some of the funniest and most meaningful moments of the film. The veteran dealer recognises their loot instantly, sees through their charade of representing a wealthy collector — they can’t even decide if he’s called Mr West or Mr Quest — and warns them that no dealer in the world would touch their haul. 

A still from Museo, a movie based on the heist of artifacts from Mexico City’s Anthropology Museum in 1985

The film’s director Alonso Ruizpalacios also explores thorny issues relating to museums and preservation of national antiquities through these scenes. Initially, Nunez balks at finding that Mr Graves, the dealer they are meeting, is British, complaining that this — the appropriation of antiquities by colonial powers —  was how Western museums were filled. Graves retorts, “This is how all museums are filled.” Indeed, the film opens with an old newsreel showing how a gigantic statue of a Mayan deity was transported from its original location in the Mexican countryside to the same Anthropology Museum, to the displeasure of the rural community that believed the deity belonged to them, not to some museum in Mexico City. What is its rightful place? Where would it be safer? “There’s no preservation without plunder,” claims Graves. 

This is a debate particularly relevant to a country like India, which rightly demands the return of various historical items taken out of the country by previous conquerors, but at the same time, is also unable to protect its remaining rich cache of treasures from unscrupulous operators like Subhash Kapoor, formerly a well-connected art dealer in New York who is currently lodged in a Tamil Nadu jail awaiting trial for his alleged role as the mastermind of an international antiquities smuggling ring. 

In Museo, Nunez sees no way of selling the stolen items and decides to return them to the museum, getting arrested in the process. The film hints that he wanted to be caught. In an interview to Variety magazine, the director said, “Digging deeper into the story, we couldn’t find a motive for the (real-life) heist. We ended up embracing that. It became one of the film’s keys.” Similarly, the hapless pair in Hyderabad, according to the police, was as interested in getting a taste of the Nizams’ luxurious lives as in selling the stolen items. The muddled attitudes of the amateur thieves in both cases helped in their ultimate resolution, but professional criminals are still getting away with plundering history too often.