Mexico. 2024.
Crew
Director – Rodrigo Prieto, Screenplay – Mateo Gil, Based on the Novel Pedro Paramo (1955) by Juan Rolfo, Producers – Stacie Perskie Kaniss & Rafael Ley, Photography – Nico Aguilar & Rodrigo Prieto, Music – Gustavo Santaolalla, Visual Effects Supervisor – Marco Maldonado, Visual Effects – Folks VFX (Supervisors – Jamie Guzman & Nick Seal) & Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies, Special Effects Supervisor – Alejandro Vazquez, Prosthetics Designer – Karina Rodriguez, Production Design – Eugenio Caballero & Carlos Y. Jacques. Production Company – Redrum/Woo Films.
Cast
Manuel-Garcia Rulfo (Pedro Paramo), Tenoch Huerta Mejia (Juan Preciado), Dolores Heredia (Eduviges Dyada), Ilse Salas (Susana San Juan), Hector Kotsifakis (Fulgor Sedano), Mayra Batalla (Damiana), Roberto Sosa (Father Renteria), Giovanna Zacarias (Dorotea), Noe Hernandez (Abundio Martinez), Yoshira Escárrega (Ella), Santiago Colores (Miguel Paramo), Horacio Garcia-Rojas (Donis), Sarah Rovira (Sister Susana)
Plot
Juan Preciado is on a quest. Just before the death of his mother, she asked Juan arrives to seek his father Pedro Paramo in the village of Comala. Juan arrives to find Comala all but a ghost town. He is directed to take a room with Eduviges Dyada, who says his mother told him she was coming. Juan comes to the realisation that the town is inhabited by people who are no longer alive. Through these people, he comes to understand the story of his father, a cruel man who inherited lands and property and of the harsh influence he had on the region that has led to the current desolation of Comala.
Pedro Paramo (1955) was a novel by Juan Rolfo (1917-86), who is considered one of the Mexican literary giants. The book has been cited as one of the earliest works of Latin American Magical Realism and mentioned by Jorge Luis Borges as being highly influential. There had been an earlier Mexican-made film version made of the novel with Pedro Paramo (1967) starring US actor John Gavin in the title role.
This version was the first feature film directed by Rodrigo Prieto Prieto. Prieto is better known as a cinematographer, in particular for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese on films like The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Irishman (2020) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2024) and other works like Alexander (2004), Babel (2006), Brokeback Mountain (2006), Argo (2012) and Barbie (2023), among others. He had received four Academy Award nominations as cinematographer.
You are immediately captivated by the film’s atmosphere in the first few minutes. We meet Tenoch Huerta Mejia on a quest through the desert, his meeting a peasant (Noe Hernandez) walking in the same direction who knew his father who makes cryptic comments. There is then Tenoch’s arrival in the town, which seems mysteriously deserted, and being granted shelter by Dolores Heredia – a room in the attic with no bed. She mentions that she was told by his mother that he was coming but, he replies, his mother died several days ago. The effect is something quite haunted, especially in the guarded replies that people give or cryptic lack of proper answers.
It pays not to be familiar with the novel before you go in. There becomes something incredibly haunted about the town. Of stories that Eduviges tells of meeting Pedro’s son Miguel (Santiago Colores) who turns up at her door after getting lost and wandering in the fog, before she has to tell him to go away because he is a ghost. The scenes in the town gradually become something otherworldly where Tenoch Huerta Mejia has to keep asking people whether they are alive – and where their silence speaks all. It as though the town with its narrow empty streets sits on the edge of a twilight zone.
The most haunted sequence is the one where Tenoch Huerta Mejia is taken home by a brother and sister and sleeps on the floor while they curl up naked on the bed. Later the brother is gone and the sister comes to Tenoch, saying how she feels like mud inside and asking him to come lie with her. He turns her down and goes back to sleep on the floor and the camera focuses on him turned on its side when in an eerie moment her feet step over him and she floats up into the air. Later he joins her on the bed and then wakes up to find her and the entire bed dissolving into mud.
Eventually, the backstory opens out and comes to tell us who Pedro Paramo was and how all of the characters we meet throughout thread together in an eventual explanation. Here the film becomes something of a family saga as a number of Latin American works of Magical Realism do – see Like Water for Chocolate (1992), The House of the Spirits (1993) – in telling the story of the way events influence multiple generations. The haunted ghost town aspect (and indeed the character of Juan Preciado) drops off and becomes less important in the latter half as the family saga takes over. This is less interesting than the haunted mood but the story builds and winds together for a strong finale.
(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2024 list. Nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay at this site’s Best of 2024 Awards).
Trailer here