It’s not surprising that Netflix’s latest Mexican horror fantasy movie, Pedro Paramo, looks breathtaking on screen, given it’s the much anticipated feature debut of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. The man is known for having walked on some of the most gorgeous movies of the last twenty-five years. He is a trusted collaborator of auteurs like Scorsese and Inarritu, which speaks volumes. Attempting to adapt the 1955 novel (of the same name) by Manuel Garcia-Ruffo is certainly a bold choice for a first film, but I suppose Prieto must be very confident about his craft. The end product, however, is not quite satisfactory. Yes, the novel is confusing and not at all an easy thing to adapt, but Prieto’s adaptation on screen seems to lack any kind of conviction. An experienced director would have probably handled it better and approached the narrative in a direct manner, which would have been beneficial. But all we have is a grand-looking, confusing movie, which is a laborious watch with a runtime of more than two hours. Only in the second half, where it focuses on the titular character and focuses a bit on the storytelling, does it become sort of tolerable. I’m not sure how your experience has been watching Pedro Paramo, but if you’re reading this article, then I guess what you’re expecting is a simplification of the plot. I’m going to try to give you exactly that.
Spoilers Ahead
What is the movie about?
It opens with a man named Juan Preciado (we get to know that much later though) coming to this Mexican village called Comala. He’s here to fulfill his recently deceased mother’s wish, which is Juan meeting his father—a man named Pedro Paramo. On his way to the village, he comes across a man named Abundio, who lets him know that he’s also a son of Pedro Paramo, who has been dead for a long time. Juan doesn’t look surprised, and you realize that magic realism is very much at play here. Abundio also suggests that he stay at the house of local innkeeper Dona Eduviges. Upon reaching Comala, Juan finds the town mostly deserted until he sees a feeble woman who shows her the way to Dona’s. He receives a warm welcome from Dona, who seems to have already known that he was coming. She says she got the news from Juan’s dead mother, which pretty much hints at the fact that Dona herself is dead. She also mentions one strange thing about Abundio: that he’s deaf, even though the guy seemed to have no problem hearing Juan.
During the night, Juan hears the sound of a horse galloping around. When he asks Dona, she tells him that the horse belonged to Miguel, another son of Pedro, who died in an accident while riding that horse. Soon, Juan cannot find Dona anywhere in the house and hears the echoes of someone screaming inside his room. Out of nowhere, another woman named Damiana arrives. Juan recognizes her, as she was his mother’s friend and his nanny. Damiana asks Juan to come with her. Before moving on to what happens after this, let me just remind you that the movie keeps intercutting between the past and the present and the non-linear narrative set in different time periods is what confuses you. So I’m going to try breaking it into ‘what happened to Pedro’ in the past and ‘what happens to Juan in the present’ from this point, so everything will hopefully make sense by the end.
How does Juan die?
One might wonder why Juan would even come to this dead town, but that gets cleared up when he mentions to Damiana that he had dreams about Comala. That indicates Juan was always supposed to walk down this path, meaning he was doomed. Damiana lets him know that the town is now haunted by lost souls (at this point, there shouldn’t be any doubt that she is one of them) before disappearing all of a sudden. Juan is lost and doesn’t know where to go, until he sees a mini mob going after a man that might have something to do with the death of Pedro’s father, Lucas Paramo. Frightened and confused, Juan runs and stumbles into a couple—who turn out to be an incestuous brother and sister. I thought it was morbidly funny for Juan to ask if they were alive or dead (the right question, obviously), but they take him home. However, Juan finds out the next morning that the man has left and he now has to take care of the woman. What I assume here is that, thanks to Juan, the man finally finds his way out of his guilt now that there’s another man to take his sister to bed. Juan is initially skeptical, but then he looks a little tempted by the woman—until everything suddenly starts turning into mud, including the woman herself. He barely gets out of the house, and for the rest of the movie, we mostly hear his voice, communicating with Dorotea (the woman who showed him Dona’s house). That only proves that Juan is dead; most likely he never got out of that house and drowned in the mud. We do see him again at the end of the movie, which confirms the existence of a (rather pointless) time loop.
What did Pedro Paramo do?
In the past, we see a very young Pedro, who is smitten by this young girl, Susana. It is evident that they are childhood sweethearts, but unfortunately, the romance needs to be cut short as Susana’s family is leaving Comala. Pedro is heartbroken, but he can’t prevent it from happening. That obviously doesn’t warrant growing up as both a womanizer and a tyrannical landowner, but that is exactly what happens to Pedro Paramo. His father, Lucas, gets murdered, and in search of the perpetrator, Pedro doesn’t hesitate to kill many innocent people. Once he takes over his father’s estate, Media Luna, the evil inside him only grows further. That further gets fuelled by his father’s right-hand man, Fulgor, who starts working for him. Following Pedro’s orders, Fulgor accuses an innocent man, Toribio, and kills him by hanging the man in Dona’s inn. It’s Toribio’s screaming that Juan hears, by the way, in case you’re wondering.
As he owed money to the Preciado family, Pedro offers to marry their daughter, Doloritas. Even though it’s common knowledge that Pedro is a terrible man, in nineteenth-century Mexico, getting a marriage proposal from a man of such social status is a big deal, so Doloritas agrees. Juan, of course, is born of that marriage. But Pedro falters as a husband, as you’d expect, and sends Doloritas away. Her friend Damiana stays on as the head housemaid. She also takes pride in being one of the very few women with whom Pedro has never slept (and never will in the future). Years pass by, and Pedro keeps fathering several children but denies parentage of all of them, except Miguel. It can be assumed that the reason Pedro accepted Miguel is because he saw something of himself in the boy. Like his father, Miguel also turns out to be a womanizer, only more erratic. Dorotea, who would later tell the story to Juan, is hired by Miguel with the task of finding women for him, to be his playthings. He doesn’t hesitate murdering people and raping innocent women, as his privilege allows him to get away with it. But fate doesn’t, as Miguel suffers that accident on his horse and dies from it. The local priest, Renteria, however, denies Miguel his absolution, as he once raped Renteria’s niece Ana and also killed her father. Christianity plays a very important part in this story, as everyone you see here is a believer. Pedro manages to buy his dead son’s path to absolution by paying Renteria off. This puts the priest in a state of guilt, as earlier we have seen him not allowing Dona (yes, the innkeeper) to have absolution because she killed herself.
What happened to Pedro Paramo in the end?
At least he gets to see his beloved Susana again. Had she not left, Pedro Paramo might have ended up a completely different man from what he became; who knows! Sadly for him, the reunion with Susana doesn’t turn out to be how he had expected it. She returns to town with her father after the death of her husband. Pedro doesn’t have to put much effort into offering Susana’s father, Bartolome, a house in exchange for her. But Susana appears to be in a state of depression that doesn’t allow Pedro to be with her in any capacity. He obviously can’t force himself on her, given she is the one woman he has always loved. For Susana, it seems like nothing is left in the world anymore. Her mental condition has a lot to do with her getting sexually abused by her father, who dies shortly after she moves to Pedro’s house (it has to be Pedro pulling the strings). In her sleep, she dreams about her dead husband as Pedro painfully watches her. Her health keeps worsening, and death becomes only a matter of time. When Father Renteria comes to offer to read her the prayers before her death, Susana refuses. The love of Pedro Paramo’s life dies unhappy and miserable, leaving him in emotional ruin.
At the same time, Pedro’s days as a feudal landowner also seem to be numbered, with the rise of the revolutionaries. Fulgor is shot to death by them, but Pedro manages to trick these revolutionaries by promising them both money and men. He hires this mercenary, Damias, to do the job properly by working with the revolutionaries as Pedro’s inside man. All that stops mattering for him when Susana dies, though. Post that tragedy, Pedro finds himself in the middle of this nothingness. Life stops for him with Susana leaving. He does get angry at people of Comala getting into a festive mood though, when he’s still grieving for her. Remember what Dona mentioned about Abundio being deaf to Juan earlier? Well, if I’m not wrong, that happens thanks to the firecrackers during a celebration, where Juan manages to reach somehow. He is of course dead, and the time loop has probably started with him being dead; there is not at all any relevance to that.
As far as Pedro Paramo is concerned, he stops caring about anything and starts passing his hours by endlessly sitting in a chair outside his home. Everyone in the town starts leaving, and that’s how Comala eventually becomes a ghost town. Damiana stays, though, and keeps looking after Pedro. Dorotea also stays, as she has nowhere to go. Then one day, a drunk Abundio arrives at their doorstep. All he’s looking for is some money to bury his freshly deceased wife. But Pedro refuses and asks him to go away. Enraged, Abundio stabs Damiana to death and then does the same to Pedro. One notable thing here is Damiana failing to understand she has died, as her spirit asks Pedro to come in for lunch, right before his death. I suppose Damiana still hasn’t realized that she is dead. We’re not sure at what point Abundio or Dorotea die, but those things are inevitable occurrences in this tragic tale.
What do we take away from this movie?
It’s not mandatory for every single movie to mean something or have a message, but for something like Pedro Paramo, which has zero entertainment value and (I dare say this) also lacks severely with the craft, an introspection regarding the existence of a movie does seem justified to me. If there’s one thing Pedro Paramo manages to pull off quite successfully, it’s showing us what heartbreak can do to a man. Pedro was forever driven by the loss he suffered (Susana going away), and the evil inside him arose as a reaction. He also made sure everyone around him (and also his lineage, including Juan) suffered as well and died miserably. That’s the message we receive, but was it really necessary to make such an utterly confusing and very pointless movie just to tell us this much? I don’t think so. Lastly, I don’t mean any disrespect, but maybe Rodrigo Prieto should stick to cinematography and not attempt to direct movies anymore if the final outcomes are anything like Pedro Paramo.
