In his essay Defense of an Adaptation, French film critic and co-founder of the historical film magazine Cahiers du Cinema André Bazin states that a literary adaptation for the cinema is impure. He points out how dependence on another medium affects filmmaking and how leaning over another source material, either literature or theater, sacrifices the realistic approach of the seventh art. Ever since the first publishing of the text in 1952, the conventions about the realistic approach to film and literature adaptation have shifted. Bazin would defend that realism in cinema is intrinsic; however, genre-blending became an experimentation for directors and authors. A few years after Bazin’s essay, Mexican writer Juan Rulfo paved the way for a groundbreaking style with his novella Pedro Páramo in 1955. His narration in the inner side of Mexico shifted from the conventional realistic style to a fantastical realism of the harsh truth of those people. Nobel Prize winner in literature, Gabriel Gárcia Marquez, has stated the importance of Rulfo in shaping the genre.
Four-time Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematography Rodrigo Prieto chose the essential book by Rulfo as his first directorial effort. Prieto has worked with the most acclaimed directors recently, such as Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Ang Lee, and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Backed by immense experience in the industry and a major player with Netflix financing the project, Prieto presents his vision of the novella. The story narrates the journey of Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), a man who recently lost his mother and decides to look for his father, Pedro Páramo (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). He goes to Comala, a countryside village in Colima, where Pedro becomes a Coronel. Suddenly, Juan finds out that Comala has succumbed to the violence and brutality provoked by the ruthless men of the region, particularly his father. Conversing with the locals, he has to separate the living and the dead to discover his truth.
The director visually creates a devastated land. The cinematography has washed-up tones of brown, and the production design develops worn scenarios. There is a feeling of a city that is not what it used to be. The introduction fascinates the audience with how it leads to a place that looks like plenty of conflicts that used to happen there. However, besides thriving in structuring an appearance that resembles the magical realism of Latin American literature, Prieto fails to explore the fantastic in his adaptation. He utilizes elements of the mystical to illustrate the character’s conflicts with the past, for example, the mud woman and her melting; nonetheless, it is a situational approach to a story inherent to the genre.
Prieto seems afraid to dive into the complexity that magical realism brings. It is a style of writing that compels for its usage of the mythical to understand reality. Marquez and Rulfo would delve into the Latin family’s dynamics. The director and his screenwriter Mateo Gil decide not to adopt the ghostly elements of the book. The story of Páramo gets exposed in a manner that searches for a more conventional narrative focus. Gil uses flashbacks to develop the past of Comala and the decision of this line of adaptation that compromises the magic of Rulfo’s story. Pedro Páramo by Prieto is a story of the titular character. In the novella, it is about time. As Bazin mentions, when a film adapts literature, it borrows the story from another source. The filmmaking sets the tone for the stylistic choices that differ in both artistic processes. Besides a frustrating adaptation of a classic, Pedro Páramo lacks the structure to work as a film for itself.
Even the efforts visually dwindle after the introduction. Besides being one of the best cinematographers in the world, Prieto suffers from darkened framings and uninspiring compositions of his scenes. Some scenes depend on a darker and macabre tone that fails due to the lack of lightning and exposition to deliver what those moments seek. Prieto co-signs the cinematography with Nico Aguilar, and the work differentiates from others by Prieto. Not only filming in digital with an Arri Alexa 35, which differs from his works with film on Scorsese’s works. The choice, which may be cost-related (usually film shooting is more expensive), lacks the texture and personality that his other works have. He misses his visual diligence as a cinematographer and director.
Alongside the harsh task of adapting a major Latin-American classic for his debut, Rodrigo Prieto misses the mark with his take on Pedro Páramo. He renounces the basis of magical realism, resulting in a lackluster story about a place that does not engage with the audience.
Pedro Páramo is now streaming on Netflix.
Learn more about the movie, including how to watch, at the official Netflix site for the title.
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