Death is not distributed as if it were a commodity, says one of the most dazzling passages in Juan Rulfo’s novel. There is so much genius there that it is dizzying to even try to explain it, but through intuition and experience, we know that Mexico is contained in that line: this country where Death is written with a capital letter because it defines us inexorably, sometimes brutally and other times poetically, has not found a more powerful metaphor than the story of Peter Paramo.
Rulfo himself knew that he did not know, but he could dream, intuit, invent a story of Mexico that did not exist until then, in Juan Rulfo’s notebooks that his wife Clara Aparicio had the good sense to publish in the fateful year (what year is not fateful among us) of 1994, there appears a note, prior to the novel, in the writer’s own handwriting that says: “There are too many untranslatable things / thought in dreams / intuited / to which one can find their true meaning only with the original sound… or the color. Ineffable – The language of the ineffable / The adventure of the unknown / Inventing a landscape / or a new landscape of Mexico.”
And he succeeded. This novel, as refined as it was powerful, marked a turning point in making the protagonists of the highest literature out of such poor beings, who, because they do not have any flesh on their bones, not only because of the ingenuity to give an unprecedented order to the events, fictionalizing a genre until then known as a drama of seasons, where each event seems independent but in the whole finds its unquestionable cohesion.
And right there, in the challenge of giving it a cinematic structure to tell the story, lies one of the greatest successes of the film directed by Rodrigo Prieto, which is about to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7 and will arrive on Netflix on November 6.
The production by Redrum and Woo Films, which bears the same title as the novel, fully honours the complexity, depth and terrifying beauty of Peter ParamoIt wasn’t easy, but they did it. I, postmodern, critical and distrustful by nature, confess that I sat down to watch it with a tingle of skepticism because how could the film be on par with the novel, but it was, it is. I think that a very fortunate decision was to transfer almost literally the dialogues from the pages of the book to the mouths of the characters on screen. That and giving order to the script to tell the story, as I said. So for Mateo Gil, who has the credit for the script, my applause.
It is only fair to acknowledge that the interpretive stature of the actresses and actors gives a naturalness and weight to the words that is appreciated. I say this because it would be easy to think what could go wrong with having Rulfo’s texts as a direct resource, but, believe me, it could.
However, the rich and nuanced performances are very commendable. Dolores Heredia’s enormous career in playing Eduviges Dyada is notable, and the happy discovery of seeing Manuel García-Rulfo, the writer’s nephew, play Pedro Páramo, only adds to the film’s successes. Héctor Kotsifakis, who plays the legendary Fulgor Sedano, splashes the sequences with luminosity and charisma; Ilse Salas, who always adds richness to the characters, presents a dignified Susana San Juan, and what can we say about Mayra Batalla with her compact and impeccable energy turned into Damiana Cisneros. Tenoch Huerta is Juan Preciado, a little melodramatic, perhaps, but let’s not forget that Juan Preciado is a literary coward by anthology —just like Hamlet— and his interpretation fits the character’s character well. The voice of Giovanna Zacarías, who plays Dorotea, echoed in me for days; The histrionic quality of Roberto Sosa as Father Rentería is total and, finally, a cast that shines in substance and form.
Special mention to Yoshira Escárrega, she, the sister forced into incest, with one of the most complex scenes turns her powerful presence into a turning point to fully enter the Rulfo-esque ghostly universe.
Of course, the acting consistency also reveals the direction work of Rodrigo Prieto, who is also making his debut as a director. Prieto himself stated that he particularly enjoyed constructing Rulfo’s characters with the actors, that enjoyment is noticeable and felt, they are so alive that we forget they are dead and, better yet, they feel so current that we forget we are watching a story from a century ago; and it is the circularity and timelessness that beats in the heart of Peter Paramo: the events occurred but they continue to occur. That is why the story connects with a furiously current country.
Rodrigo Prieto also declared: “Pedro Páramo reflects a series of injustices and historical pains that have plagued the Mexican people.” And he does well to construct his statement in the passive voice and not in the past perfect. In Mexico the supernatural is as commonplace as the obscene differences between the most powerful and the poorest: “Come and have something of something,” says Eduviges Dyada to Juan Preciado, meaning that there is nothing at all, but anything would be good for the poor who, like ghosts, do not eat. Misery is heightened if those poor and those ghosts were abandoned by their father, a distinctive Mexican if ever there was one, because yes, in this country we are all children of abandonment.
Those who were once rebels end up on the side of the repressors, “that is not even discussed, stand on the side of the government,” says Pedro Páramo to Tilcuate almost at the end of the story… and here we are, restarting that cycle again and again. Needing to kill the tyrant father to recreate him, as we have seen so many times the political parties devour and regurgitate themselves with a new color and a new generational voracity. That muleteer at the beginning and at the end of the road, Abundio Martínez (incredible ferocity of the actor Noé Hernández giving body to the character) who ends up getting paid the bad way what he was not given the good way, is a snake that bites its tail in our spiral of violence.
With such a social burden, the story ran the risk of becoming a pamphlet, but nothing could be further from the truth. This does not happen in the novel, nor in the film adaptation, because the purely human has a fundamental weight: there are passions, hatreds, loves, desires and sins that only simmer in the soul of each person.
But in the midst of so much thickness is the stark beauty of the desert landscapes. Of course, the photography is a splendid element of the film. There are frames of rich contemplation (the special effects are appreciated, measured with a dropper so as not to distort the Rulfian phantasmagoria made of scarcity and hardship). And there is also a special tone in the feature film, a record of the joy that comes from this thing, this something that we Mexicans have of finding our deepest joy in the tragic. A sacred mystery.
The sequence where the mourning for Susana San Juan’s death turns into a feverish party that lasts days and days is a good example: “Little by little, things became a party, there was no way to make them understand that it was a mourning.” Ugh, raise your hand if you are willing to deny that this is Mexico. (Sorry for the spoilerbut anyway we already know that death is Mexican.)
The costumes designed by the talented Ana Terrazas gracefully show off the entire experience of that universal Comala, even from the skirts of the women emerge the murmurs with which the town surrounds us and will end up killing us.
Accepting that neither literature nor cinema are intended to satisfy us but to challenge our emotions and our view of the world, I cannot resist admitting, happily, how much I liked the film. And these are times with so few reasons for contentment that I would like nothing more than to spread it.
If you love the novel, run to see the movie as soon as it’s available. If you don’t know the novel, run to read the book and then see the movie or vice versa. You may like it or not, but I assure you that you will end up like me, feeling something of something, that ineffable, that music of stones in the desert that bounce with unbridled vitality, that fertile wound that runs through our country. This brutal spell that is Mexico and that is also Peter Paramo.
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