Magical realism meets a grand family saga in “Pedro Páramo,” the directorial debut of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto . As the man responsible for lighting and lensing countless renowned films — including “Barbie,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Brokeback Mountain” — Prieto brings a keen eye to one of Mexico’s most influential novels. A tale of ghosts and memories that slips through time, Mateo Gil’s screenplay follows the structure of Juan Rulfo’s 1955 text with stringent fidelity, laying the groundwork for a melancholic (if slightly imbalanced) adaptation that finds visual splendor in the macabre.
Tenoch Huerta (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) plays Juan Preciado, a man who travels to his late mother’s hometown of Comala sometime after the Revolution (1910-20), in search of the father he never met: a figure named Pedro Páramo (Manuel García Rulfo), who he quickly learns has died as well. The missing figure’s name is often spoken in full, numerous times before we meet him in flashback, as though he were a figure of myth. Upon arriving in Comala — an eerie, deserted municipality with cobblestone roads — Juan runs into various people who once knew his parents, and who begin regaling him with stories by candlelight.
However, the line between the living and the dead is razor-thin in this township, and it isn’t long before numerous conversations reveal themselves to be rendezvouses with spirits, who may not initially recognize the.
