Pedro Páramo

Plot synopsis:
The novel is set in the town of Comala, considered to be Comala in the Mexican state of Colima.
The story begins with the first person account of Juan Preciado, who promises his mother at her deathbed that he will return to Comala to meet his father, Pedro Páramo. Juan suggests that he did not intend to keep this promise until he was overtaken by visions of his mother. His narration is interspersed with fragments of dialogue from the life of his father, who lived in a time when Comala was a robust, living town, instead of the ghost town it has become. Juan encounters one person after another in Comala, each of whom he perceives to be dead. Midway through the novel, Preciado dies. From this point on most of the stories happen in the time of Pedro Páramo.
Most of the characters in Juan's narration (Dolores Preciado, Eduviges Dyada, Abundio Martínez, Susana San Juan, and Damiana Cisneros) are also presented in an omniscient narration but much less subjectively. The two major competing narrative voices present alternative visions of Comala, one living and one full of the spirits of the dead. The omniscient narration provides details of the life of Pedro Páramo, from his early youthful idealization of Susana San Juan to his rise to power upon his coming of age to his tyrannical abuses and womanizing, and, finally, to his death. Pedro is cruel, and though he raises one of his illegitimate sons, Miguel Páramo (whose mother dies giving birth), Miguel does not love his father (who dies when Pedro is a child) or either of his two wives.
His only love, from a very young age, is that of Susana San Juan, a childhood friend who leaves Comala with her father at a young age. Pedro Páramo bases all of his decisions on, and puts all of his attention into trying to get Susana San Juan to return to Comala. When she finally does, Pedro makes her his, but she constantly mourns her dead husband Florencio and spends her time sleeping and dreaming about him. Pedro realizes that Susana San Juan belongs to a different world that he will never understand.
When she dies the church bells toll incessantly, provoking a fiesta in Comala. Pedro buries his only true love, and angry at the indifference of the town, swears vengeance. As the most politically and economically influential person in the town, Pedro crosses his arms and refuses to continue working, and the town dies of hunger. This is why in Juan's narration, we see a dead, dry Comala instead of the luscious place it was when Pedro Páramo was a boy.

Tags: allegory, psychedelic, horror

Review:
Flawless. I truly feel that this film is an unsung masterpiece. From the opening credits to the Don's last cry of "Susana," it's a captivating, mysterious, and rich work. It is an epic both dark and profound, exploring a range of human motivations and emotions.This film, based on the short novel of the same title, opens the flood-gates for the "magical realism" that would afterward fill the Latino arts. I cannot emphasize how well done the mysticism is. This is by no means a "ghost movie," but it's not afraid to use them. One scene in particular is so haunting and powerful it made me absolutely giddy. Our protagonist's visits to various residents of the run-down village are some of my favorite bits of cinema.Potential "Spoilers" Begin Here: I felt a common chord in the Don's obsession with Susana and C.F. Kane's nostalgia with "Rosebud" in "Citizen Kane." Both men become so consumed with ambition that they can no longer possess their ideal. Both men long for something so fundamental and simple that they smother it in their quest. Perhaps it is because this ideal *cannot* be possessed. The themes of possession with Susana are clear. She thinks of herself as belonging to Florencio, her father thinks he owns her as both daughter and lover, and of course Pedro Páramo thinks of himself as owner. But can a person own another? Can a man own the careless joys of his childhood? In Páramo's yearning for the unattainable, he populates and destroys an entire region. And so resonates one of the last lines of the film: "Todos somos hijos de Pedro Páramo!" ("All of us are the children of Pedro Páramo!") But aren't we? Aren't we all the offspring of misled ambition--genetically, nationally, culturally, ethically, or religiously? There is a Pedro Páramo looming somewhere in our origins.I applaud this film.. Breathtaking. I read the novel when I was around 13 years old and even though I did not entirely understand it by those days, I had the chance to analyze it later on and it became to me a fabulous book full of mystery, sadness, loneliness and yet a lot of Mexican Revolution realism. So as people might imagine I was kind of frightened of watching the movie, because I know that it is not something good to compare a film with a book, but sometimes there is just no way to avoid it, but after this Friday when I had the chance to read an essay about Ignacio López Tarso (Fulgor Sedano in the film), who is a very important actor in Mexico, and that I saw in a theater play when I was a kid, I decided to take the risk and watch it... At the end I could think that was the silliest thing not to watch it before. Not just respects the entire story of Juan Rulfo and keeps extreme similarity to the actual novel, but it is also a beautiful piece of art full of mystery, sadness and loneliness. Velo represents with extreme fidelity a Mexico that was being victim of a Revolution, the town, the costumes, the people, the houses. Each detail is loyal to those times, and the actings to me are awesome. "La Cuarraca" is a real ugly character and you feel like you need to see to some other place but the screen when she is on scene, Susana is fighting against her madness and the reality at the same time and just to look at her face you are able to feel her desperation and her melancholy, There is a point where (spoilers might be here) you cannot actually know if what you are watching the reality itself (if there is one) or another one of the dead bodies talking. You are not able to tell the very moment when Juan Preciado dies but by the other way it is entirely understandable almost at the ending, when he goes to the grave where his mother is and when he understands he died in some part of the journey and then you ask to your self "was it worthless?". There are some little things of the book that you cannot see in the movie but since its realization is so good, I would say they are not really important. I can recommend it to everybody.