Life and death blur in haunting debut

“Pedro Páramo” is not the kind of film you’d expect to see as the directorial debut of the cinematographer who shot “Barbie”—unless you know that that cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto, also shot “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Silence,” “Babel,” “21 Grams,” and many other films that carefully avoid bright pink in any form.

Rodrigo has been one of the most prolific and experimental cinematographers of recent years (including, not to belittle, the well-shot “Barbie”), and if he draws inspiration from any of the directors he's worked for, it's probably Iñárritu. “Pedro Páramo,” which had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, is reminiscent of “Bardo” in that it's at once personal and mystical.

Drawing on family memories of the Mexican Revolution in which his grandparents were involved, the adaptation of Juan Rulfo's 1955 novel, which is the prototype of magical realism, evokes universal thoughts about the guilt that can be passed down through generations. It is beautifully shot – partly in deep darkness and shadow, partly in the scorching desert sunlight. The images are vivid, but the narrative remains elusive and elliptical, examining the title character from various perspectives without ever pinning him down.

At first, Pedro Páramo is more of a question than a person. A middle-aged man named Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta) wanders the desert in the 1930s in a suit, looking for the town of Comala. His late mother sent him there to find his father, Pedro Páramo, but it is not the family reunion she imagined. “For the neglect he showed us, make him pay, my son,” she says.

Preciado reaches Comala with the help of a man who is walking through the desert alongside a pair of donkeys. When asked if he knows who Paramo is, the man replies, “A living rancor,” and says that Paramo is also his father.

But Páramo is not a living thing. When Preciado arrives in Comala, he learns that the man is dead and, in essence, the town is dead too.

Nevertheless, a woman who appears to run a kind of guesthouse is waiting for him. In an attic room, a bed is noticeably missing. She knew he was coming, she says, because his mother told her.

“My mother is dead,” he says, confused.

“Oh,” she says. “That's why her voice was so weak.”

But before any further explanation is given, the film flashes back to a town that is more green than brown, and a young girl who moves away, leaving behind a boy in love. He seems too idealistic for this place, and we think he is the younger version of Preciado. But he is not; he is a young páramo with a backstory of ruthless ambition, fueled by heartbreak, who advances in spurts between reports from Comala.

In the present, the town is teeming with ghosts, and it's possible that the whole place is little more than a halfway house for the dead. That makes it the ideal starting point for a film that itself treads the line between life and the afterlife. “You can't imagine the amount of souls that roam the streets,” Preciado is told – but he doesn't have to imagine them, because sometimes he can see them.

The story gets stranger and more hallucinatory as it progresses, and Preciado, our entry point into this world, essentially disappears as the story focuses on Páramo himself. We see his rise to power, how he saved himself from bankruptcy by marrying into the richest family in town before sending his wife away.

The adult Páramo appears to be a gentle fellow, but is vicious and devious, still obsessed with his childhood friend, who eventually returns as a grown woman, aged, exhausted and dazed.

It's a dreamy meditation on loss and longing that turns to hatred, and on evil deeds that set things in motion that will consume everyone, even Páramo. He makes deals with the revolutionaries who have overrun Mexico, and he calls for grief that turns into parties that even he can't control. The film slides through time in a way that can be lyrical or infuriating, in a way that at times would probably have been within the control of a more experienced director.

But as Pedro Paramo changes direction and unites good and evil in a strange dance of life and death, there is not much you can do but relax and immerse yourself in Prieto's strange vision.

“Pedro Páramo” is released by Netflix.