Have you ever heard the groaning of a soul?

In “Pedro Páramo,” Mexican author Juan Rulfo’s haunting 1955 novel, these words strike the reader with unnerving force. But in the recent film adaptation, they drop clunkily onto a plot that lacks that same intensity.

“Pedro Páramo” follows the story of Juan Preciado who, by the wishes of his late mother, travels to her hometown to visit his father, the titular character. Upon his arrival, though, he finds his father dead, the town decrepit, and the streets crawling with specters. The novel, often cited as defining the genre of magical realism, then shatters the chronology of the narrative and loosely reassembles its pieces to tell the story of how a licentious and concupiscent Pedro Páramo drove the town of Comala to ruin. 

It’s a novel that has never lent itself to easy readings—the plot is obscured by thickly layered euphemism and egregious understatement, and the narrative flits restlessly between different time periods and narrators. The story’s dry irreverence toward topics of death, matrimony, and faith is startling. It’s hard to say whether the film adds anything to the novel—but could it? Therein lies the issue of “Pedro Páramo.”

That said, setting the challenge of the content aside, the film has some notable successes. With material grounded in neither time nor space, director Rodrigo Prieto generally shows admirable restraint in his use of special effects. Scenes like the galloping of Miguel Páramo’s dead horse or the whirlpool of souls spiraling in the sky sparkle, while the scene in which a woman turns into mud feels like an awkward intrusion of CGI.

The film is, however, scrupulous in its attention to the minutiae that make this slim volume so rich to begin with. In our first glimpse of young Pedro, the cinematography lingers knowingly in the dripping of water from the roof tiles, an almost mocking celebration of the tranquility of a town soon to be destroyed by one man’s intransigent greed. When Fulgor Sedano knocks on the front door of his patrón, we see the dusty black bows over the doorway. And in the final scene, Páramo drops, per the book, with the sound of rocks hitting the ground. Much of the important dialogue references the language of the novel almost exactly.

While generally fiercely loyal to the plot of the novel, Prieto takes a few liberties in smoothing out the storyline and cutting superficial characters, to the benefit of the viewer. In the few places where material is added, dialogue is pointed and advances the narrative. Pedro Páramo’s infidelity and love for the dolorous Susana San Juan, while not sufficiently forefront in the first half of the film, are made abundantly clear through these added scenes, like the one depicting his wedding.

Certain characters, too, shine in this film. Special attention is paid to Father Renteria, who, from the outset, appears tormented. Deep creases run down his face, and his trancelike movements are draped with saturnine gloom. We see the twinge of guilt within him as he folds the handkerchief over Pedro’s bribe money. And in a rare example of dimensionality added by the film, his communion at Susana’s deathbed feels like an expiation of his own sins.

And of course, there’s the cinematography itself. Prieto, a four-time Academy Award winner, is known for his shooting on “Brokeback Mountain,” “Silence,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “Pedro Páramo” certainly has some striking cuts (some of them explicit; it’s rated R). Take the sideways angle of Donis as she steps (or glides?) over a sleeping Juan, or the slow, deliberate pan on the irrigation channels as water trickles lazily past Sedano’s dead body. And while the shots of the abandoned town as Juan meanders through it can seem a little contrived in their CGI-tinged ghostliness, they’re excusable when placed seamlessly alongside brighter cuts of Comala in its heyday. That contrast ends up being a strength of the film.

How can it be, then, that even in the presence of this deft cinematographic execution, “Pedro Páramo” still comes across as flat and uninspired? 

It’s because “Pedro Páramo“ is not a story aided by the added detail of the screen. Where other novels see enhancement through the addition of music and facial expressions, “Pedro Páramo” regresses in clarity and force because the novel is defined by its distance and detachment. For someone who’s read the novel, it’s jarring to watch Susana cry or Juan scream, because these are actions described by Rulfo with such matter-of-fact removal and permeated so fluidly by the supernatural that to make them concrete is to do away with the magic. How do you visually represent the taste of orange blossoms? Or translate to sound the suspension of the “very din of existence”? These are images best served by our imaginations.

So while readers of the novel are likely to be disappointed by the interpretation, it’s easy to see those unacquainted with the story leaving theaters, or rather, switching off Netflix, feeling like they missed crucial aspects of the story. It’s paradoxical, but perhaps explanatory of the confused reviews.

“Pedro Páramo” is a valiant effort at something that just cannot be done. It’s a film that certainly won’t make Rulfo roll over in his grave. But it won’t occupy the hallowed space his novel does, either.