Saoirse Ronan Says Being A Child Actor Shaped Her — For The Better
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest is four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan, the star of Little Women, Lady Bird, and Atonement, stars in two very different new films, The Outrun and Blitz. She spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenaro.

Saoirse Ronan's performance as a precocious young girl in the war drama Atonement got her her first Oscar nomination. She was only 13 at the time, and three other nominations were to follow. One for the 2015 film Brooklyn, about a young Irish woman in the 1950s, torn between her new life in the U.S. and her homeland.

She got two nominations for the film she made with Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird in 2017 and Little Women in 2019. Her other movies include The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lovely Bones, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

This fall, she has two films in theaters. In the movie Blitz by the director Steve McQueen, Ronan plays a mother living in London with her young son and elderly father, all trying to survive the German bombing campaigns during World War II. And in the film The Outrun, she plays a young woman whose life is derailed because of her addiction to alcohol. It's based on the best-selling memoir by Amy Liptrott.

Ronan plays Rona, a dramatized version of Lip Trot, who's a graduate student living in London when her drinking takes over. She tries different things to get sober, going to rehab, moving back to Orkney, Scotland, to help her bipolar dad tend to his goat farm, and then to an even more remote island off the coast of Scotland, where she spends most of her time alone working on nature conservation.

Here's a scene from the outrun. Rona is waking up after a bad night of drinking. She doesn't even remember what she's done, but both she and her boyfriend, played by Papa Essia-do, are both hurt and bandaged up. He's had enough and wants to break up. What did I do last night? You don't remember. Dana, I'm so sorry. Whatever I did, I'm not drinking anymore. I'm sorry. Rona, I'm so tired of hearing you say that. I can't hear you say that again.

What do you mean? I don't even recognize you anymore. I wish you were a completely different person. Don't say that. I can't do this. What do you mean you can't do this? I just can't do this. Did I do that to you? I'll never do that again, right? Whatever I did, I'll never do it again. I'm never going to drink again. I promise you, right? Because I don't want to lose you. I don't want to lose you. Saoirse Ronan, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you.

I know you read the book The Outrun and loved it so much that you wanted to make it into a movie, produce it, and play the main character. What was it about the book that you found so compelling?

I think it was the first time that I had been exposed to an addiction story that didn't feel like it was all doom and gloom. It allowed me to get to know the whole person. Amy Liptrot wasn't defining herself by her addiction to alcohol, but was acknowledging that it played a huge part in her life, in the destruction of her life for a long time.

I was really drawn to the fact that we would follow a young woman as she struggles with alcoholism. I think that usually when you think of

That as a story, you would imagine probably a man, you know, middle aged or a woman who's going through a divorce or she's lost her family or, you know, there's there's a sort of domestic sort of element to it. And the fact that we were going to follow someone who

as bad as it sounds, on paper, shouldn't have this addiction. And yet does just reminds us of how this is something that can affect everyone. Now, you said that there were parts of this story of dealing with it was scary for you because it was too private. Something that you hadn't completely explored before. And I'm not sure if you mean like in the film or in your life or both. What was so scary to you about it?

It is a particular topic that is very personal to me. It's an addiction that I haven't struggled with myself, but I've watched people very close to me struggle with it. And some of them have seen the light eventually and others have not. And that's incredibly painful. And I think as someone on the receiving end of that,

There's a lot of anger and resentment that is born out of that experience because you're not going through it yourself. You don't understand, or I certainly didn't understand really how addiction works. I know that's kind of a silly thing to say, but I think unless you actually sit down to examine the effect that a substance is having on your brain, you don't really take the time to unpick it because you're so hurt by it and you're so hurt that you're

it has been chosen over you. And so I think I spent a lot of my life carrying that around with me. But it was, yeah, it was scary. It was scary to hone in on this. It just brought up a lot of pain for me, I suppose.

In this movie, you do some interesting things. You know, your character grew up on a sheep farm. And at one point, your character puts her hands in a sheep to get to help birth a lamb. And at another point, you know, you're in what seems like completely freezing water. And the character is connecting with seals who are swimming there. And it kind of shocks her into her body. So you physically did those things. What was that like?

I love to swim in cold water. I've been doing that since I was a kid. So that's like my happy place. That was not a challenge at all. If anything, it was a challenge to pretend that it was freezing cold, like so cold that I just wouldn't get in. Am I a sheep farmer? I am not. And I was not before this experience.

However, since then, I have like gotten in touch with every farmer I know in like Ireland and Scotland and been like, let me know when lambing season starts, guys, because I'm ready. It was the most insane experience I've ever had on a film and just in life. It's so intense. And we actually shot...

lambing sequence before we started principal photography. So it was probably about five months prior to us starting the production because lambing season in the Orkney Island starts in like sort of April time. It's a little bit later than the mainland. And then I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and had my hand up a ewe and was pulling a lamb. And

And I did that seven times and I was sort of coached by different farmers that I met in Orkney and they were incredible. But the really interesting and really humbling thing about it was that sheep don't sort of stick to a schedule necessarily. And so we had to bend our shooting schedule to nature. I would get ready at like 4 a.m.

We'd go into the shed and we would just wait and the camera would be ready to go. And sometimes you would go in and there wouldn't be a ewe that would go into labour that day. Other times they would. And as soon as they did, Kyle, our farming consultant, was just like, OK, go get her. Go tackle that ewe to the ground. And he would coach me through it from off camera. And it was...

just the most amazing experience. So that really sort of set the tone for the rest of the movie, I think. Now, the other movie that you have coming out this fall is Blitz by the director Steve McQueen. It's about a mother during Germany's bombing attacks on London in World War II. She's worried about her son's safety, so she follows the government's recommendation, which is to send all children in

to the countryside to avoid the bombing campaigns. I'm going to play a scene from the beginning of the film. The son, played by first-time child actor Elliot Heffernan, doesn't want to leave his mom and his grandfather. Why can't you come with me? Sweetheart, I told you it's an adventure for children only. Growing up's not allowed. But it's going to be great. You're going to make new friends. My friends already are.

Yeah, well, you play games in the countryside. That'd be nice. There'd be cows and there'd be horses and sheep. But they smell. I want to stay with you. Yeah, I know. It's only until all this is over and then the schools will open again and life will get back to normal, I promise. Please, Mum, don't send me away.

That's a scene from the film Blitz. Now, I read that a photo that Steve McQueen saw while researching another project ended up inspiring this film. Is that your understanding of how it came about?

Yeah, he was doing research and came across this incredible photograph of this little black boy on a train station platform on his own. And he had a little cap on and his little suitcase. And I think I'm assuming a tag around his neck. And Steve was shocked.

of course, very intrigued by him and wanted to know what his story was. And so that's where the inspiration for Blitz came from. And what drew you to the film? I'll say that it's a different kind of World War II film that focuses on those left in London during the bombing attacks.

Yeah, I mean, that's really the reason why I wanted to get involved. I, of course, wanted to make a film with Steve McQueen. I'm such a huge fan of his and I've wanted to work with him for years. I, of course, knew that it was going to be a sort of fresh take on...

a World War II British epic but I didn't know exactly how and so when he started to explain to me that it would follow a mixed race little boy who he'd found already at that stage I think Elliot had already been cast and that it would really focus on the people left behind essentially the ones who had to keep society going which was the women children and older folk it just piqued my interest straight away and

knowing that my sort of role that I would play would be in honouring the mother-child relationship.

And was was just something that I couldn't really pass up. I'm incredibly close to my own mother and we've spent a lot of time together where it was just me and her. So that dynamic is something that I've always wanted to bring to life on screen and getting to do it with this sort of backdrop was just incredibly exciting.

The actor who plays your son, Elliot Heffernan, hadn't ever acted before. And you started acting around the same age that he started. How in particular did you want to help him on set? I'm sure there are things that you remember that were great for you as a kid and things that weren't were less great.

I guess I just wanted him to have the kind of experiences that I had when I was younger. I think I was very, very lucky that probably partly because I had my mother with me to protect me, but also because the people I was working with were so positive and supportive. And, you know, people like Stanley Tucci, James McAvoy, Juno Temple,

Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel Weisz, you know, Guy Pearce, like they made me feel safe. They respected me as a fellow actor, but they were sensitive to the fact that this was my first time. This was new for me and it's special. And I think they obviously remembered that from when they had started. And so I wanted Elliot to have the same experience really.

You mentioned Stanley Tucci. And in 2010, Stanley Tucci came on Fresh Air and he talked about working with you on The Lovely Bones, which was a film with difficult subject matter. And you were still young at the time playing the girl who was murdered.

Stanley Tucci was asked about working with a young actor with you and playing the murderer. And I actually wanted to play that part of the interview where he talks about you. So let's take a listen.

Well, Saoirse is a very mature 13-year-old now and a very mature 15-year-old. Mature as an actress, but mature as a person, too. She has a worldliness and a wisdom that I've never seen before in anybody that age. And a very wonderful, sophisticated, ironic, caustic sense of humor, which was the saving grace for all of us.

Saoirse is the one who made us feel comfortable about the movie that we were making. I looked to her maybe for security in a way. If I knew she was okay, then everything was okay. And sometimes after takes, I'd say, are you all right? Did I hurt you? Did that happen? Did it hurt your leg when you were on the ladder? And then sometimes I would just say, are you okay? Meaning just emotionally.

And she always said, I'm fine. She's this little skinny Irish girl. She'd say, I'm fine, Stanley. Don't worry about it. I'm all right. I'm all right. And then in the makeup trailer, it was lots of jokes about murder and lots of jokes about whatever because you have to do it to sort of keep yourself sane. I remember her coming up to me in the makeup trailer and putting her arm around me and saying, Stanley, you know,

If anyone had to kill me, I'm awfully glad that you're my murderer. Oh, boy. That's Stanley Tucci on Fresh Air, recorded in 2010. Yeah, it seemed like your family worked really hard for you to be professional and poised on set, even when the subject matter was so dire. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think as Stanley said, especially when the subject matter was so dire, I think I was really lucky, I'm sure just through the people that I was brought up with and maybe the fact that my dad is an actor as well. And just the way they are as people that like I didn't ever take it too seriously. I was very, very focused and very disciplined. But I...

knew that I needed to leave it at the door and I think that's the really incredible kind of uh

the capability that children have in general. And that's sort of, I suppose, what Steve wanted to highlight in Blitz. Kids, of course, it's going to affect them in some way, but they have this ability to just float through life to a certain extent. That's not, of course, sidestepping the reality that, of course, everything affects everyone and it stays with you. Of course, it does.

But the fact that there was this levity from the very beginning, I think really helped me. And I was really, really lucky.

So lucky. And I realize that now more than ever, that the filmmakers that I was working with in those first few years really promoted fun. You know, Pete Jackson, Peter Weir, Amy Heckerling, who discovered me, essentially. She was the first director that I worked with on a movie. And they were just great people to be around. And, you know, you have to remember about...

certainly about filmmakers is that they're big kids. You know, they get into this because they want to stay in that world of make-believe. They want to take something that's real and build something else from it.

So in a lot of ways, it was such an incredible environment to grow up in where youth and innocence is sort of encouraged in a way and play is never forgotten about. And I think that's really shaped who I am as an actor now.

You know, a lot has come out about how children and women, young women, get treated on sets. Do you think the way children are treated on film sets has changed since when you started out? Not as much as I'd like, to be honest. I think that kids need to be protected far more than they are. If a kid has a great chaperone, then that's amazing. But I think that...

The relationship between director and young performer really needs to be given the time that it deserves. I think it's incredibly important that a director is a solid influence on their young performer, that they're not mercurial, that they're not unpredictable around them in the way that you wouldn't want a parent to be with a child.

It's so important that there's someone that the kid can rely on, that they always bring an element of fun to the set for them. I always think about Spielberg. I feel like it seems like Steven Spielberg was really, really incredible with kids, with like Drew when they were on E.T. and stuff. And I think that we cannot forget, no matter how impressive a child can be at acting for the first time,

they're still a kid and their innocence has to be protected. I think the real danger, though, comes, which has changed. It's gotten worse since I was a kid with the promotion and the self-promotion that comes when a movie that a child is in comes out or a TV show. I think there's too much that's expected of kids now. I think social media hasn't helped that at all.

But, you know, I've watched kids over the years since I started out who are like networking essentially in Hollywood and are allowed to go to parties until late at night with adults that they don't know. And yeah, I think it's a dangerous environment for a kid to be in if they don't have the right people around them.

Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more. My guest today is the actor and producer, Saoirse Ronan. She's been nominated for four Academy Awards for her films Atonement, Brooklyn, Lady Bird, and Little Women. She stars in two new films, The Outrun and Blitz. I'm Anne-Marie Baldonado, and this is Fresh Air.

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Anne-Marie Baldonado, back with Oscar-nominated actor Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films in theaters this fall, The Outrun, about a young woman dealing with her alcoholism, living on a small island off the coast of Scotland, and Blitz, about a mother desperately trying to find her son during Germany's bombing attacks on London during World War II.

You were born in New York City in the Bronx. Your parents had moved to the U.S. from Ireland in the 1980s. Why did they come to New York? It was a rite of passage, really. They left school when they were 15, 16. They left.

they needed to get to work there was more work in the UK and America than there was at home um and I think a couple of their friends had gone over ahead of them had gotten a bit of work and had something lined up for dad and so he went over and then mam followed a couple of months later um

And yeah, and they just they lived there. They experienced life outside of Ireland and

And, you know, it was really hard. They didn't have anything. They didn't have money. They, you know, she had me and of course couldn't afford health insurance. And so it was actually, I think it was like, it was a Catholic church charity or something that helped her a lot when she had me. The point being that she,

sort of really had to rely on, um, other sources in order to live. Um, but it was, it was tough. You know, my, my dad started out in construction. He eventually became a bartender and was discovered by a bunch of actors from the Irish rep in the pub that he worked in. He auditioned for a play. He got the part. He became an actor, um, a theater actor. Um,

was a cleaner and then eventually nannied for different families and took me to work with her. And I think at a certain point,

my mom in particular realized that this just wasn't the life that she wanted me to have. You know, if you're, if you want to live comfortably in New York and I would say London as well, you need money. And they just didn't have that. So they went home where they had, you know, a proper support system. And it was your dad's acting career that brought you back to Ireland. Is that right? Yeah.

Yeah, it was. So it was a combination of them just needing more support, I suppose, from their family, them wanting me to, you know, have a garden and fresh air to grow up with and in. But also it was a time where the Irish film industry was sort of starting to boom a little bit because of filmmakers like Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan and

And just a lot of American filmmakers who were becoming really fascinated with Ireland, either because of their heritage or Irish playwrights that they'd grown up reading. And yeah, and so work took him home. So we went back. Do you remember your first time on a set as a child? Yes, I do. I remember... What was Dad doing? Um...

It was some film about the troubles, of course. There was lots of explosions. We definitely went through a phase of that in Ireland. And so he was, I can't remember what the movie was, but I think that's where I got my sort of mild tinnitus from. I still have a ringing in my ears and I think it's from this. There was an explosion that happened. I was in a pram.

And there was an explosion that happened that they hadn't prepared anyone for. And dad ran for me and put his hands over my ears to protect them from this massive explosion that had gone off. And he always said, I just don't know if I got to you in time because I've got a ringing in my ears right now, even as I speak to you. And he's got really bad tinnitus because of it.

So that's my first memory of being on a film set. And I remember even, like, I was young. Maybe I wasn't in a pram, but I was like, I don't know, I was like five or something. And even then, I remember loving the atmosphere of a film set. I just loved, I loved how cool everyone was and how much fun everyone seemed to be having.

Now, your role in the 2015 film Brooklyn got you your second Oscar nomination. And Brooklyn is about a young woman who immigrates to the U.S. from Ireland because her sister wants her to leave so that she can have more opportunities. And your character Eilish is torn between the life she's starting in the U.S. and her life back in her studies.

the small town where she grew up in Ireland. Was part of what drew you to this movie the fact that your parents immigrated to the U.S. when they were that young? Of course, you know, it's a different time period. But was that part of the appeal of the movie?

Absolutely. Up until that point, I hadn't really played someone who was properly from Ireland. I'd used my own accent in the Grand Budapest Hotel, but I'd never helped to bring to life a sort of stereotypical Irish experience, which millions and millions of us have gone through for a very, very long time. So to be able to...

to explore that, I suppose, on screen was absolutely part of the reason why I wanted to do it. Although I think what I hadn't anticipated was that

actually how overwhelming the experience would be because I had only recently just left home and I'd moved from Ireland to London, assuming that London's just a bigger Dublin. It's the same. I'll be fine. And it's not. And I wasn't. And I went through a period of just realizing that I actually didn't know that many people here. And

I felt quite lonely and disconnected from what I knew and from my roots and who I felt I was back then. And yeah, and so to make Brooklyn sort of at the very beginning of that experience in my life was kind of wild. Yeah.

I want to play a scene from the film. Your character lives in a boarding house but is very homesick and misses her sister and mother. And one evening she goes to a dance for Irish immigrants. She didn't really want to go, but she goes and meets a young Italian-American named Tony, played by Emery Cohen. She dances with him and he walks her home. I'm not Irish. You don't sound Irish. I need to make this clear. Nope.

Part of me is Irish. I don't have Irish parents or grandparents or anything. I'm Italian, or my parents are, anyway. So what were you doing at an Irish dance? Don't the Italians have dances? Yeah, and I wouldn't want to tell you to one. They behave like Italians all night. What does that mean? Oh, you know. No. Hands? Too many of them. Oh, I guess it could seem that way if he was a girl. Listen.

I want everything out in the open. I came to the Irish dance because I really like Irish girls. And I was the only one who would dance with you? Oh, no, it wasn't... Oh, so you danced with loads of others?

That's a scene from the 2015 film Brooklyn. Now the character Eilish is pulled in two different directions, her new home in Brooklyn, her old one back in Ireland. You started acting and being on sets when you were so young. You were always kind of traveling. Do you think your work affected your sense of place and of home?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it did. But I think that goes back even further for me because I was born in the place that I didn't grow up in. So I was born in the Bronx. I was there till I was three.

I always sounded Irish. I was only really surrounded by Irish people when I was there anyway. And then with two Dublin parents, I moved to the countryside and so still didn't really fit in and was reminded of that quite a bit. And so I never really felt like I fully belonged anywhere. And I still don't really. I think there's...

parts of me that belong in different places. And I suppose the older I've gotten and the more sort of people who have become a part of my bubble, they are my home, you know, my partner is my home, like wherever we are, that will feel the most like home that anywhere can really. So it's not site specific for a long time.

I think I got really bogged down by that. But yeah, I've kind of always felt that way. But actually, what's really great about being on the road from so young is that you can create a home for yourself anywhere and you know what you need to feel safe and to feel comforted. And so, yeah, I think any actor, any filmmaker, any musician, I'm sure, they become experts in

Setting up camp anywhere, really. Our guest today is Saoirse Ronan. She has two new films, The Outrun and Blitz. More after a break. This is Fresh Air.

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This is Fresh Air, back with actor Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films in theaters, The Outrun and Blitz. She's received four Oscar nominations over the years for her roles in the films Atonement, Brooklyn, Lady Bird, and Little Women. Her other films include The Lovely Bones, Mary, Queen of Scots, and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Now, you're very good at doing accents. You know, you're Scottish in The Outrun, English in Blitz. You do a specific regional accent in Brooklyn. And of course, you do an American accent in the films Lady Bird and Little Women. I was wondering if you think about...

That living in the U.S. as a baby helped you with your American accent. So it just makes me think about language at that early age and kind of like how weird and malleable it could be.

Absolutely. I mean, I think it's not dissimilar to being bilingual. Like, you know, you're so open to everything. And so if you're exposed to lots of different sounds, then I guess your ear sort of remains open to that and your brain is tuned into that.

from quite an early age. So, yeah, I think, you know, I was, as I said, I was mainly around a lot of Irish people in New York, but of course heard a lot of American accents too and was also brought up on American TV like a lot of kids are. And, you know, a lot of my friends nowadays will say that their kids, whether they're in London or Dublin or Glasgow or London,

New Zealand, you know, were so influenced by America that actually a lot of their kids are kind of brilliant at doing the American accent just through like Dora the Explorer or whatever, whatever they watch now, Paw Patrol. So, yeah, so I guess I was no different. But I will say that it's funny, the older that I've gotten, you

As important as accents have always been for me, I'm actually really, really keen to just use my own now. And I remember Andrew Scott saying that, that, you know, he spent so long, as we all do, as a lot of Irish and Celts do in particular and Northern English do, where we have to be able to do accents because there just aren't enough parts for everyone.

people who sound the way we sound so you have to be able to talk like this um or have an american accent which is you know uh frustrating um but he he said that for a long time he really uh

he indulged in sounding different from himself and that that's sort of part of what acting is. And I felt exactly the same way. And then at a certain point in your life, you kind of think, oh, I'm actually not that bad and I'm not completely uninteresting. And I'd quite like to explore acting without having to think about the accent. So I've kind of gone through a period over the last few years where I've really enjoyed using my own accent.

I want to ask you about the film Lady Bird and working with director Greta Gerwig, who you've worked with on two films. Let's hear a scene from Lady Bird. It's at the beginning of the movie. Lady Bird and her mom, played by Laurie Metcalf, have been on a road trip visiting colleges. And your character, who's named herself Lady Bird, is talking about how she wants to leave Sacramento and go to school far away.

I want to go where culture is, like New York. How in the world did I raise such a snob? Or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire, where writers live in the woods. I won't get into those schools anyway. Mom! You can't even pass your driver's test. Because you wouldn't let me practice enough. The way that you work, or the way that you don't work, you're not even worth state tuition, Christine. My name is Lady Bird. Well, actually, it's not, and it's ridiculous. Call me Lady Bird like you said you would. You should just go to city college. You know, with your work ethic, just go to city college and then to jail, and then back to city college, and then maybe you'd learn to pull yourself up.

and not expect everybody to. So that scene ends with your character jumping out of the moving car. Now, at its core, the film Lady Bird is about a daughter and a mother trying to do well by her daughter. And just, you know, they often get misaligned and don't get each other. And this movie is semi-autobiographical for Greta Gerwig. Did you talk...

I'm sure you talked a lot about that mother-daughter relationship. You mentioned that you're very close to your mother. And I was wondering if you could talk about examining that in this film. Yeah, I mean, I guess the really interesting thing at the time was that I couldn't relate to that at all with my mom. But at the time, I was 22, I think.

And I needed my mam desperately and really couldn't relate to that too much. But I think my internal struggle as a young person at that point and feeling very chaotic in my head and very hormonal and very out of control is what really fed that performance. And conversations that I had with Greta...

of course really informed that as well but also Laurie and I just kind of built something that was very it was very personal for us it was our relationship that we built and we got on so well off screen and we just had so much fun doing those scenes together because we

I don't know, I feel like sometimes when you've got distance from a relationship like that or you're not as in it in real life, you can enjoy it so much more and kind of have clarity on it. So, yeah, so it was just it was just really it was just so fun. I just loved working with her. I was wondering if you could talk about working with Greta Gerwig and what in particular about the way she directs is something that, you know, you love or you're drawn to.

Put simply, what I love and admire most about Greta is that she loves actors. She is not afraid of actors. She's not intimidated by them. She knows how to handle them. She gives them support and structure, but also allows them to just play and be free and

And it's quite incredible how many directors can't seem to do that. She enjoys being on set so much. She's such a positive person.

of influence on all of us and she has the most impeccable taste and that girl will never stop working to make something better she she pays attention to every little detail without it feeling clinical she actually put a line into Lady Bird where I think the the nun in um

The movie says that the greatest form of love is to pay attention. Something like that. Yes. It's the most beautiful line. And that is what Greta does. She pays attention. I've never met someone who is more genuinely interested by human nature and people. And I've never worked with anyone like her. And she always makes me better. Well, Saoirse Ronan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It was lovely.

Saoirse Ronan spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado. Her films The Outrun and Blitz are in theaters. Blitz will start streaming on Apple TV Plus November 22nd. After we take a short break, Carolina Miranda will review a new film adapted from a 1955 novel that inspired many Latin American writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is Fresh Air.

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This is fresh air. In 1955, Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo published a slim novel called Pedro Paramo about a man who goes in search of the father he'd never met, only to discover that his father is dead and the village he inhabited is haunted by ghosts.

Pedro Paramo changed the course of Latin American literature. Among the writers it influenced was a young magical realist by the name of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who went on to write 100 Years of Solitude, and who once declared that Rulfo was as enduring as Sophocles.

Today, a new movie inspired by the novel premieres on Netflix. Contributor Carolina Miranda had a look to see how this cinematic interpretation holds up against Rulfo's timeless book.

Pedro Baramo is not the sort of novel that's easy to turn into a movie. The plot, what there is of it, meanders constantly. Perspectives shift. The narrative jumps back and forth in time. Strange things happen. And as you sink into the story, it can be impossible to tell what's waking life and what might be a dream.

The novel is also hard to make into a movie because it's iconic. Practically every school kid in Mexico reads it, and every student of Latin American literature has wrestled with its ruminations on betrayal, power, and death. Rodrigo Prieto, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer from Mexico whose past projects include Killers of the Flower Moon, has bravely chosen Pedro Paramo as the subject of his first feature film.

The story kicks off as Juan Preciado arrives in the village of Comala to look for his father, a prominent landowner. In the film's opening scene, a camera plunges the viewer into a hole in the earth as we hear Preciado deliver the novel's opening lines. Lines so famous, many Spanish speakers can recite them by heart. I came to Comala because they told me that my father lived here, a man named Pedro Paramo.

"I came to Comala," he says, "because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Páramo." But as Preciado enters Comala, he discovers that the lush settlement his mother had once described no longer exists. The town is abandoned, its crumbling adobe houses occupied by the ghosts of his father's ruthless past. In the role of Preciado is Tenoch Huerta, best known for playing the ocean-dwelling Namor in the Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever.

His performance in Pedro Páramo is far more restrained. As his character is led by one ghost and then another ever deeper into Comala, Preciado learns about his father's casual brutality as well as the other children he'd fathered and even loved. The actor conveys these painful discoveries in flashes of quiet hurt and bewilderment.

As in the novel, about midway through the film, the narrative shifts its primary focus from son to father, charting Paramo's rise as a landowner during the years of the Mexican Revolution. Paramo murders his adversaries and takes their land. He treats the town's women like a personal harem. He knows he can disobey the law because in this corner of Mexico, he is the law.

What laws, he asks. We'll make the laws ourselves. Starring as Páramo is Manuel García Rulfo, a Mexican actor known for playing the title role on the Netflix series The Lincoln Lawyer. Born in Guadalajara, García Rulfo also happens to be a distant relative of the book's author. And to the character, he brings the spoken cadences of Western Mexico, where the novel is set.

But the actor's approachable good looks don't always jibe with the merciless rancher described in the book. The bigger challenge facing any director who tackles Pedro Paramo is constructing a believable world. To read the novel is to get the sensation that you are being told a story by ghosts, as if you're hearing voices fade in and out.

The author conveys these strange and terrible events in matter-of-fact ways. He doesn't sensationalize or overdo the suspense. Capturing the sensibility on film, however, can be difficult, and it's why it's been a challenge to translate Pedro Paramo, as well as other novels by magical realists, into movie form. The literature has a very restrained approach to the extraordinary.

On screen, however, things like violence can come off as lurid and apparitions can feel hokey. Prieto's film, for the most part, presents a convincing world. His transitions between past and present and life and death are seamless.

Bleak scenes are portrayed with otherworldly beauty. And sound, which Rulfo describes with great care in the novel, is used in interesting ways. At one moment, we hear the world through the partially deaf ears of an old mule driver. In another, we're immersed in the echoes of Comala's empty streets. Comala!

The movie, however, has its awkward moments. A scene that involves a woman who turns into mud feels like an intrusion of CGI in early 20th century Mexico. And the same goes for a key death scene, of which I won't say more so as not to give away plot. Prieto's film is one of several inspired by Rulfo's novel. A version from 1967 was more melodramatic.

Another, released in 1977, had a stripped-down spaghetti western vibe. Prieto's version adheres most closely to Rulfo's text, and that can hamper the film's pacing. The frequent jumps between time periods, which give the book its sense of disorientation, become repetitive and extra confusing on screen.

Though, ultimately, being confused is part of grappling with Juan Rulfo's masterwork, a story about love, corruption, dominance, and the ways in which death comes for us all in the end. Culture critic Carolina Miranda reviewed the film Pedro Paramo. It started streaming today on Netflix.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, after the Civil War, tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, a bank created for them. But they lost their savings when the bank collapsed in 1874. Our guest will be Justine Hill Edwards, author of a new book about the bank and how it contributed to racial economic disparities. I hope you'll join us.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. On the Embedded Podcast, every Marine takes an oath to protect the Constitution. Against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This is the story of a Marine in the Capitol on January 6th. Did he break his oath? And what does that mean for all of us? Listen to A Good Guy on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. Both episodes available now.

Once again, we find ourselves in an unprecedented election. And with all that's happening in the lead up to the big day, a weekly podcast just won't cut it. Get a better grasp of where we stand as a nation every weekday on the NPR Politics Podcast. Here are seasoned reporters dig into the issues that are shaping voters' decisions and understand how the latest updates play into the bigger picture. The NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on Spotify.