Last night, I watched Pedro Páramo on Netflix.
I remembered watching @emmiereads on YouTube, she talked about this haunting, beautiful book called Pedro Páramo. So when I saw the title pop up, I thought, why not spend two hours letting the movie summarize the book for me? I’m not here to talk about the plot. You can Google that or ChatGPT it in seconds.
What I want to share is how it made me feel and what it made me see.
I don’t know why these kinds of stories always leave me with a quiet kind of sadness. Men living with regret. Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, the twisted desperation in Squid Game, and now Pedro Páramo. All consumed in one same week.
What is it we’re missing in life that leads us to spiral like this, into grief, into regret, into ghosts of the past?
Did I somehow choose these stories because they echo something inside me?
Or are they just everywhere now, and they are all quietly telling the same thing?
I used to think men were simple-minded. Or at least, they seemed to be. But the more I read, the more I watch, these stories unravel that idea. They aren’t simple. But they’re definitely silent. There’s a kind of desperation tucked into the corners of their stories. Like they’re crying for help without knowing how to ask. They don’t know how to carry the fragility of life. They weren’t taught to be in tune with their feelings.
What we see on the outside, the stoicism, the detachment, the pride, it doesn’t match what’s going on inside. It never did, kan.
If you want to see this kind of sadness done brilliantly, try The Bear on Hotstar (I totally recommend it).
It’s a love letter to the unspoken grief of men. Carmy is brilliant but broken. It’s about kitchen chaos, sure, but really? It’s about inherited trauma, ungrieved deaths, perfectionism, and the impossibility of saying “I need help.” Or anything at all, lah. Mad Men? Peaky Blinders? Same pain, different wardrobe.
So, is this a cry for help?
Maybe it is.
Maybe they all are.
What do you think?
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