Review of Pascual Duarte

The movie is not that much faithful to the book "The Family of Pascual Duarte", written by Spanish Nobel Prize of literature (1989) Camilo José Cela. The movie seems to show only madness affecting Pascual, madness that will push him to commit several crimes. I found the movie slow and almost boring while I couldn't drop the book after opening it. For example: why does Pascual kill "el Estirao"? Because he finds him responsible for the death of his wife. She did get hurt some years earlier by Pascual's mare (and not a mule), accident which caused her an abortion. She later got pregnant a second time, gave birth to a son, who died eleven month later of illness. After his wife's death, he married a second time but his mother hated her new daughter in law, and made the couple's life unbearable. He wanted to stab her in her sleep and almost gave it up. As he was turning away, she woke up and Pascual assaulted her. They fought, wrestled on the ground, and Pascual stabbed her several times. Then he escaped to never return, killed the landlord on his way who Pascual suspected having an affair with his mother and was later arrested. He stayed several years in prison before being executed, during which time he wrote the story of his life.

As for the "shocking scenes", it is not sure that the dog is really shot in front of the camera. This can be easily checked by moving the picture frame to frame. You will see then a difference, a small change in the shot, showing a slight camera displacement. It's well made because the change is produced at the exact moment when we hear the shot. And this is why we don't see it the first time. The noise makes you shake a little, so the eyes are unable to focus properly on the screen and the moment the change appears. But then again, I wasn't there to check it out and I might be wrong.