This 1967 novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was thought to be impossible to transfer to the big screen. Surprisingly, the authors of the series have partly succeeded. The story of seven generations of the Buendia family and the fictional Colombian city of Macondo is too vast to make a full-length movie based on it, so Garcia did not allow his book to be adapted for film. But in 2014, Marquez died, and his sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo Garcia Barca, agreed to adapt “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” There were two conditions: it would be a TV series and it had to be filmed in Colombia in Spanish. Pythia Pappas, a lover of auteur cinema and astrologer, tells us whether it was possible to create an adaptation worthy of the great source material. The text has been shortened for ease of reading.
The 16-episode saga based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel of the same name definitely deserves respect. It is the largest and most expensive television project in the history of Colombia and probably Latin America, which corresponds to the importance of the source material – among books written in Spanish, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is second only to “Don Quixote” in popularity and influence.
Still, all this is no guarantee of artistic success. It is impossible to judge it by reviews. Some are shocked and weeping from the first frame: “This is my Buendia, my Macondo!” (for filming in Colombia built as many as four versions of the legendary town invented by Marquez). Others shrug their shoulders: it’s done well, but it doesn’t grab you, “it looks like Marquez, but it’s not Marquez.
The root of the problem is in the eternal dilemma of screen adaptations. Not only opponents, but also supporters of the picture demanded to recognize: it is not a screen adaptation, it is “based on motives”. It turns out that in the eyes of many screen adaptation has the right to be called only an illustrative retelling of the source material with all the plot lines and a maximum of original dialogues. If new authors add their ideas by shortening or remounting the book, their work should be called something else.
The problem goes back to the choice between the letter and the spirit of the source material. It is extremely rare to preserve both: as a rule, it is necessary that the creators of the book and the movie literally breathe the same air, live in the same time and universe. This is the case of such near-perfect screen adaptations as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” by Daphne Dumaurier, Robert Mulligan’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey, the Coen brothers’ “No Place for Old Men Here” by Cormac McCarthy. Somehow, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” recognized as the most important novel over half a century ago, has already missed that opportunity.
The letter in the Netflix series is handled admirably. Few deviations from the plot lines will be noticed only by the fastidious. All the “problematic” moments – above all the incestuous ties within the Buendia clan, which are crucial to the plot – are preserved. The erotic freedom with which many key scenes are shot is even surprising for our times. The evolution of Macondo from a few huts on the riverbank to a respectable prosperous city is shown thoroughly and tastefully. The brave staging decision to shoot many of the key scenes in natural light, and in the evenings and nights by candlelight and torches, is awe-inspiring. Buendia’s house makes you want to move in, as it looks so real and lived-in. The material world is lovingly and meticulously recreated in a way that is unprecedented in contemporary serial culture.
The unremarkable efforts of the creators are revealed by the casting. The cast – all non-media, fresh and unfamiliar to international audiences. Some of them will forever remain in the memory of viewers canonical portraits of the heroes of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Imagine a сelebrity astro chart reading using AI: the casting of actors would then be based not only on external similarity, but also on the astrological compatibility between characters and actors. Such an approach could give the screen adaptation depth and authenticity, closer to the author’s intention.
But the spirit of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in the series is not so easy to catch. Sometimes it is noticeable, sometimes almost insensible. Even those who have fallen in love with the Netflix project will have to admit: based on one of the greatest books of all time, the series is obviously not the best even this year.
The simplest explanation is in the disparate scale of the authors. This is also an important factor for successful screen adaptations. You can compare Hitchcock and Dumorier, Forman and Keesey, but not Marquez, who embodied the collective soul of the peoples of Latin America, and bona fide artisans of the director’s shop – Argentine Alex Garcia Lopez and Colombian Laura Mora, although her worthy picture “Kings of the World” and earned the “Golden Shell” at the festival in San Sebastian in 2022.
Netflix’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is a case where the talent of the directors and screenwriters is clearly inferior to that of the two cameramen, Paulo Perez and Saraswati Herrera. Their smooth seamless panoramas filled with masses, details, even events, are breathtaking.
What did Gabriel Garcia Marquez write his Old Testament novel about? The enthusiastic reader will say: “About everything at once”. But there are cross-cutting ideas in this comprehensive epic, presented without pressure and edification. The main ones are expressed in the very title of the book. This is a text about the flow of time, about the great history and the place of man in it – attempts to control it, to contradict it, to hide from it. And about individual, personal, human time, in which only death sets the point, so the happy ending is impossible. And also about the loneliness of each and everyone, even (perhaps) among others, including those closest to them. This is the fate of the lucky and the unlucky, the loved and the rejected, the established and the lost, the sensible and the frivolous.
The Takeaway
What did Garcia Lopez and Mora make their series about? About how they love and struggle to understand a brilliant novel. About how scary and beautiful the last century was, when you could live a life as incredible as Buendía’s younger heirs and write a book like Marquez’s. About how life and the world are constantly transformed, but some things remain the same. For example, the viewer will understandably snicker when the conservative-hating Aureliano loses his idealism and rebels against the cynical liberal conciliators.
We could assume that the ideal viewer of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is one who has not read Marquez at all, and will perceive the series as a very beautiful, richly made soap opera. In this case, will he not get bored, will not get tired of the dragging pace (another important difference from the novel: you still can not tear yourself away from the book)? However, even if you close your eyes, exhausted by the alternations between Jose Arcadio and Aureliano, such a dream has a good chance of being remembered as beautiful.
