One Hundred Years of Solitude Scored 92% on RT, but Is It Really That Good?
Did the creators manage to capture the magical realism and mood of Márquez's prose?
Netflix has released the first season of the series One Hundred Years of Solitude, based on the novel of the same name by Colombian classic Gabriel García Márquez.
During the author's lifetime, it was not possible to agree on the adaptation, but the author's heirs sold the rights to the streaming service for the adaptation with many conditions, including plot accuracy, filming in Colombia, and a Colombian team of actors and directors.
The Series Will Be Exciting Even for Those Who Have Read the Novel
The young Buendía family, Jose Arcadio, Ursula and their friends, set out to find a place where the fears of their ancestors and the ghosts of the past no longer interfere with their lives.
The rich tropical colors, the landscapes of the mountains and plains of Colombia that they encounter along the way immediately make the first episode of the project surprisingly visually interesting, even for those who have read the novel many times.
Finally, in a dream, the main character sees a utopian image of the city of Macondo, which became the center of the story. The settlement is created gradually, in each episode something changes in it – much faster than its inhabitants themselves change.
The series has already received positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes – 84% freshness from critics and 92% from viewers.
So far, the project has eight episodes, covering about half of the action of the novel, which is a really good result for an unfinished story, but there are some questions about the on-screen version.
Adaptation Sometimes Fails to Convey the Unique Mood of the Original Text
In some difficult moments, the novel's characters were able to capture the elusive reality only through words – perhaps this is why Márquez was against the film adaptation.
On screen, the images often look like interesting illustrations, but they do not always have the magical effect of the book, with its astonishing comparisons and metaphors, not all of which fit into the voice-over text of the series.
The adaptation, like the original, wants to tell a story about history and time, but at the same time it has a rather complicated relationship with these dimensions.
Very often, the episodes lack a noticeable dynamic, and this does not seem to be a technique designed to depict the constancy of time, but a shortcoming of the creators, who could not fully cope with the powerful material.
One of the Greatest Strengths of the Series Is the Attention to Detail
The work of the artists and decorators is brilliant, completely immersing the viewers in the world of Macondo. The frame contains many tiny details of everyday life in Colombia in the 19th and 20th centuries, which are impossible to imagine while reading.
The material world in the plot is very important to the founders of Macondo: Jose Arcadio admires mechanisms, and everyday objects like a magnet or ice seem like miracles to him.
The Netflix series creates vivid and recognizable images of characters with their weaknesses, peculiarities, and passions.
Each member of the family appears unique, which can be considered both the success of the project and its paradoxical problem, because when reading this novel, the images merge and get confused, creating an amazing effect of infinity.