With its generational narrative of affection, betrayal and intrigue, and an epic backdrop of civil battle and fantastical goings-on, One Hundred Years of Solitude was lengthy thought-about to be an unattainable novel to adapt to the display.
The work’s creator, Gabriel García Márquez, even claimed that the sprawling novel had been written exactly to show that the written phrase had a vaster scope than the cinema.
But in opposition to the percentages, Netflix seems to have efficiently translated Márquez’s magnum opus to tv, to the reduction of many Colombians, who’re fiercely protecting of the late author – and fed up with different on-screen depictions of their nation.
“I used to be utterly skeptical. This e-book means a lot to me, how on earth do you translate it right into a sequence?” mentioned Irene Arenas, a 34-year-old English instructor in Bogotá who learn the novel for the primary time when she was 13. “But it surely overwhelmed me with its magnificence. I watched each episode in two days, I cried a number of occasions, and I’ve simply gone and acquired the e-book once more.”
The novel tells the century-spanning story of the founders of the legendary city of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía and his spouse, Úrsula, and their descendants, in a story which generally parallels the historical past of Colombia, and generally doesn’t.
Swarms of yellow butterflies flutter always round one character, youngsters are conceived with pig tails and the blood of a lifeless son trickles by way of the village till it reaches the toes of his mom.
However what makes good literary fiction doesn’t essentially make good tv – the timeline jumps always backwards and forwards, the plot contains a lot intercourse and little dialogue, many characters share the identical identify – and Márquez insisted that each the shape and content material of the novel meant it may by no means be tailored.
Netflix’s reply, in collaboration with the creator’s household, was to condense the century-spanning narrative into 16 episodes in “one of the bold productions in Latin American historical past”.
Past the technical challenges, the producers additionally needed to confront the legacy of Márquez himself, which looms massive over the nation of his start. His face adorns the nationwide foreign money and his novel has been obligatory studying for generations of Colombian schoolchildren.
“One Hundred Years is Colombia’s nationwide poem,” mentioned creator Ricardo Silva Romero.
The novel’s exploration of Colombia’s bloody, cyclical historical past has in flip formed the nation’s personal self-image.
“It’s optimistic, it’s romantic, however it’s trustworthy, and that’s the rationale why I cried,” Arenas mentioned. “It actually reveals how Colombia is on this state of everlasting return the place we preserve going again to the identical place. How we’re passionate but additionally obsessive, which isn’t at all times an excellent factor. And the way there’s a little bit of outlaw in each Colombian on this nation that’s despite itself.”
The sequence has additionally come as a reduction to Colombians weary of depictions of their nation in tv as a lawless and violent playground for narcos.
“We wrestle to not be seen as a rustic of cocaine and drug cartels,” mentioned Adrian Lemus, a enterprise administrator who grew up on the nation’s Caribbean coast. “Gabo’s work is an instance of resilience, energy and neighborhood – virtues which are carved into Colombians from childhood.”
As Márquez had requested earlier than his demise in 2014, the sequence was shot in Colombia, in Spanish with an all-Colombian forged.
To carry the fictional Macondo to life, Netflix constructed 4 totally different Macondo units, transported dozens of native bushes from the coast and contracted 150 communities to make 1000’s of handmade artifacts.
Netflix won’t disclose the price range for the sequence however says it took six years to make and is the costliest in Latin American historical past.
“The landscapes within the sequence are equivalent to those I see daily,” mentioned Maria Fernanda Cortés, a 34-year-old an industrial designer who lives in Guachaca, a small city on the Caribbean coast. “The bushes, the extreme warmth, the crystal-clear inexperienced rivers and the blue seas. It has made me really feel like I dwell in Macondo.”
Cortés mentioned that just like the novel, the TV sequence succeeded as a result of it mirrored the truth of Colombia – a rustic the place superstition abounds, mindless battle appears perennial and pure magnificence exceeds the creativeness.
“It’s one thing that solely individuals right here perceive as a result of we dwell in a spot the place inexplicable issues typically occur that border on the magical,” she mentioned.
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