19/15
In the timeless city of Macondo, seven generations of the Buendía family face love, forgetfulness, and the inevitability of their past and destiny. This is Netflix’s most expensive project in Latin America to date, with Colombian groups and indigenous communities building the props and sets for the series. Adapting One Hundred Years of Solitude into a film seems like an incredibly difficult task for two main reasons. First, the novel belongs to a specific literary movement, initiated by South American writers, especially Gabriel García Márquez, in which the story is told through a fusion of reality and fantasy. Sometimes this fusion is so intense that it seems impossible to separate them. Of course, translating such scenes into cinematic language runs the risk of setting them to absurdity and not achieving a satisfactory cinematic form. However, watching the first episode of One Hundred Years of Solitude, it turned out that the creators managed to convey this magical and surreal feeling to the audience without ridiculing it. The second reason is the internal complexity of the novel. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is difficult to read due to the repeated use of identical names for different characters, as well as the non-linear narrative and frequent breaks in the timeline. These elements can be boring for the reader. Fortunately, the series has no such problems, successfully transforming the non-linear narrative into a linear one that allows for a strong connection with the viewer. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is one of the biggest TV and streaming premieres of the month. Check out our December calendar for more!