Should I watch the series Denis Lukyanov “One Hundred Years of Solitude”? 18.01.2025, 13:25

They said it was impossible to film Marquez, and they filmed it anyway – the first season of the series based on the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was released on Netflix. Eight hours of magical realism on screen, and that’s only the first half of the saga of Macondo’s life: from creation to catastrophic destruction in the “biblical vortex.”

Any film adaptation is an a priori interpretation; To follow the text exactly is both impossible and foolish. Take the already cult “The Lord of the Rings” by Peter Jackson, which minimally deviates from the original source, and the last “The Master and Margarita”, which, on the contrary, deliberately plays with the original and turns Bulgakov’s Moscow into something new. Babylon. Of course, there are completely disastrous options: either follow the text or don’t. The viewer remembers (and gnashes his teeth) the unsuccessful film versions of The Three Musketeers, Sherlock Holmes and other works.

So how much did Netflix give viewers to Marquez? Shocking but almost 100 percent.

The combination of the everyday and the miraculous, the ordinary and the poetic, which permeates many of Marquez’s novels and especially “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, seems impossible to convey on the big screen. After all, it is not so much about fantastic events in real life: a trickle of blood suddenly crawling towards the mother and telling about the suicide of her son, or a spontaneous flight in the middle of the street. Magical realism is something much more insidious, complex and multifaceted, especially in Marquez. As Dmitry Bykov (known as a foreign media agent in the Russian Federation) said, this genre blooms in fertile soil, where many cultural layers are mixed together, and the reader never understands which one he is in. In this sense, Latin America is a treasure trove: ancient pre-Columbian beliefs, conquistador Christianity, modern colonization, successive dictatorial regimes, and the age of globalization. All these have their own “myths”, patterns and ideas about life. It turns out, if you like, a game with reflections, achieved primarily thanks to the writing style. What is important is not the plot or the characters, but the text itself. It envelops a primitive man living in a semi-magical world where something is equal to him and something is not equal to him, puts him in a hypnotic state; requires attention to countless details; it is a huge, wonderful fish whale, ancient and unhurried.

The creators of the series understood and implemented all this.

Netflix’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is perhaps one of the most enjoyable TV series of recent years. For eight hours, the viewer will be shown gradual close-ups of characters in moments of mental anguish and long shots of Macondo’s next blows; it is immersed in the atmosphere of the tavern and sent to the forest, where its moisture will remain on the skin; will focus on yellow flowers falling from the sky and the crumpled hands of a mother whose children are dying, going crazy, or doing reckless things. The series pays attention to detail as if the cameramen were shooting through a microscope; he knows what he’s doing; it slows the reader down and puts him or her in a slight trance state when Macondo seems like a painfully familiar city. It’s as if you’ve been walking on its streets since your childhood.

Of course, none of this works without great visuals. The opening scene, with the abandoned house of the Buendia family and the history book, literally shines in Marquez’s text: colors, framing, and again details, details, details, endless details. This is a stopped world, a dead world: the series began with this, and like the novel, it will obviously end with it. Although there are more and more events in the plot with each episode (quarrels, separations, deaths, births, coups, the opening of new schools, the arrival of Europeans), the overall pace of the narrative becomes surprisingly slow. And by the season finale, the series is again frantically intertwined with Marquez’s text: the funeral of the head of the Buendia family and the prayer of his wife again become something magical, seemingly assembled from pieces of the usual mosaic: acting, framing, music, color correction… .And by the final season, the viewer is again lost between cultural layers: lost between the everyday and the miraculous, the Christian and the pagan, the progressive and the archaic.

This is exactly the formula; the familiar becomes magical. The tools of the creative director become the magic wands of a Latin American wizard.

However, it is important to remember that a series that fully matches the book in terms of narrative style and tempo will not appeal to everyone. It’s something far from the cinematic appeal of Eisenstein, closer to the spirit of Tarkovsky, but appealing to a wider audience. And Netflix’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” has emerged: the case where a movie seems worthy of consideration not even as a movie, but as some kind of immersive experience broadcast directly into the skull. Of course, this is not a Marquez novel; but it’s also definitely him. And there’s great value in making a film adaptation that, at its core, is just about atmosphere.

How could it be otherwise when the main characters are here: love, death and time? As always with Marquez.

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.

What are you thinking?



Source: Gazeta

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