The first eight chapters of the series A hundred years of solitude, adaptation of the famous novel which earned its Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, are available on Netflix. This adaptation of a great classic of universal literature was a risky bet.
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A hundred years of solitude is a monument in Colombia, required reading for all high school students in the country and a novel deemed unadaptable. Moreover, the author, Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, declared that his book should not be adapted for the cinema. Also the Netflix series was awaited with a certain skepticism.
But the first season won over Nohora Robayo, a university executive, who read the novel three times. She expresses her enthusiasm on the microphone of our correspondent in Bogota, Marie-Eve Detoeuf. “ It was a real pleasure to watch this television series, which was the only possible format to adapt this work for the screen. I connected with the landscape, photography, vegetation. I was transported to this place, Macondo that we all have in our heads.”
Macondo is the imaginary village where the action of the novel takes place, the epic of the Buendia family which we follow over seven generations, emblematic of Latin American “magical realism”. According to Gabriel Garcia MarquezMacondo was not so much a place as a state of mind, he explained. A village inspired by his hometown Aracataca.
Carolina Albornoz, consultant, is a little more measured. “ I think the series is very well done; she managed to recreate the atmosphere of the book. But a series will never match what the imagination can awaken when we read ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude'”.
Jacobo del Castillo, filmmaker, reminds us that adapting A hundred years of solitude on television was a huge challenge. “ The series was made by a team of 600 or 700 people, it had very significant financial resources, two excellent directors, a very good production team. That said, when you see it, you want to go read the book, to get away from the audiovisual magic and return to the text. »
The adaptation was signed by the Puerto Rican José Rivera, and the production entrusted to the Argentinian Alex Garcia Lopez and to Colombian Laura Mora, awarded two years ago at the San Sebastian festival for her latest feature film Los Reyes del Mundo.
Like Nohora, Carolina, Jacobo will watch the second season.