One Hundred Years of Solitude: the review of the Netflix series

The biggest impasse an adaptation of could face One hundred years of solitudeand which is what happened with the eight-part work directed by Alex García López and Laura Mora, is the attempt to enclose a story that is too big within a container such as the screen. The type of literature at its maximum power, which transcends space and time and which can be attributed to the territories of the infinite, where the imagination can gallop free and unlimited.

But transpositions of undisputed pages for world narrative have been made, with often discreet results, sometimes even excellent ones like the three films of The Lord of the Ringsalmost as immortal as the characters and their stories on paper. Now entering this category of praiseworthy adaptations is the serial revisitation of the book of the same name by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquezwithin the framework of Netflix and divided into a first and second part precisely to attempt to restore breadth and breadth to his timeless novel.

The history of the Buendía family

What’s most admirable about the Netflix version of One hundred years of solitude it is that he does not decide, however, to rely solely on the verbose content of the book from which it is taken, but to set up a dance on which words and images fluctuate, accompanied by a light and continuously fluid work of the camera. The direction is not afraid of getting lost in the meanders of the Buendía familywhose evolution is told starting from the characters of Úrsula and José Arcadio up to their offspring, but finds its own positioning in the artistic importance of the transposition onto the platform and does so from the first sequence. An introduction into a new and fruitful world continuous omensas underlined by the objective which nothing escapes: the horror, the house as the heart of the entire story, the continuous hovering of death.

If the outcome of Márquez’s story is impressive, so is the ambition of the series, never wanting to work in subtraction to risk disrespecting the original work, but going towards it, embracing its vastness and the continuous spanning of the years that they gradually broaden the terrain of history, just like the first huts of Macondo. An imaginary place that has become to all intents and purposes a city whose development can be seen. A growth of its community and, thus, of the narrative lines of the show which have the same smoothness with which all cultures and societies change their skin. A small world which for the writer represented more a mental state than a real concert venue, albeit inspired byAracataca where he was born, a river village that takes its name from the river it runs alongside and which descends from the nearby Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta chain in Colombia.

The compass of One hundred years of solitude

It is therefore a sense of growth that is perceived from episode to episode. The expansion of a story whose writing, just like the direction, does not need explanations or forcing, but continues smoothly, expanding the legacy of the Buendía family, making it a portrait of the entire family tree. This is also thanks to a voice-over which, like a narrator who seems to be reading their story straight from a book, helps the audience to orient themselves between the existences and emotions of the various characters, without ever sounding invasive or pedantic. A compass that helps to indicate a direction and invites spectators to follow it. North star of a story in which you never have the feeling of getting lost, almost being surprised given the amount of information that the narration, images and protagonists do not shy away from sharing.

A cyclopean operation which finds in the serial dimension the possibility of giving greater scope to each of its aspects. A faithful work which, even if it were to sacrifice some aspects of the book or rework them to make them suitable for another medium, keeps its core alive and bold.