“One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a new Netflix miniseries based on the acclaimed novel by Gabriel García Márquez, premiered in December. Stubbornly refusing to believe that anyone could do justice to the book I cherish, I didn’t watch it. Only after a number of recommendations from friends, I decided to dip my toes. Soon I was fully immersed in the tale of my beloved Buendía family, savoring each episode to extract all the magic present. This must-see eight-episode series is as close to a literate, mystical, transcendental and powerful experience as you can possibly have on the screen, large or small. Following many of the events of the sprawling novel, the writers have captured the soul of the original and translated those haunting words into the living color of film, making the metaphorical village of Macondo into a real town, one you feel you could find if you could locate it on a map. It is not insignificant that the imaginary town of Macondo is fashioned after Aracataca, Colombia, the birthplace of Márquez.
Young Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía, cousins of unknown degree, are very much in love and want to marry. Her parents forbid it, saying that it would be tantamount to inbreeding and their babies would be born with pig’s tails. Undeterred, they marry, although Úrsula’s self-made chastity belt prevents its consummation, so fearful is she of her mother’s prediction. Rumors about their unusual relationship spread, and José, humiliated, kills Prudencio, the rumor monger. Haunted by Prudencio’s ghost, José Arcadio decides to leave the village with his wife and a band of followers to find a paradise far away, preferably near the sea. Cutting their way through jungle and growth that has never been tamed by man, exhausted, they settle on a great expanse near a river with enough prosperous land for everyone. It is here they start the town of Macondo, unfettered by church or state, ruled only by goodwill and the kind of honesty that friends rely on. Trading on their skills, the town soon has most of the benefits of civilization – brothels, bars, families, goods and services—managed only by good faith and the Biblical adage, “love thy neighbor as thyself,” although they left the Bible and judgmental attitudes behind as well.
They doted on their sons, young José Arcadio and Aureliano. Pilar the fortune teller remarked on young José Arcadio’s endowment, selfishly taking full advantage of it, and pronounced that Aureliano would have precognition, a dubious gift indeed. The town’s isolation is eventually disturbed by the arrival of a gypsy band and their leader, the alchemist Melquiades, who stays in Macondo to mentor the senior José Arcadio. Melquiades will be both his savior and his downfall.
Photos by Pablo Arellano, courtesy of Netflix
People come and go, returning and leaving again. The Buendía family expands with new members, both wanted and unwanted, and the town grows more prosperous. When José Arcadio the elder retreats to his laboratory, convinced that Melquiades’s alchemical teachings will lead him to turn metal into gold, the age-old promise, Úrsula must take charge of the family. His mystical science is mundane, and her everyday household maintenance literally raises her in the air.
This sweeping tale of family, love, death, heartache, petty jealousy, friendship and rivalry mirrors, in its own way, the history of their new country, Colombia, a land of hope, prejudice, insularity, corruption and continued revolution. It will engulf you with flowers raining from the skies and have you believe that there could have been a plague of insomnia, sent to punish those who would doubt.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” will transport you to a land imaginary, yet full of real emotion. It is where you’d like to go but be afraid to stay because the dreams and nightmares of the Buendía family are all too real. Challenge yourself not to watch more than two episodes at a time so that each action and character can stay with you overnight, allowing you to savor every minute of the magic that seems so real.
The actors, most of whom you will not have heard of, are magnificent. Listen to them in the original Spanish, rather than the dubbed version, to get the full flavor of their inflection and emotion. Too many to mention, each member of the Buendía family ages into a new actor as they grow older. It is only Pilar, the fortune teller, prolific at spreading her genes to the Buendías, who seems ageless, and maybe that’s the point.
It was apparent from the moment it appeared on the literary horizon in 1967 that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was a masterpiece, one of the acknowledged greats of the 20th century. Márquez would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He refused all efforts to obtain the film rights to his novel, unconvinced that his sprawling story of the Buendía family could be told in the two-to three-hour format of a film. Written in the style of magical realism, where the real is fanciful and the fanciful is real, filmmakers have long struggled to bring this kind of metaphorical storytelling to the screen successfully. Following his death, those rights were transferred to his widow, Mercedes, and his two sons, Gonzalo García Barcha, an artist, and Rodrigo García, a highly regarded writer and director of American film and television.
Presented with the possibility of telling the story over eight episodes, the family acquiesced, dependent on certain conditions. The filming must take place entirely in Colombia, capturing the beauty, culture and atmosphere of the story; the cast must be made up primarily of Colombian actors and filmed entirely in Spanish with a Colombian production team involved in making the series. With those stipulations met, Netflix obtained the rights to García Márquez’s masterpiece. Both García sons are executive producers of the series, one that they can take enormous pride in.
Cinematographers Paulo Perez and Sarasvati Herrera bring the breathtaking Colombian locations to life. Production Designers Eugenio Caballero and Barbara Enriquez created a Macondo that is real and imaginary at the same time. The colors vibrate and the sets reach into the heart of the different eras. Costuming by Catherine Rodriguez is positively tactile. The direction, divided between Alex Garcia Lopez and Laura Mora Ortega, delivers the world that the various writers presented.
All of the above-cited actors are Colombian, most with impressive experience in the world of Spanish-language filmmaking. The intensity of Marleyda Soto’s older Úrsula will warm you and make you quake at the same time. She carries the family and Macondo on her back like a beast of burden who is deadly when cornered. Diego Vásquez is the adult José Arcadia in middle and old age, lost in the stars and driven mad by the fumes of his laboratory and his crushed dreams. Claudio Cataño plays the adult Aureliano with the sadness of lost love and the passion of a cause as his importance grows with his maturity. Édgar Vittorino is all sex, tension, passion and power as José Arcadio, the son as an adult, returned from seeing the world after disappearing with Melquiades’ gypsies. Akina, Rebecca the mystery relative, raised as a Buendía is staggeringly beautiful and haunted, eating dirt as a punishment for sins she hasn’t committed. There are so many others, especially the younger versions of the Buendía family, whose depth of acting enhances the already full characters they have been given to bring to life. And that’s the point. This series has brought this magnificent book to light, allowing you to absorb the magical realism as though it occurred on a daily basis to ordinary souls like us. I, too, believe I can levitate.
Now streaming on Netflix.
Neely Swanson spent most of her professional career in the television industry, almost all of it working for David E. Kelley. In her last full-time position as Executive Vice President of Development, she reviewed writer submissions and targeted content for adaptation. As she has often said, she did book reports for a living. For several years she was a freelance writer for “Written By,” the magazine of the WGA West, and was adjunct faculty at USC in the writing division of the School of Cinematic Arts. Neely has been writing film and television reviews for the “Easy Reader” for more than 10 years. Her past reviews can be read on Rotten Tomatoes where she is a tomatometer-approved critic.
