I have been waiting six months or so for the series to start and to see how such a magical book would come across on television. Gabriel Garcia Marquez had always refused permission or to sell the film/tv rights of his book yet after his death in 2014 his family sold those rights and Netflix has now acquired them and have made a 16 part adaptation over two seasons all eight episodes of season one are available to watch on Netflix now.
The family insisted that the series was filmed on location in Marquez’s native Colombia and in the Latin Spanish language of the book using an all Colombian cast. I have avoided reading any reviews and have just watched Episode 1 which is beautifully shot and is beautifully atmospheric and am really looking forward to the rest of the series.
When I was 18 years old I spent the Spring and Summer of that year travelling and working around the Spanish Costas, two weeks before my 19th Birthday in early October I spent my last money on a coach ticket home a gruelling day and a half long journey about half of which I spent I spent in the company of a guy who was a little older had spent the Summer with his family in France and was going back to University.
We got to know each other quite well in the way that people travelling long distances can do and I told him that I had left school, didn’t have a job and wasn’t looking forward to going home and when we said goodbye at Victoria Coach Station he gave me his copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Even though I can read a favourite book two or three times I’ve always resisted reading it again as I enjoyed it so much but I had been thinking of doing so when I read that the series was coming out so after watching I plan to buy a copy and read it.
I’m really happy to have grown up in a world without the internet or mobile phones when people could connect briefly and move on with out exchanging social media addresses and then following one another or whatever.
My Niece is 25 and has never had an intimate relationship with someone she didn’t meet on the internet her last two boyfriends she met through instagram where they had some type of courtship before actually meeting in person a few times after which they decided to be exclusive!
Very true and many an imagination has run riot standing at a kitchen sink elbow deep in fairy only to find the bad smell of a blocked drain rising above the lemon fresh.
The book itself is such more than any other book that it really requires you to participate in the story with your own imagination it is essential that you do, so the film makers really have their work cut out to reproduce that.
I have always loved the book, and Love in the Time of Cholera even more (a ‘desert island’ choice) but I consider them unfilmable. I don’t care if any TV or film version gets good reviews I just cannot imagine it getting close to matching my pleasure of the books which are so much more than just about the story. I would need a lot of convincing to watch this. I’d also need a lot of time with so many episodes!
As you said Marquez generally resisted authorising adaptations of his works. Of course his family appear to have a different view now he is dead.
Bruce
Unfilmable favourite books-discuss!
Credit to the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall and the recent (mad) Iannucci film version of David Copperfield for doing a surprisingly good job I think. War and Peace-no.
The photography is stunning and must account for a large part of the descriptive text in the book. My daughter in law says that she had to look up many of the archaic Colombian Spanish words. I understand it is the use of language that makes the book so remarkable, but given the number of languages it has been translated into the story itself must be outstanding. Maybe worth a read.
