It took me a week to watch eight episodes of the much-awaited TV series ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ released by Netflix 10 days ago.
There were countless people who were waiting for the release of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, which Netflix started making in 16 parts as the most ambitious project among its products. I was one of those impatient spectators. If I had enough free time, I would watch it in one breath, as I once watched Narcos, a film about Pablo Escobar.
When I got the movie, I started watching it at the rate of one hour every night so as not to finish it in a hurry. There was a compelling reason behind this unusual wait.
The comment made by the author Gabriel García Márquez about the book ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, widely praised as the greatest novel of the twentieth century, is relevant here. 10 years ago i.e. before his death in 2014, many filmmakers expressed their desire to work with Marquez on ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. Marquez always kept aside all those proposals. He thought from the inside – this is such a novel, on which it is not possible to make a movie.
When Marquez wrote ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, it was dismissed as a monotonous novel with too much sex and too little dialogue. Progressive writers didn’t believe it, the liberal camp did.
Initially, 10,000 copies of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ were not appreciated by the critics, but the publisher sold thousands of copies within a few years.
The wave of solitude did not stop there. The book was translated into 40 languages. Over time, more than 5 million copies were sold. The publisher started selling the book as ‘The Multimillion Copy Bestseller’ instead of a bestseller. The epidemic of Marquez-Mahatmya was like a chicken. The mouth of the critic was closed.
And, at its peak, Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his contributions including ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ written in 1967. Marquez has many readers in Nepal, who have read dozens of his books translated from Spanish to English. ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ means ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ is the highest among them.
I bought the book ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Marquez, which took the magical realist style to a new height, in Jamal’s Educational Book House in May 067. Until then, the great writer Narayan Dhakal used to say, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, “Solitude” whenever he met Markhes, Markhes. Poet Bimal Niva named Narayan Dhakal as Markhej Dhakal. Kavi Shyamal translated Nine Rights to the Colonel into Nepali under the name Abhagi Colonel.
In the creative frenzy of those days, I tried to cover 458 pages of the novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. But the sentence and structure in which it was written, it was difficult for me to deal with it. I started liking Marquez through books like Love in the Time of Cholera, Memories of My Melancholy Horse, Living to Tell the Tale etc.
Much later I re-read ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. It tells the story of José Arcadio, his wife Ursula, who set out to settle the fictional city of Macondo, and the tight-knit story of the Bundeya family, who follow them across the mountains in search of the sea. A South Asian reader reading a South American plot gets confused in many places. Because there are many characters that sound like the same name. Even after reading the book, the reader will not stop.
In order to make the book easy and legible, the authors use ease in sentence formation, running dialogues.
Marquez doesn’t seem to care about that either. On his way to the office of the newspaper, where he had just started working as a reporter, he was suddenly possessed by the ghost of writing this novel.
Then Markhez returned home without going to the office of the newspaper. He left all his daily work and went into hiding to write a book. It is said that he stayed in a cheap hotel and wrote the book. It seems that he wrote this book not only ignoring the reader, but also himself.
It can be read that he was not very satisfied even when ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ was translated from Spanish to English. It can be read in the interviews that he thinks that the magical atmosphere of poetry, plot and presentation that he had created while writing in Spanish language, could not come alive in the same way in translation.
Even Marquez flatly refused the offer to make a movie of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. Marquez used to make a condition about the proposal to bring the book into visual language – if it is to be made into a movie, it should be made for 100 hours. And it should be shot only in Colombia. The language is only in Spanish.
Netflix didn’t make Hundred Years of Solitude in 100 hours, but I remembered the story of a director named Bella Tarr who made a novel called Satantango in seven and a half hours. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is no less difficult than reading Satantango written by Hungarian director László Krasnohorkhei.
Currently, while the novel is said to be shot in 16 parts, eight parts are currently available. The ‘book purists’ may or may not understand, but the wonderful novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, which has been adapted into a film, has been able to satisfy both the reader and the audience in me.
The plot of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, directed by Alex Garcia Lopez, spans a hundred years since 1850. While weaving the story of Bundeya family for more than four or five generations, he has brought together the unlimited happiness, indomitable courage, sorrow, conspiracy, betrayal, hatred and love within the family. The tyranny ties the plot into an inextricable mess.
Not only the families of Colombia, but all the families of the world are also running on many such express and unexpressed threads. The eight parts of the Netflix series have expressed it in many ways in visuals, language, silence, colors, animals, and ghosts.
Before meeting the gypsies, Macondo’s new civilization is moving along with stress-free ease. As long as the gypsies teach magic and science, the Bundeyas’ curiosity about human potential is spreading. That’s when unexpected things start happening. Unexpected problems begin to arise in the life of the tribal type.
How religion, law, state, political debates take turns pressing in the lives of Bundeyas who are living a normal life. And it shows that the common people have to be forced into war without wanting to. The film vividly presents the rotten arrogance and artificiality of the right-wingers who went to strengthen the state, the Christians who went to establish morality, and the liberals who faked rights and freedom. Soldiers are more honest in Solitude than the delusional advocates of honesty.
As Arcadio Buenda moves to build a larger society, he becomes isolated. His keen curiosity to learn from scientific inventions to Eastern Sanskrit language gets tired when he gets caught up in family and social tangles. He eventually becomes isolated from himself. It is weighed down by the weight of wealth and class. Daughters fall into mutual jealousy. His dreams are crushed by the happiness and fun of his sons. What do you think in life, what happens.
The ghosts never stop haunting. A person who has been killed in a fight by his age does not give up until the end. It seems as if superstition is being shrugged off, but the destiny of man keeps swaying on the ropes of those beliefs and blindness. As if Jose Arcadio Buenda keeps shaking, yearning. Even when he runs away from himself, the yellow butterfly does not stop following him. He remains isolated in the midst of everyone, but alone. After that, the events that he didn’t think about keep increasing. Don’t tell me more about the scene where he was tied to a tree in his own house. Let’s just say that it is mentioned in the original promotional material of Netflix ie the poster.
Diego Vasquez plays the role of Jose Arcadio, Marilida Soto plays the role of Ursula. The role of Colonel Aureliano Bundea played by Claudio Catano is unforgettable. Discussion of many other characters is neither possible nor relevant here. Each lama chota role gives us a special impression.
There are many sexual scenes. Children and minors are not recommended to watch ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. Even if you don’t understand Spanish, you try to feel the sound of the words. Otherwise, there are options for both English language and subtitles.
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ fulfills the desire to watch a film with strong Colombian taste, passion, visuals and sound. Perhaps Marquez himself would have been surprised if he had been alive. Be sure to watch ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ directed by Alex Garcia Lopez. And the all-time great writer Marquez’s novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ also had to be read, right?
