One Hundred Years of Solitude is a beautiful, deliberate literary adaptation that only the streaming era could produce.
Whether its Apple TV+ taking a pass at Isaac Asimovs heady sci-fi tomeFoundationor Prime Video making sense of J.R.R.
For better or worse, were living in the golden era of making the impossible possible onscreen.
Now,Netflixhas reached another level in this genre with its brilliant TV adaptation ofOne Hundred Years of Solitude.
As Macondo grows, so too do the Buendias, often in an unpredictable manner.
Aided by Marquez deployment of magical realism, odd supernatural events are commonplace for the Buendia family.
Her family gets back to work without her.
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Its a lot.
And as its title promises, there is indeed 100 years of it.
He was right to do so.
Marquez died in April 2014, just as the media landscape was changing significantly.
Of course, the reality of streaming hasnt always lived up to the promise of it.
Rather than exploiting the diverse formatting potential, streaming algorithms have increasingly locked them into distinct patterns.
Perhaps youve observed that every Netflix documentary venture has arbitrarily become a docuseries with preciselythreeepisodeseach.
None of this is to mention the frustrating phenomenon of the careless 3 a.m.
ET release times that rob properties of any sense of excitement.
And that feels like precisely what has happened withOne Hundred Years of Solitude.
There is no version of aOne Hundred Years of Solitudemovie that works.
Any amount of cuts for time to Marquez masterwork would be criminal.
Similarly, a more conventional miniseries presentation on a internet would prove fruitless as well.
Marquez text is wonderfully resistant to sensible timelines and narratives.
Thankfully,this title is both.
The series was filmed in collaboration with the writers family, who sold Netflix the rights in 2019.
It was shot exclusively in Colombia, with Colombian actors, and in Spanish.
One Hundred Years of Solitudeis a good TV show.
Its real value to the culture is a little more complex than just that though.
The series is an expensive televisual museum exhibit for one of the Western worlds most important novels.
If it hadnt,One Hundred Years of Solitudecouldnt have lived anywhere else.
All eight episodes of One Hundred Years of Solitude season 1 are available to stream on Netflix now.
Season 2 has been filmed but does not yet have a release date.
