"... the family at the center of the novel. Nor could he see the epic story being squeezed into two hours — or three, or four, for that matter. And then there was the issue of magical realism... Onscreen... [t]he visual effects used to create such images in the past tipped at times into fantasy or horror, or just looked silly.... But in the decade since García Márquez died, much has changed... For one, the streaming giant could make a big-budget adaptation of the novel in Spanish... [and] could also make a series, not a film, giving the plot more room to stretch out. Finally, it could film it in the author’s native Colombia, with mostly Colombian actors.... The author’s family said yes, and the first season, made up of eight hourlong episodes, airs on Dec. 11. The second is in progress. García, the author’s son, said the family had agreed in part because they felt a series could produce 'the sensation of having experienced 100 years of life,' which is a hallmark of the book...."
From
"How Netflix Made Magic Look Real in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’/The series, which will be released this week, adapts the novel for the screen for the first time. Even the author didn’t think it was possible" (NYT). That's a free-access link, so you can see the stills and video, along with passages from the much-loved book.
I hope the series is great, and I'd love to see more of the great long novels done as a series with many episodes.
পোস্টগুলি
৪৩টি মন্তব্য:
But in the decade since García Márquez died, much has changed
…where much being the major impediment to Hollywood wrecking things had been dead for ten years…
I loved the book. I'm looking forward to seeing how it looks on the screen
Netflix has been very good at bringing international content to America. Magical realism and the Christmas season seem like a good match. Thanks for the heads up; we'll try this.
My only qualm is that Hollywood doesn't do Catholic very well. If the show will gently touch on the mysticism, then that could be beautiful.
I just finished auditing a course on Proust. We didn't read every word (lordy!), but we read a lot. We also watched 3 film versions. They're differently great from each other and from the novel, but it's a worthy challenge. I'd love to see Netflix take on Lost Time!! Next semester I'm going to start over at the beginning and try to read every word.
Hollywood's standard processes:
1. Buy stories from living authors if they will sell them. Transform them into something commercial with lots of sex and violence, but that miss the point. See Blair Witch 1 vs. 2. See Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novel vs. Swedish vs. English films.
2. Buy recent classic stories from the family of a dead author for a huge amount of money. Maybe follow the original (Lord of the Rings), or maybe corrupt it into something truly horrid (e.g., The Hobbit; Amazon's Tolkein stuff).
3. Avoid paying the author a dime by riffing on the original story and changing it enough to avoid a lawsuit. See the Buchwald vs. Eddie Murphy lawsuit regarding "Coming to America."
"The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha"
"...as "Sancho's spirit ascends from reality to illusion, Don Quixote's declines from illusion to reality". Salvador de Madariaga
Wikipedia
With modern AI and CGI, and the need for endless content, someone could do the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin series.
The series is serendipitous to me: I finally got around to reading the novel about 6 months ago. I saw an ad for the series and wasn't paying much attention, but the image of the main character showing his sons the ice was just as I pictured it in my mind. Looking forward to seeing this.
I did not know this was being attempted. So looking forward to it.
I read the book so long all I remember is the hero was always drinking cups of steaming hot black coffee.
I ought to try rereading Proust. I read the CK Scott Moncrieff translation as a teenager and surely missed an awful lot. I watched one adaptation (with John Malkovich as the Baron Charlus, I think) and it was fine, but didn't really feel like the novel.
"With modern AI and CGI, and the need for endless content, someone could do the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin series."
But please note that this article is about the great care taken to create the scenes in the book *without* using CGI. They built the town of Macondo and when magical things happen, they happened in the actors' real space and were not simply added later. The actors see and relate to a rain of flowers, for example. It was hard to make the magic described in the book seem special in the way it feels to a reader because there is so much CGI around that we're blasé about seeing anything on screen. Nothing is magic. They had to overcome that problem.
I read “100 Years” in the mid-70s, and again in the late 90s when my daughter was a high school senior. Loved it both times, but wondered how it could ever be adapted by Hollywood and retain the book’s “magical feeling.” I look forward to checking out this new effort.
A movie series (specifically, a limited series of 6-8 episodes) is the perfect medium for this kind of book. And Netflix has started to get the knack of this kind of production with some excellent limited series, both domestic and international. A single 2-hour movie can't capture novels with long timeframes, complex plots, or multi-generational character development.
Really looking forward to seeing what they do with this one, and particularly if it's set and cast in Colombia.
The atmospherics reminded me of the Big Fish. Very nice article.Thanks.
I have read several GGM books. His imagery and use of language (translated from Spanish) is really something special. I have serious doubts that his works would translate to movies, at least for his fans like me.
"Also" Said his grandson, "It's a Hell of a good payday from the old geezer"
John Henry
When you think of long form novels, the first one that probably comes to most minds is "War and Peace"
And when folks say that it is only recently that long form adaptations, expecially those requiring large casts and lots of special effects have become possible, I would point them to "War and Peace" The 1972 version (53 years "recent") with cast of thousands and lots of battle scenes.
BBC did it in 20 45 minute episodes and it is terrific! I am currently on episode 7 in my 5th or 6th time watching it over the past 5 years.
Available on YouTube and a helluva watch.
They have always been able to bring long-form novels to TV. They just don't.
John Henry
Our preferred modes of story telling have changed. Stories that last only two hours seem too short, we want eight-hour stories. Moreover, the two- hour story seems contrived, since every scene and every character serves the plot (anything extraneous will be cut for budgetary reasons). In an eight-hour story there are more plot threads and more combinations of characters on the screen that lead in various directions, adding complexity and interest, much as in a novel.
I tried to read War and Peace last year. I got maybe 200 pages in. It is a great read, interspersed every 50-100 pages with some of Tolstoy's deep thinking. I managed to force myself through a couple of interludes but then got to one that stooped me cold. I keep meaning to go back but have not mustered the willpower to do so.
John Henry
They have. "Master and Commander" 15 years ago crammed elements from all of the series into one movie. Great movie and it was fun to sit there and think "Ahhh.... I remember this scene from (book name).
"Justified" did something like that with all of Elmore Leonard's books. Taking story lines and scenes from different books and weaving them into a series. I'm a big Leonard fan and found the series a great tribute albeit somewhat cartoonish.
John Henry
Agree completely. I seldom watch movies anymore. I mostly watch series (recently rebinged 18 hours of "Happy Valley") even a 3 hour movie doesn't develop as much as I would like. A series, especially a continuing series, can really stretch out.
The other problem I find is that it takes me so long to find something to watch, I don't like spending 20 minutes searching just to get 2 hours of screentime.
John Henry
For years it's been weird that Fidelista Gabo had a son working at HBO, the heart and soul of Yanqui imperialism. It must have made for some awkward Días de Acción de Gracias in the Garcia Marquez home.
I'd like to see the series. I didn't get very much out of the (audio)book, so I'm wondering what I missed.
Speaking of Happy Valley, it was originally made by Netflix. Not on Netflix anymore but available on Prime to buy.
I got confused when I watched the first ep, on Prime, and saw the Netflix logo.
John Henry
Never mind the magical realism - how are they going to show all the sex!?
JSM
I read a lot og GGM in the 80's, including One 100 Years of Solitude which I greatly enjoyed. I'll give the Netflix series a try. I think they did a reasonable good job adopting My Brilliant Friend, except for the last season, but that was adopting the last book of the series which was well under par.
I'm looking forward to watching it, but I am getting sick of the 2-, 3-, even 4-year breaks between seasons that we are subjected to by streaming platforms these days. Eight 1-hour episodes seems like enough for one book.
My experience is that if you loved the a book don't expect too much from the movie and visa versa.
Sometimes a great notion with Paul Newman is one, of a very few, exceptions.
John Henry
That coincides with the decline of the short story. It's not satisfying enough. People who still make the time to read novels aren't finding much time to read stories. Short stories are now mostly just what novelists and screenwriters do to hone their craft. It's curious that people now have shorter attention spans but prefer longer form entertainment. It may be because long arc television series stick in the mind. A 90-minute film is like a blip that's easily forgettable. The long arc series also gives us the satisfying experience of immersing ourselves in a world. While the old movie trailers used to start out "in a world" films gave us only a glimpse or an inkling of a world, while an HBO series fills out the picture.
I've always been a fan of the miniseries format and it's a shame that it fell out of fashion. But it looks like streaming is bringing it back.
At least it's not a franchise film, a sequel, a remake or a re-boot. It seems that's the majority of what Hollywood does these days. One of the reasons that streaming is doing so well is the new ideas it brings.
"Proust in his first book wrote about wrote about
Proust in his first book wrote about wrote about
Proust in his first book wrote about wrote about
He wrote about
He wrote about...the..."
They can also avoid paying authors using "Hollywood accounting." If the author is dumb enough to take a percentage of the profits, guess what? Even if the film takes in a billion dollars, it still loses money and there are suddenly no profits.
Magical realism is played out. The book was good but that was long ago. They should wait another 30 years or so to make it. But his family needs the money now.
50 years since assigned to read in college. It became judged a classic in record time.
Give me Gargantua and Pantagruel, with an unlimited budget for CGI to produce the cast of millions it requires. A bit, or perhaps a whole helluva lot, of Rabelais is exactly what this part of the 21st Century needs.
I'm sure I read the book, but I can't recall anything about it. As great books go, it didn't make that much of an impression. I'll definitely watch the mini series......I don't think magic realism is played out among Spanish and Latin-American writers. They live in a stranger world than we do, and the laws of physics play out differently there........Aside: Vanity Fair used to be considered the great novel of the 19th century. It's since fallen out of favor, but it's highly readable. I think Thackeray came along a generation or two after Jane Austen, but Vanity Fair is set in the same period. The movies and mini series based on Jane Austen books are nearly always pretty good. I think that's why they keep trying with Vanity Fair, but the three versions I've seen were disappointing.....The movie version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was just as good as the book. The thing is no one alive remembers the immigrant experience that the book and the movie depict. The book and the movie were loved in their moment, but that moment is gone. I suppose that's better than GWTW where that moment is now considered a false and pernicious memory;.
Pretentious lefty tripe-merchant.
I read 100 Years, but it seemed longer.
I agree about the Master and Commander movie. Also loved Justified (and agree about the cartoonish aspect).
I never read the novel (perhaps I will now).
My point about CGI is that making "realistic" sprawling 18th century scenes is a lot cheaper and easier than it used to be.
More O'Brien would be nice, if the quality could be maintained.
Hell, someone should do a serious run at the Hornblower books. Peck was fine in the movie, and Wotzizname too in that short-lived miniseries, but neither production exhausted the tales.
IIRC the otherwise lousy Baron Munchausen movie had some clever old-fashioned effects (or was there some CGI even then?)
Terry Gilliam went after that windmill for a while.
Lost in Mancha
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন