Netflix’s One Hundred Years of Solitude Breathes Life Into a Classic ‘Unfilmable’ Novel

‘Unfilmable’ books come in more than one variety. The classic examples are modernist masterpieces like Ulysses, in which James Joyce dilates a day to 732 pages and switches stylistic conceits with each chapter, and Mrs. Dalloway, rooted in the interiority of Virginia Woolf’s protagonist. (Film adaptations of both titles exist, though their relative obscurity speaks for itself.) One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Colombian literary giant Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 magnum opus, presents different problems. It’s written in straightforward language. It certainly isn’t light on plot points or characters; in fact, it’s bursting with them. But to do justice to this novel would mean capturing its century-spanning sweep—the intricacy of the world García Márquez constructs, the balance he strikes between realism and magic, the metaphor and allusion layered into his prose, the momentum propelling each full-bodied paragraph. 

Considering the difficulty of the assignment, it’s remarkable how close Netflix’s splendid One Hundred Years of Solitude, whose eight-episode first part arrives on Dec. 11, comes to recreating not just the substance, but also the kinetic spirit of the book. Shot in Colombia, with an almost entirely Colombian cast and the blessing of García Márquez’s family (who, it’s worth noting, faced criticism this year for publishing his posthumous novel Until August against his wishes), the Spanish-language series took more than six years to realize. The patience afforded to the production shows in its monumental scale, as well as in the movement and detail that directors Alex García López (The Witcher) and Laura Mora (The Kings of the World) achieve on screen. Each hourlong episode contains dozens, maybe hundreds, of astonishing images.

Solitude traces the rise and fall of a family, a house, a town—and, in its most conspicuous layer of symbolism, a civilization—over the course of, yes, 100 years. In the early 19th century, young lovers José Arcadio Buendía (Marco Antonio González) and Úrsula Iguarán (Susana Morales) flee their stultifying village. Their marriage had been forbidden by their elders (understandably, as they were cousins, and family lore held that their offspring would be born with pig tails), and José Arcadio had slain a rival who made a crude joke at the couple’s expense. “We’ll find a place where the fears of our ancestors won’t weigh us down,” the future patriarch proclaims at the outset of their journey. “Where we can love each other in peace and raise a family.” 

After years of wandering, sometimes in circles, the Buendías and their followers settle on a patch of unoccupied land that José Arcadio gives the meaningless name Macondo. A frontier village springs up, where, he says, “no one can decide for others.” A visionary who later becomes an amateur inventor and alchemist, he has no intention of governing Macondo. He and Úrsula, whose pragmatism, moral clarity, and work ethic make her the perfect counterpart to her cerebral, impractical husband, set up a modest house with room to bring up their children, José Arcadio (Thiago Padilla), Aureliano (Jerónimo Echeverría), and Amaranta (Luna Ruíz). Several generations of Buendías, whose names are mostly variations on José Arcadio, Úrsula, Aureliano, and Amaranta follow.

As the family grows and prospers, Úrsula expands and redecorates until the little thatch-roofed house is a grand Victorian mansion, its every phase rendered with historical precision by production designer Bárbara Enríquez. Macondo develops beyond its primitive origins, too, even as its own Adam and Eve (or Romulus and Remus) presciently oppose much of what passes for progress. A magistrate appears, sent by the Colombian government to make the town official. His arrival opens the floodgates to the Church, Liberal and Conservative political parties, elections, firing squads, a war. The series captures these intertwined evolutions beautifully; cinematographers Paulo Pérez and María Sarasvati keep the camera in motion, gliding through the rooms of the house and the streets of Macondo and the landscapes beyond it where various Buendías’ fates take them. Surreal images from the novel that could easily have looked silly on screen—a rivulet of blood winds its way across town, from the home where a character dies to his family’s abode, for example—retain their poetic profundity.

Even more impressive is the extent to which Netflix’s Solitude tells a dynamic story without oversimplifying García Márquez’s grand themes: politics, religion, autonomy, love, civilization and its endless parade of discontents, and of course the scourge of solitude in all its many manifestations. Certain characters and performances stand out amid a collection of distinctive personalities. Claudio Cataño brings a haunting stillness to his portrayal of the grown-up Aureliano, a lost soul who searches for love in a girl too young to understand romance and for meaning in an impossible war. A nearly feral orphan who arrives on the Buendías’ doorstep with her parents’ bones in a burlap sack, Rebeca (Nicole Montenegro) retains her wildness into adulthood (when she's played by Akima). While the scripts are, out of necessity, much heavier on dialogue than the book, a combination of economical narration and well-placed silences keep the show from feeling too talky.

If Solitude has one flaw, it’s that it can seem almost too faithful to the book. To their great credit, the writers neither sanitize nor pruriently exploit ugly but symbolically meaningful aspects of the story, from self-harm to incest. But despite hints of humor and sensuality, this adaptation can sometimes lapse into the reverent formality of a Masterpiece miniseries. And in retaining García Márquez’s swift pace, lingering on elaborate bridal and battlefield set pieces but not on quieter revelations, it occasionally moves too quickly past crucial moments. A scene in which Aureliano, lost in the swamp, encounters an apparition of his father as a young man and the two discuss the cyclical nature of their wanderings is over virtually as soon as it begins.

But this is a minor complaint that shouldn’t detract from a major achievement. Emerging at the end of a big year for TV adaptations of unfilmable novels, from The Sympathizer to 3 Body Problem to Interior Chinatown, One Hundred Years of Solitude is among the best of the bunch.