Gabriel García Márquez resisted all offers to turn his best-known novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” into a film. Though the Colombian writer loved cinema, he was wary of how Hollywood would reshape his 1967 book.
After his death a decade ago, though, his family agreed to allow Netflix to adapt the novel. His son, Rodrigo García, explained that Netflix had offered to create a Spanish-language series, filmed in Colombia, with a mainly Colombian cast — an approach that seemed to honor his father’s creation.
Before the first season of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (“Cien Años de Soledad”) was released last month, I traveled to Colombia to go behind the scenes of the series. In a multimedia project, which The Times published earlier this month, we showed how the directors approached the book’s magical realism, in which ghosts, flower storms and levitating characters appear amid everyday life.
I was born and partly raised in Colombia, and my father was Colombian. So I was curious about what it was like to film this series in Colombia, where García Márquez is generally revered: He appears on the 50,000-peso bill, and students memorize the first lines of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in school.
What did it mean to create Macondo, the imaginary town at the heart of the novel, in the author’s home country?
I flew from New York to Bogotá, then to the smaller city of Ibagué; Netflix had built Macondo on a cattle ranch on the city’s outskirts. To my surprise, the artificial town, with its view of the Andes Mountains, reminded me of real places.
Walking through the 19th-century Macondo, I didn’t just think of the world of the book; I thought of the towns I had visited with my family during my childhood. The civil conflict that had ravaged Colombia in the 20th century also preserved much of its beautiful countryside and small villages, which, in some places, remained frozen in time.
The production designers, Eugenio Caballero and Bárbara Enríquez, both from Mexico, created the Oscar-nominated set of the film “Roma.” (Caballero also won an Oscar for best art direction for “Pan’s Labyrinth”). Here, too, they spared no effort to make a set that was historically accurate, down to the posters on the Colonial-style buildings and the candles that dripped mountains of wax on the bar at Catarino’s, the tavern from the book.
This wasn’t the Disney version of Colombia in the movie “Encanto.” It felt earthy and real.
Another thing that struck me was the pride of the Colombian cast and crew, which was palpable. I saw it in the costume crew as its members prepared garments; in the care of the man who served coffee from a cart. Many on the set considered it an honor to be part of the project. Several people told me it would be the most important work they would ever do.
That pride is tied to García Márquez’s stature in Colombia — and the importance of this book, in particular. But it also has something to do with Colombia’s image outside the country, which for decades has been dominated by Pablo Escobar and the drug trade. “Narcos,” another Netflix production, portrays that Colombia. Among other things, that image fails to capture the reality of Colombia’s decades-long civil conflict: the massacres, the displacement of millions, the horrors experienced by ordinary people.
Many on the set of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” lived through that violence. Laura Mora, one of the directors of the series, lost her father, a lawyer and academic, when a hit man shot him in Medellín more than 20 years ago.
García Márquez never denied Colombia’s violent history. While readers tend to remember “One Hundred Years of Solitude” for its beauty — “the little butterflies,” said Camila Brugés, one of the Colombian screenwriters — at its core, she said, it’s “very dark.” The Netflix series, too, is full of darkness: war, death, intergenerational trauma. But it also invites viewers into a visually gorgeous world where characters find meaning, even humor, amid the violence.
I expect that this — along with the set design, the distinctive rhythms of the soundtrack, the light that falls over Macondo — will ring true with Colombians, and bring back memories. The series may also reveal to international viewers a different Colombia than the one they’ve previously seen onscreen.
That, to me, is an accomplishment worthy of García Márquez.
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