The city of Macondo by no means existed. It was by no means imagined to. And but, right here it’s.
The idyllic city in Colombia was the imaginary setting for “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the 1967 novel that helped Gabriel García Márquez win the Nobel Prize and that, over time, led to many presents from Hollywood to create an adaptation.
The creator all the time refused, insisting that his novel, wherein the actual and fantastical converge, may by no means be rendered onscreen. His Macondo, he mentioned, may by no means be constructed.
However now, in a rambling area outdoors the town of Ibagué, stands Macondo. Constructed by Netflix from the bottom up for the first-ever display adaptation of the novel, the city has actual birds nesting in its bushes and canines wandering its slender streets.
García Márquez didn’t need Hollywood to make a film from his e book, his son Rodrigo García mentioned, as a result of he couldn’t image English-speaking actors taking part in the Buendías, the household on the heart of the novel. Nor may he see the epic story being squeezed into two hours — or three, or 4, for that matter.
After which there was the problem of magical realism, which the creator used to conjure his expertise of Latin America’s capricious, stranger-than-fiction actuality.
Within the novel, which opens within the Nineteenth century, the individuals of Macondo marvel at issues already thought of atypical elsewhere: a daguerreotype machine, magnets, ice. However nobody questions the presence of a ghost — or whether or not a child may be born with the tail of a pig or flowers fall like rain from the sky.
Flowers raining down on Úrsula, the matriarch of the Buendía household.
Pablo Arellano/Netflix
Onscreen, magical realism has proved notoriously onerous to duplicate: The visible results used to create such photos previously tipped at occasions into fantasy or horror, or simply regarded foolish. The 2007 movie adaptation of “Love within the Time of Cholera,” the creator’s different best-known e book, was a box-office flop.
However within the decade since García Márquez died, a lot has modified and, in a flip he couldn’t have imagined, Netflix has been in a position to overcome his previous objections.
For one, the streaming big may make a big-budget adaptation of the novel in Spanish, having proved the worldwide enchantment of Latin American content material with hits like “Narcos” and “Roma.”
Netflix may additionally make a sequence, not a movie, giving the plot extra room to stretch out. Lastly, it may movie it within the creator’s native Colombia, with principally Colombian actors, mentioned Francisco Ramos, the corporate’s vp of content material for Latin America. Netflix may make “Cien Años de Soledad,” not “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
The creator’s household mentioned sure, and the primary season, made up of eight hourlong episodes, airs on Dec. 11. The second is in progress.
García, the creator’s son, mentioned the household had agreed partially as a result of they felt a sequence may produce “the feeling of getting skilled 100 years of life,” which is a trademark of the e book, he mentioned.
“That, to me, is what’s vital,” he mentioned. “It’s the entire expertise of immersing your self.”
And so now, Macondo — and a studious reproduction of the Buendía house, sheltered beneath a hangar — have turn out to be actuality.
They’re so actual, so immersive, in actual fact, that generally the actors aren’t positive the place the fiction begins or ends.
On a current afternoon, because the actor who performs an older Úrsula, the Buendía matriarch, ready to shoot a scene within the kitchen, she held out an egg earlier than cracking it on a bowl and laughed.
“Is it actual, or is it pretend?” requested the actor, Marleyda Soto.
The actress taking part in Úrsula, Marleyda Soto, and Laura Mora, the co-director of the sequence.
A complete dedication to recreating actuality, or the novel’s model of actuality, would information their work, the creators determined. With that, would they — lastly — get magical realism proper?
Inside Macondo
In Colombia, the place García Márquez seems on the foreign money, many individuals can recite his e book’s opening strains: “A few years later, as he confronted the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to do not forget that distant afternoon when his father took him to find ice.”
Within the sequence, the scene lets viewers see how what may seem atypical elsewhere is usually skilled as magical in Macondo, a city remoted by a dense jungle swamp close to the Caribbean coast.
When ice involves the city for the primary time, it’s not only a novelty, an indication of modernity, however an otherworldly spectacle. Mirroring the creator’s elaborate description of the second, and hewing carefully to the textual content, the filmmakers create a theatrical scene wherein mild and shadow evoke an virtually non secular expertise.
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When it was opened by the large, the chest gave off a glacial exhalation. Inside there was solely an infinite, clear block with infinite inside needles wherein the sunshine of the sundown was damaged up into coloured stars. Disconcerted, realizing that the kids have been ready for an instantaneous rationalization, José Arcadio Buendía ventured a murmur:
“It’s the biggest diamond on the earth.”
“No,” the gypsy countered. “It’s ice.”
1970 translation by Gregory Rabassa
The ice additionally alerts the arrival of the primary outsiders to Macondo. They’re a troupe of gypsies who deliver the esoteric data — and primary scientific devices — that appeal José Arcadio, the Quixote-like household patriarch.
He finally units to work on alchemy, melting down his spouse’s gold cash and leaving his household to fend for itself. Whereas his head is buried in a e book, one among his sons runs off with the gypsies. Later, his daughter almost floats off in her bassinet. He casually pulls her down, extra irritated by the distraction than amazed.
Like different scenes the place the unattainable happens, the second is offered within the sequence with out drama or fanfare, a lot as it’s within the novel by the creator.
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Someday Amaranta’s basket started to maneuver by itself and made a whole flip in regards to the room, to the consternation of Aureliano, who hurried to cease it. However his father didn’t get upset. He put the basket as an alternative and tied it to the leg of a desk…
1970 translation by Gregory Rabassa
That method was a part of “visually capturing a particular e book,” mentioned Alex García López, one of many first season’s two administrators. “That is the tradition of the Caribbean,” he mentioned, the place Catholic mysticism mingles with Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean beliefs about life and loss of life, the physique and the soul.
Portraying actuality as it’s skilled by the characters grew to become the guiding imaginative and prescient of the challenge, mentioned García López. What’s acquainted, what’s theirs, is taken without any consideration; the brand new enchants and in the end destroys.
That’s sturdy social commentary. Additionally it is playful, mentioned García López, who’s from Argentina. “It’s typical of Latin America,” he mentioned, “to assume that every little thing that comes from overseas is best than what we’ve got at house.”
The following figures to deliver the skin world to Macondo are a Justice of the Peace from the capital and a priest, the personification of politics and arranged faith.
Towards the desires of the Buendías, they remodel the city, portray homes within the blue of their political get together and erecting a church. Just like the gypsies, in addition they declare one of many household’s sons, who will head to struggle.
A lot of the first season is dedicated to telling this story.
“Ninety p.c of the e book, and the sequence, offers with Colombian historical past and the home passions and traumas of this household,” mentioned José Rivera, the screenwriter and playwright who produced the primary draft of the screenplay.
“When the magic does occur, it’s startling,” he mentioned. “It’s beautiful, as a result of it falls in the course of very on a regular basis realism.”
A scene the place Úrsula learns of the loss of life of one among her sons is an instance of magic going down inside atypical every day life. A trickle of his blood travels by the city to succeed in her.
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A trickle of blood got here out beneath the door, crossed the lounge, went out into the road, continued on in a straight line throughout the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, handed alongside the Road of the Turks, turned a nook to the best and one other to the left, made a proper angle on the Buendía home, went in beneath the closed door, crossed by the parlor, hugging the partitions in order to not stain the rugs, went on to the opposite lounge, made a large curve to keep away from the eating room desk, went alongside the porch with the begonias, and handed with out being seen beneath Amaranta’s chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went by the pantry and got here out within the kitchen, the place Úrsula was on the brink of crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
1970 translation by Gregory Rabassa
Úrsula is shocked not by the journey the blood has taken, however by the ominous message she sees in it. It’s “her sixth sense” made seen, mentioned García López, who directed the scene.
Flesh and Blood
To maintain the manufacturing grounded within the characters’ actuality, the filmmakers shot the scenes involving magical realism in entrance of the digicam, avoiding visible results each time attainable, mentioned Laura Mora, who’s co-directing the sequence.
“That needed to do with a proper determination on our half,” Mora mentioned. “‘Every part has to really feel very home made, very analog, very, very on-camera.’”
So, for instance, the ghost that haunts the Buendías was not a translucent apparition made in postproduction, the administrators mentioned. He was a flesh-and-blood actor — with numerous blood.
The ghost seems repeatedly making an attempt to staunch a bleeding wound.
Mauro González/Netflix
Likewise, the scene wherein the city’s priest levitates after consuming scorching chocolate was not filmed in a studio towards a display. The actor was hauled up proper on the set, utilizing ropes and harnesses.
The harness and ropes lifting the priest have been eliminated in postproduction.
Netflix
And within the memorable scene when it rains flowers, 1000’s of actual (and plastic) flowers really did fall from above whereas the cameras have been rolling.
Actual flowers have been supplemented with flowers made utilizing visible results.
Netflix
Mora mentioned the hope was that if the magical scenes regarded similar to the remainder of the drama, they’d be extra convincing.
“For the actors, that was pleasant, as a result of every little thing was taking place on the set,” Mora mentioned. Nobody needed to be informed to think about issues that weren’t there, she mentioned. “That was actually stunning.”
A Homage to Colombia
The city of Macondo embodies the dedication Netflix made to the creator’s household when it obtained the rights to the e book in 2018.
No sequence on this scale had been made in Colombia earlier than. In constructing the city, an effort that took a whole lot of employees greater than a 12 months, Netflix gave actuality to a bygone world, recreating the Colombia that García Márquez had created, right down to the small print.
On a current, sweltering afternoon, Bárbara Enríquez walked by Macondo, a set she helped create as one of many two manufacturing designers on the sequence. She pointed to a towering rubber tree, which was all that had stood within the area earlier than.
The placement was chosen partially due to this tree.
Now it was the middle of a city stuffed with buildings modeled on architectural kinds from the Nineteenth century, she mentioned: vernacular, Colonial, Republican. There was the e book’s bordello and bar, Catarino’s, its faculty, lodge and church. Dozens of species of crops have been shipped in by the panorama designer to recreate the flora of the Caribbean coast.
Enríquez, who designed the set for the 2018 movie “Roma,” stepped into the city’s basic retailer.
Her staff scoured the nation for the vintage furnishings on the set. She pointed to a woven basket: They commissioned Colombian craftspeople to weave them, together with hats, hammocks and the distinctive shoulder baggage referred to as mochilas.
Hats used within the sequence, and the final retailer.
To recreate Macondo, Netflix additionally relied on museums, paperwork, researchers and historians. The costume designer used drawings made by a Nineteenth-century traveler and a authorities fee to create a wardrobe of 1000’s of clothes.
“In the long run,” mentioned Enríquez, “‘One Hundred Years’ is a homage to Colombia.”
The artistic crew needed to sit down for Colombian historical past classes, studying in regards to the Thousand Days’ Conflict, the brutal civil battle that performs a pivotal function within the first season.
The actors needed to study to talk within the regional Costeño accent, and likewise to put in writing longhand, in ink, to stitch and embroider. They took to calling it “The Faculty of One Hundred Years.”
Costumes have been aged on the set.
Within the course of, everybody on set realized that many scenes from the e book that seem fantastical have been a part of García Márquez’s life.
In his writings, the creator revealed it was his sister who, like a little bit lady adopted by the Buendías, ate filth. And there actually was a priest within the area who was mentioned to levitate when he drank wine from the chalice. (García Márquez mentioned he swapped the wine for warm chocolate as a result of he discovered that extra plausible.)
“You notice, OK, what he’s doing right here is he’s narrating the tales of the world he was born into,” Mora, the director, mentioned. “Magical realism is a reputation that the teachers have utilized.”
The forged, most of whom are Colombian like Mora, got here to see the sequence that means, too — as a means of bringing to life not solely a fiction born from one man’s creativeness, but additionally their nation’s wealthy, if painful, historical past, and its inimitable tradition.
Mora, the director, used this pocket book to plan shoots.
Due to the care delivered to that effort, the small print accumulate to make Macondo appear actual, mentioned Enríquez, the manufacturing designer. “They might not all be seen, however they are often felt.”
The primary season recreates the Nineteenth century; the second will comply with Macondo into the twentieth. Enríquez mentioned she hoped the deeply researched manufacturing would work like a time machine, making Colombians say, “That’s proper, it was similar to that.”
In the long run, “you enter into the fiction,” she mentioned. “Everybody enters the world of the fiction, and also you embrace it.”
