Netflix has adapted Gabriel García Márquez’s brilliant creation One Hundred Years of Solitude Savvy TV marked an apparently good year for literary adaptations this December. At least on TV. 2024 regularly saw stories old and new from the republic of letters to the republic of moving images. But it was TV that won more spectacular victories in its columns than cinema. Diminishing returns haven’t stopped the blockbuster parade of comic book movies from moving forward with rock-ribbed vaudeville. And the studio has no intention of stopping. There were less than a handful of big-screen iterations we could describe as an outright success.
One of that handful was a pleasant surprise wild robotAuthor-illustrator Peter Brown’s middle grade book trilogy was always intended for animated retellings. In charge of the retailing was veteran Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), with DreamWorks Animation producing. Lupita Nyong’o voices a robot named Rose, who travels to a remote island and cares for an orphaned cow and all the animals in the forest. Hand-painted landscapes are full of the power to appeal to a child’s sense of curiosity about the natural world. The animation captures Rose’s journey as she goes from feeling out of place and unused to learning the wild language and overcoming the boundaries of what she has been programmed to do. It enriches a story about self-growth and found family. This teaches Rose what it means to be a parent and part of a community. And it emphasizes the abundant beauty of nature without diluting its harshness. It is Sanders’ loyalty to the medium, his imaginative desires, and all of its possibilities that give the film its soul.
If filming the unfilmable wasn’t already a delicate challenge, regional fans can make it even more challenging. Denis Villeneuve’s Two-Part dune The saga proved in short that it is not impossible to walk the fine line between loyalty and flexibility. The cinematic medium can be as inaccessible to characters’ interior landscapes as Frank Herbert’s desert planet of Arrakis. But a skilled group of artists and a little rewiring with visual correlations manage to transform a tome full of introspection and exposition into a goose-bump-like spectacle of epic maelstrom. Villeneuve broadly follows the main features of Herbert’s story about a future war for resources. He validates his fears about colonialism, faith, and false messiahs, while managing to make the exploration of these big ideas more intuitive than preachy. He connects the film to the same imaginative range that gave the book its status as a monumental work of science fiction. In the process, he also creates images and sequences worth saving in a time capsule.
What many people might not have expected is Patricia Highsmith’s latest retelling talented mr ripley and James Clavell’s Shogun will be two of the best and most engaging shows of the year on television and streaming. Still, it was pleasant to see. Andrew Scott makes the role of the slippery Ripley his own with an ice-cold gaze and a distinct physicality. Gone are the blue waters and sun-kissed colors of the Italian coastline from René Clément and Anthony Minghella’s versions. Instead, producer Steven Zaillian has imbued Highsmith’s chameleon into noir chic with shadows, silhouettes, stairs, and a Caravaggio fetish. The show is constantly in conversation with the baroque bad guy who was on the run for murder in the years before his death – not unlike our thug with no conscience. Death, violence and repressed sexuality haunt the 16th-century painter’s tenth work just as they do throughout the eight-episode light-and-shadow drama. Black and white photography, crystal clear, crisp and angular, is enough to put you under its spell. The show, along with the recent film Saltburn, proves how well suited Highsmith’s story of murder and self-invention is to this era of contemporary anxieties, hustlers and strugglers. The author herself could not have anticipated its lasting resonance.
Shogun The samurai code, power struggles and nosy Englishmen had enthralled the audience right from the first episode. From there, as all the pawns and players make their moves, the story becomes more interesting with each passing hour. Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks deepen the Japanese perspective of James Clavell’s 1975 historical novel, and therein lies its strength. There’s plenty of slapstick here, but none as mesmerizing as the cool calmness and determination of Anna Sawai’s Mariko-sama. Tadanobu Asano’s Yabushige-sama’s Two-Timing comes in second place.
Of course this year was not without damp squibs. Netflix’s take on Boccaccio DecameronIt was a little rough around the edges, calling out the text’s irreverent feeling in the face of an existential crisis, but capturing a few laughs and having none of its medieval response. The streaming giant spent millions of dollars to bring on Liu Cixin remembrance of earth’s past Trilogy of life on screen, 3 physical problems Sounded like wet concrete, like a twice-translated work from a corporate committee, deprived of a clear author’s voice. with hbo sympatheticPark Chan-wook and Don McKellar fared much better because they didn’t sink their voices entirely in service of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s bold vision. The show flourishes when it becomes something completely different. It never comes across as a dehydrated and salvaged version of the novel, in fear of straying too far from the story’s guiding ropes. As it portrays the Vietnam War and its consequences through the eyes of a Viet Cong double agent, it introduces us to a story about history and memory, identity and cognitive dissonance, acculturation and displacement. If the scene 3 physical problems The scenery is flat and dull sympathetic Platforms and platforms. And that makes all the difference.
The rivals were perhaps less announced but no less attractive. Start with Dame Jilly Cooper’s novel about the cutthroat world of broadcasting, full of posh types with posh names (like Rupert Campell-Blank) and quoting Yeats, romancing al fresco and posing in the nude. plays tennis. Put together a brilliant group of actors (led by David Tennant, Alex Hassell and Aidan Turner) so that the lines land with a razor-sharp edge to the writer’s rhythm. And you’ve prepared yourself a disgusting jamboree that’s far too entertaining for an appointment. Ambition, betrayal, greed, revenge and good old-fashioned hedonism were the hallmarks of Rivals, the second entry in Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles series. Disney+’s sexiest show of 2024 actively engages with its source material, confronting the casual abuse of power, sexism, racism, homophobia and all the hypocrisy of sexist elitism during the Thatcher era. The main thing is to have fun while doing the show.
One Hundred Years of Solitude It was a textbook example of an unfilmable book. Had to grapple with the challenge of its story spanning generations. Then there is its vast cast of characters, its endless symbolism and asides, its exquisite blend of myth, history, memory, language, culture and nature – with a touch of magic. With eight of the 16 episodes that have dropped on Netflix so far, it looks like we’ll be hard pressed to rise to the challenge. It has been exhilarating to see all the components of Marquez’s complex literary latticework come together so beautifully. Rather than hacking through a novel for a concise film, a 16 episode show undoubtedly offers more room to break the boundaries of easy solutions while still paying respect to the original. But this isn’t a show that relies too heavily on the borrowed prestige of its source material to elevate itself. Although it helps. The deeply considered page-to-screen translation makes a Macondo worthy of worship. A flood of rich textures reverberate through images and sounds, from the creation of the mythical city through evolution and revolutions to its ultimate end. If you’ve read the book, you can practically smell and taste the air of Macondo while watching the show. And when the first part ends, you feel this pang that makes you wish you were still living it, so much so that you feel like going back and reading the book again. There is no better indicator of a successful adaptation.
*Note: Film adaptation by William S. Burroughs Weird and Colson Whitehead’s nickel boys At the time of writing this article is yet to be released in India.
Prahlad Srihari is a film and pop culture writer. He lives in Bengaluru.
