Last night I started watching One Hundred Years of Solitude on Netflix, a Colombian series based on the homonymous novel by Márquez. I watched the first two episodes, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue. Why? The experience feels far too faint compared to what the novel stirred in me decades ago.

There could be a number of reasons for this. First of all, it might be the difference in rhythm between reading and watching a film. Reading allows for a personal pace, letting you pause, imagine, reflect. This flexibility creates space for deeper exploration and enables more vivid emotional experience. In contrast, a film unfolds at a predetermined pace, which often leaves little time for meditation or immersion — and as a result, you can end up skimming the surface.

There seems to be another factor at play. Literature enables you, the reader, to be a co-creator — allowing you to form your own images and grasp messages in your own way. This personal contribution enhances emotional resonance and your connection to the world of the novel. In film, although visual images can create a powerful atmosphere, they also limit the viewer’s imaginative engagement, since the director’s vision is imposed — often reducing the space for individual interpretation.

The fact that Márquez’s novel belongs to the genre of magical realism perhaps makes it even harder to adapt to the screen. With words, one can more easily and effectively blend the real with the fantastical — something that’s harder to do with film images, or at least not always done successfully.

This leads to another point: between Márquez’s genius and the director’s (and their team's) capabilities, there seems to be a wide — perhaps even natural — gap.

The reason? Either geniuses of Gabriel García Márquez’s stature appear only rarely — or good directors are becoming rarer and rarer.