Sunday, August 30, 2026
Cien Años de Soledad is the Spanish title for One Hundred Years of Solitude. I just finished the TV series and it's beautiful, so beautiful. I re-watched season 1 before season 2 and many times when I was watching it, I was like the people of Colombia must be and should be proud of this TV series. It's so beautifully and cleverly made. The cinematography, the play with the light, the actors - all were just so so great. It's a good companion to the book. I actually found the book not that easy to read, so to watch this, it just makes so many things easier to understand. Like for example, I was reminded that in season 1 there's a period where the whole village forgot things and when reading it, it may get hard to imagine, but watching it, I was like this is like dementia. So it's kinda easier to see what's happening. Everything about it was so so good.
When I started season 2 episode 1, I was like struck by the colour, it felt off, like what's going on. I had to google this thinking if I watched the correct thing. Google said yes indeed there's a tonal shift. Season 2 is the walk to the end for the Buendía family after all. There are actually funny bits, but the heartbreaks are plenty. What happened to Renata was heartbreaking, I was even also sad for her father. What happened to the banana workers, that kind of injustice to workers may still happen in many parts of the world right now, so you may get as depressed as José Arcadio Segundo. There are things that really still resonate right now, like the use of religion to oppress instead of something that brings blessings. Then when Úrsula died, the end of that formidable character, it's sad. I'm super impressed that the actress that played older Úrsula is actually not that old; she played it amazingly. Úrsula is the strongest female character I've ever read and it came through too in the TV series. What perhaps I forgot was that there were some mistakes too that Úrsula did, she's not perfect. When his husband died, it rained flowers, but the way Úrsula's funeral went, it was rather simple what with the town still dealing with the flood. A sad end.
I know the ending would be the ultimate end where all are going to be obliterated and the final episode is as it was. It centered on the last adult male Buendía descendant, Aureliano Babilonia, who I think is the most handsome Buendía. It's like a welcome suprise in this last episode, I cannot stop watching him :D It's three chapters of tragedy and he needed to witness it all until he's the last one standing to be wiped away. I do feel sad for him, but maybe in life we should remember and hold the happy moments we have even if there aren't many of them. His life was not easy, but he had moments where he was loved and have loved *sigh* I was looking at what I wrote about One Hundred Years of Solitude in this blog when I finished reading it 15 years ago and I wrote this line, somehow I feel that no matter how old I'll be, whichever stage my life is, I'll always have that feeling of restlessness - this is in relation to the members of the Buendía family who I found to be restless. How true that was, but I guess what that mind who's embarking on the last year of her 20s didn't know was how more and more difficult it actually gets. I guess as I myself am walking closer and closer to my end, my mind gets harder to tame. It's perhaps fate that people like me will have our own one hundred years of solitude? I digress, I just want to say how I really love Cien Años de Soledad. Watching it is like a gift. It also made me wish I could speak Spanish :D
Other thing that I did, I finished book 4, The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits. It tells a story of this 55-year old professor who might be leaving his wife or so he thought that's the plan. His wife had an affair 12 years ago. Throughout the years he hold it in because of the kids. Now that the youngest one is leaving for college, he thought okay now? When he dropped off his daughter in her dorm, he just continued on driving away and did not return home. He didn't actually have a plan and this whole book is like in a span of a week or so. He finally reached his son in the other side of the country. Then his weird medical conditions manifested badly and so if I have to answer the title of this book, I guess the rest of their lives would be spent figuring out how to deal with what this man is having as a family. A medical emergency in a family does pause life, I had experienced that. It was an okay book. The prof is like talking to us, the readers, as he runs through his thoughts. So we're like in the car with him on his drive, but I guess the bad thing was we cannot talk back and question him. I wouldn't say this book leaves a deep impression in me. Though I got me thinking as I look around my surrounding, there could be many people in this same stage of their life re-examining their marriages, their kids, and their lives throughout the years being in those marriages and raising their kids.
:) eKa @ 10:23:00 PM • 0 comments
bluesky.
photos.
archives.