I was finally able, thanks to the Colombian DVD version, to see this film again after twenty years. I saw immediately what drew me to it in the first place.
What's so special is all basically extraneous to the plotting. The photography is basically a sequence of stills, but what stills! - full benefit of the exoticism of the setting was realized (some was shot in a village chosen as the fictional "Macondo", some in Cartagena), and all in a very high colour. A lot of attention was paid to the appearance of the characters as well - Muti/Everett/Delon became a sort of programme music to commemorate human beauty, and I really liked the reluctantly avenging twins. Another technical trick was the scantiness of the soundtrack; there were times when I would have liked a bit more dialogue, but some of the long silences (like Bayardo and Angela in the rowboat) spoke for themselves, as it were.
Speaking of soundtrack, why were Rupert Everett's lines dubbed into Spanish? I know it avoids the need for subtitles; but it was so out of sync with the movement of his mouth as to be ridiculous, and his use of English (apparently sullenness rather than bad Spanish - so said the flyer at the 1987 Montreal Film Festival) added to the fish-out-of-water, if not actually exotic, characterization of Bayardo.
What really troubled me, and it would be unfair not to say so, was the narrative frame that Garcia Marquez adopted for the screenplay. It was clumsy to have Cristo Bedoya as both character and objective narrator, and the external narrator of the novel might have been kept as a voice-over device. And (SPOILER HERE) the final scene wasn't plausible; being untrue to the novel is no big deal, but it was so far beyond belief as to have harmed the film. Why not just finish with the body of Santiago Nasar lying in the sand? But it's a WONDERFUL piece of film-making. It deserves far more attention than it's had to date.
What's so special is all basically extraneous to the plotting. The photography is basically a sequence of stills, but what stills! - full benefit of the exoticism of the setting was realized (some was shot in a village chosen as the fictional "Macondo", some in Cartagena), and all in a very high colour. A lot of attention was paid to the appearance of the characters as well - Muti/Everett/Delon became a sort of programme music to commemorate human beauty, and I really liked the reluctantly avenging twins. Another technical trick was the scantiness of the soundtrack; there were times when I would have liked a bit more dialogue, but some of the long silences (like Bayardo and Angela in the rowboat) spoke for themselves, as it were.
Speaking of soundtrack, why were Rupert Everett's lines dubbed into Spanish? I know it avoids the need for subtitles; but it was so out of sync with the movement of his mouth as to be ridiculous, and his use of English (apparently sullenness rather than bad Spanish - so said the flyer at the 1987 Montreal Film Festival) added to the fish-out-of-water, if not actually exotic, characterization of Bayardo.
What really troubled me, and it would be unfair not to say so, was the narrative frame that Garcia Marquez adopted for the screenplay. It was clumsy to have Cristo Bedoya as both character and objective narrator, and the external narrator of the novel might have been kept as a voice-over device. And (SPOILER HERE) the final scene wasn't plausible; being untrue to the novel is no big deal, but it was so far beyond belief as to have harmed the film. Why not just finish with the body of Santiago Nasar lying in the sand? But it's a WONDERFUL piece of film-making. It deserves far more attention than it's had to date.
Tell Your Friends