Comparison Among the Scripted Work and the Cinematographic Transposition of Love
Majority of hardcover books that I have enjoyed reading a lot, have made the leap to movies or TV because they have enjoyed great popularity, in addition to having a great story that can be told otherwise by a film director, transferring those ideas to images, although you do not believe it, half of the movies we see are founded by hardcover books, because some director, actor or producer ran into a hardcover book that moved him and wanted to do the same with others, touching that emotional fiber. This causes some hardcover books, it happens that when we read them we wake up that imaginative fiber, and this hardcover book we will talk about will not be the exception. The director Scott Steindorff who had read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's hardcover book, Love in the Times of Cholera, a few years ago and had fallen in love with history, tried for several years to have Gabriel Garcia Maqrquez sell him the rights of the story to make a film in the English language, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez was not interested, telling him that he would not make a 'hollywoodense' version of this hardcover book, and Gabo agrees for the sum of 3 million dollars, which at that time was A pretty good figure.
This film that began to shot in Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, passing through the Magdalena River, Barranquilla, and Santa Marta, had a soundtrack that would win a golden globe for the best original song in 2008 and that would also count on the collaboration of the Colombian singer Shakira, who was convinced by Gabriel Garcia himself to work for that movie since they were good friends.
The first project at the Rio de Janeiro festival and pre premiered in Las Vegas at an event where the singer Shakira would be performing by auctioning and allocating the funds collected for her foundation called Pies Descalzos, which helps many children in Colombia.
The film in the United States did not receive the best critics or the expected box office, but in Colombia, it was well received and the Colombians enjoyed it, although they had also not quite good reviews. We did an analysis and this was what we could determine, making a comparison with the literary work that without place and for obvious reasons is more complete.
The literary expression and that of cinema are not equal, so it is possible to find certain differences. Among the main criticisms that we can mention of this film adaptation is the use of a language other than that of the novel on which the film is based and different from the mother tongue of most actors, which leads to poor diction.
Another of the difference that we can notice is that in the film key parts of the novel are omitted, although the adapter in charge of transposing the script of the film, extracted from the novel most of its dialogues as they were in it, literal, it is difficult because it is not enough for the script of the film, because it is much longer and a film can not last 4 or 5 hours, even so, the script tries to keep everything written in his hardcover book by Gabriel Garcia. Also, try to keep the characters, but it is very difficult due to the extension or economy.
In conclusion, we have seen how the claim of fidelity to the written letter of a writer is not always sufficient to guarantee the correct transposition of the original literary material into the cinematographic medium.
Despite this, it is important to rescue all those characteristics that bring the film closer to the charm of literature, many of them allow us not only to identify with the protagonists but also allow us to place ourselves in their context and it is through them that It can be preserved in the film, in the original sense, as the features and essence of García Márquez. It is from this that we can find elements that present the bases of the novel, such as: the costumes, which take us to an amazing stage, which allows us to visualize the authentic characteristics that we must take into account, and also allows us to leave in clear the characteristics of each character and makes us feel as if we were in the first half of the last century. The scenography is equally important, that when approaching the old Colombia that shows its historical and social context, as they would be: the presence of civil wars, the diseases that are unleashed, the inequality between the social classes, and also the element of slavery symbolized the two in the work and in the film by the black race. On the other hand, the features offered by the film make us really think about Latin America and we identify with it, because we can see within the shots, some that are regarding the topography and the present vegetation that allow us to feel within a plot truly Colombian, which helps the viewer to have the same narrative experience that he could have when reading the hardcover book.
Finally, it should be noted that the film is in this case a summary, and the one who thinks that watching the movie is experiencing and understanding everything about the hardcover book, it is not so, since several things change and there are cases of films that change much more, that in the end the only thing that the two versions have, the two the hardcover book and the movie are the title.