Wellness

REAL BEAUTY IN MAGICAL REALISM

Courtesy of New Line Cinema. Still from Love in the Time of Cholera.

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” -- Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen

These are tossed back, forth and up in the air in the songs, novels, and art of Magical Realism -- as well as in our dreams.

Photo: Courtesy of New Line Cinema. Still from Love in the Time of Cholera.

Magical realism is a form of fiction that integrates elements of fantasy within a realistic framework. When reading a novel or watching a film that employs magical realism, you might feel as though you are tripping through a Magritte painting that has come to life.

Photo: Courtesy of New Line Cinema. Still from Love in the Time of Cholera.

The experience is dreamlike -- the kind of dream where you are not quite sure if you are awake or simply rocking REM.

Today, we are celebrating the life of a magical master of magical realism, Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died recently, at age 87.

Photo: Courtesy of New Line Cinema. Still from Love in the Time of Cholera.

Marquez’s writings are largely anecdotal. They are not adventures into the surreal. They are stories remembered, as many are, with bits of truth, hyperbole, embellishment, possibility, and imagination, all swirled together.

Photo: Courtesy of Alicia Films. Still from Of Love and Other Demons.

In his 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez journeys into the lives of one family, living in an enchanted village. Magic carpets fly, ghosts haunt villagers, and blood comes alive, leading the reader through the winding trail of a murder.

Photo: by Sergiofx. “One Hundred Years Of Solitude.”

The book won Marquez the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. The Swedish Academy described it as a book "in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts." Watch this Democracy Now video to hear Marquez speak about this epic work.

Photo: Courtesy of New Line Cinema. Still from Love in the Time of Cholera.

Watch this trailer from Love in the Time of Cholera film, directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Four Weddings and a Funeral), and featuring a talented cast that includes Javier Bardem, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Benjamin Bratt, John Leguizamo, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Hector Elizondo and Liev Schreiber.