Carlos Fuentes’ The Death of Artemio Cruz Bound for the Big Screen

June 18, 2012

By Christine Spines

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Among the most maddeningly immutable laws romance shares with economics is that a product’s value rises along with its scarcity. So when a supply stream is cut off — as in a breakup, death, or discontinuation of a treasured treat at Trader Joe’s — we’re left bereft and longing for a second chance to embrace and devour that which we cannot have. Of course, access is rarely an issue for Hollywood except when mortality intervenes and suddenly that overlooked or underused filmmaker, screenwriter, or novelist receives the exalted folk hero treatment. During this brief window, a person’s work is often reconsidered, rediscovered, and — in the best-case scenario — revived on the big screen. We’re not talking about the works of Franz Kafka or Stieg Larsson, who died before they had any inkling that their work would find an audience. This is more about artists whose stature grew disproportionately after death. Think: Heath Ledger or Jim Thompson.

Now that 2012 has already racked up more than its fair share of fallen literary icons — Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury, and Carlos Fuentes — this is bound to be a fertile time for adaptations for those authors’ work. And while each is deserving of a cinematic revival, Fuentes (and the late twentieth-century movement of Latin American magic realists of which he was a vital figure) is the most long overdue. As if on cue came the news this past weekend  that an international team of producers (which tangentially includes Guillermo Del Toro) snatched up the film and TV rights to one of Fuentes’ most celebrated novels, The Death of Artemio Cruz, about a corrupt tycoon who mournfully looks back on his days as a young idealist from his deathbed.

Because much of the narrative takes place in Cruz’ head after he becomes paralyzed and mute, the challenge here for the filmmakers will be to create a visual and verbal language distinct from two similarly themed recent films: “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “The Sea Inside,” each of which is told in flashback from the point of view of a severely disabled protagonist. It’s also worth mentioning that both films featured stellar lead performances by Mathieu Amalric and Javier Bardem, respectively, and despite receiving rhapsodic reviews and a heap of awards hype, neither was included among the Academy’s five finalists for Best Actor. If the role of Cruz is cast right, this project stands as good a chance as any to make up for those snubs. It combines many of the elements that have proven most irresistible to Oscar voters: a strong, deeply flawed lead character who who undergoes a moral and physical transformation at the end of his life.

But beyond the ephemeral pleasures of Oscar love, we’re hopeful that, under the guidance of a deep-thinking, visually audacious filmmaker like Fernando Meirelles or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, this adaptation of The Death of Artemio Cruz could remind filmmakers and studios to revisit the untapped trove of rich material by the contemporary Latin American novelists at the heart of the magic realist movement of the ’80s and early ’90s. Nobel Prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s oeuvre represents Hollywood’s most obvious missed opportunity as a source of visually inventive epic storytelling. Though Mike Newell spearheaded a fairly forgettable big-screen version of Love in the Time of Cholera (and there is no shortage of Spanish-language films based on his short stories), it’s mystifying that his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has yet to find its place in the canon of English-language literary adaptations. And while the most celebrated stories by Julio Cortazar yielded two classic films — “Hopscotch” and “Blow Up” — major works by other active ingredients in the Latin American boom — namely, Mario Vargas Llosa — gone largely ignored by American filmmakers.

It’s still too early to tell whether the death of Fuentes, the fourth pillar of the movement, will spark a renewed interest in these multilayered allegorical narratives that touch upon life’s fundamental questions. But the postmortem renewed interest in his life and work is certainly a step in the right direction.

What are some of the South American novels from that time period you would most like to see resurrected on the big screen?

Tags: Carlos Fuentes, Celebrity deaths, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortazar, Latin American fiction, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mathieu Amalric, Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury, The Death of Artemio Cruz