The main Spanish tv channel/conglomerate used to invest in literary adaptations of Spanish classics and "La Forja de un Rebelde" was one going around to be adapted for ages, though many of who attempted banged their heads trying to see what to cut from that three book epic. Mario Camus was lucky, then: a fan of the book, he got the biggest budget the channel could give (it was even controversial if I remember correctly) and all the time of the world, so he adapted this in 6 chapters of what actually proper movies.
And without having read the books, it seems the series follows them pretty much to the letter. You can feel the budget and the love for what is being told as the reconstruction of different times is so overwhelmingly realistic: the places, the way people dress across the years, the incredible work in miniatures and mattés... It is one of the most impressive I have seen to be honest. The issue here is the literary adaptation itself, as a genre, with a narrator voice that most of the times adds absolutely nothing, with a very squared narrative that almost feels like you are seeing "Chapter x" every few minutes and that weird mixing that happened in European cinema until fairly recently, where half of the actors are overdubbed, with the dubbing speaking in a very theatrical way. To compensate for that artificiality Camus and the involved amp the sentimental moments to eleven, making this very soap opera.
Oh but when it works. You can see Mario Camus at his best in some moments where he places the camera to reflect exactly what the characters are feeling, and those moments are magical. And you can see he really loved the book... which is another problem on itself because, as much as it is a very important canonical piece on the Spanish literature, it presents itself as a veridic and realistic telling of the history and the movies do not even leave a hint of that this could be a fairly unreliable narrator - and he is narrating not only his story but the Spanish early XX century history, which is very very messy. It cannot avoid the tropes of so many Spanish movies and series about the Republic and Civil War, with MEN angrily talking about revenge and politics, intellectual wholesome important men, and that sense of self importance is what irks me a bit (politically I am very much on the "you go girl, smash those fascists" faction, in case it needs to be clarified). Probably this forced non ambiguous narrative comes from the fact that those series were seen as a didactic effort, and a kind of substitute for being culturally enriched by reading those books (same as religious movies could kind of work as going to Church).
But I liked it anyway. Kind of a common theme with my relationship with Mario Camus: many things in his movies are ew but in the end I think they are important pieces of Spanish culture. And pop.
