Tech

Kaleidoscope, Netflix creates its own Hopscotch

Netflix experiments, from time to time, with alternative formats. We already saw it at the time with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and now he does it with Kaleidoscopea series of which he has just published a video about the filming, and which will debut on the platform on January 1, 2023, and which represents the leap into audiovisuals from the “messy” reading proposed by Julio Cortázar with his well-remembered Hopscotch, and which he later developed in 62/Modelo para armar, undoubtedly the most experimental novel by the brilliant Argentine writer.

If you don’t know Hopscotch, you should know that it is a novel written by Cortázar in Madrid and that it was published in Latin America in 1963 (its debut in Spain was substantially delayed due to the censorship of the regime). Composed of 155 chapters, its main singularity is that the author proposed no less than four different reading options for it:

  • normal readingthat is, sequential from start to finish.
  • “traditional” readingthus defined by the author, and which proposes the sequential reading from the beginning to chapter 56, in which the reader must leave the work.
  • Reading at the reader’s pleasurein which the reading is no longer sequential, but random, since it is the reader who decides which part they want to read at any given time, something they can do by planning the order in advance or, if they prefer, leaving it to chance.
  • Reading according to the direction boarda guide that is found at the beginning of the book and that proposes a reading skipping and alternating chapters, and adds texts from other authors and fields

Beyond the interest of the story narrated in Hopscotch, much of its significance is due to this rupturist approach with the normal reading model.

Well, with Kaleidoscope Netflix seems to want to offer a similar experience, since one of the key points for the promotion of this new series has been to affirm that the episodes can be seen in the order that the user wishes, following some guidelines in this regard. Now, you may be thinking that there are already many other series like this, specifically all of them in which the plot of each episode is self-contained, but the big difference is that in Kaleidoscope all the episodes are part of the same plot.

More interesting is that, according to its creators, depending on the order in which we see the episodes will substantially affect our point of view about the story told in the series. Thus, we can start choosing between the titles Yellow and Green, then repeat the process with Blue, Violet and Orange, and make the last decision with Red and Pink. Once they’re done, it’s time to watch the series finale, found in the episode White: The Heist.

Starring Paz Vega, Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell and Tati Gabrielle, Kaleidoscope tells the story, spanning 25 years, of a group of thieves and their plan to carry out the biggest heist in history, accessing a supposedly impassable vault. and protected as a fortress, to get hold of the loot that is kept inside. Each of the episodes will show us a different side of both the story of the robbery and the intra-history that surrounds it.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *