Summary:
A year in the life of a maid living in Mexico City during the 1970s.
My Thoughts:
There are masterpieces and then there are masterpieces.
What do I mean by that? Well, art is subjective. When you first look at a piece of art you bring with it your whole person. You bring everything you’ve thought and wished for, everything you’ve imagined and dreamed, and everything that you’ve seen that has helped to shape you into the person you are when you see it. When you approach artwork, be it a painting, a film, a book, or a piece of music, you aren’t a blank slate, you yourself are a complex and emotional work of art, one that changes and evolves based on where you are in your life and what you’ve experienced. Your experiences, and everything in you, gives you certain unique worldview that will affect how you see something vs how the person standing next to you sees something. I can look at Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and understand that it is a masterpiece, but it doesn’t stir in me a wonder at the majesty of the universe like when I look at van Gogh’s Starry Night.
With that out of the way, let me say that Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” is undoubtedly a masterpiece. It is a technical marvel in every sense of the phrase; it’s one of the most human films I’ve ever seen; it’s utterly gorgeous as far as its production design and crafting of the world. But… out of all of the Best Picture nominees that I have seen this year, if I’m being honest, I will be least likely to come back to this film. Why? It’s a masterpiece, yes, but it’s not the kind of film I want to sit down to watch over and over again.
“Mountains are old, but they’re still green.”
Romarevolves around a middle class family and their maid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio in her Oscar nominated debut role). Cleo spends her days watching after the children and doing her best to keep the house clean, and her nights she spends with her friend Adela (Nancy Garcia Garcia) and her new boyfriend Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Narcos: Mexico). Political tensions run rampant through the city as well as in the home that Cleo watches over- the father, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga) and his wife Sofia (Marina de Tavina also nominated for her role in this film). After Cleo becomes pregnant she worries about Fermin’s involvement with the resistance.
Really, this film is a straight drama. It’s about Cleo trying to find a place for herself in the world, trying to find where she belongs. For the first hour and fifteen minutes of the movie, it feels very cinema verite; there are a lot of shots where the camera is stationary and it pans around the room to show characters doing whatever it is they do. There’s lots of subtle character development that later leads to subtle character growth. We get a sense of what character relationships are- Cleo is regarded as simply a maid at the beginning of the film. The children love her, but the parents treat her as if she is only an employee.
Where this film succeeds in becoming a masterpiece is in the way that it crafts the world around it, the way it uses subtle framing to tell of a world that stretches beyond the edge of the frame on to infinity. The Mexico City Cuaran creates rivals the richness of Fellini’s Rome in “La Dolce Vita”. It feels as if this world not only exists, but it feels as if were watching these things happen in real time as they play out before us. Cuaron has always been a director that likes to use long shots. I remember in “Y Mama Tu Tambien” being absolutely baffled by a scene where the three main characters are in a car, and the camera leads their car, getting closer to them and further away for a five or six minute period, emphasizing the closeness or farness of the characters in those scenes. This film has like a dozen shots that blow that one shot in “Tambien” out of the water. This movie has multiple shots that start inside, follow characters outside to show huge crowds, and then follow them back inside again. There are shots in this film that I would’ve thought were absolutely impossible, but Cuaron did it. Until yesterday, I thought “The Favourite” had Best Cinematography in the bag, but now it’s not even a question in my mind that this film deserves to win.
Verdict:
This film is a quiet masterpiece that champions the tender moments we as humans are capable. It takes a look at the poorest of us, the ones that have nothing, the ones that have no families, nowhere to run when things get rough, and no fallback plan if things go awry; it looks at those people and tells them (us) that they (we) still deserve love, that they (we) still deserve respect, and that they (we) still have immense immeasurable value.
As I said above, this film is undeniably a masterpiece- it’s a beautiful look at life in the small, oft forgotten corners of the world, and a reminder that all life, no matter how small or broken, is still wonderful. This might not be my favorite film of the year (funnily enough that spot still belongs to “The Favourite”), but I understand all of the acclaim this film has garnered, and I’m happy that such a small-scale drama can be nominated this year, especially when the Academy seems to have completely thrown all care to the wind with nominees like “Black Panther” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. THIS is the kind of film that should be nominated for best picture; movies that challenge the viewers to expand their worldview and themselves. “Black Panther” was a fine movie, sure, but does it deserve to stand alongside a movie the caliber of “Roma” or “The Favourite”?
No. I don’t believe it does.
There are films that advance the language of cinema, and then there are movies that are fun to munch popcorn during and laugh at the funny lines. Roma is a movie that will never be seen by as many people as Black Panther , but its far more important to the language of cinema than “Black Panther” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” will ever be. Call me a cinematic curmudgeon if you want, but in my opinion the only thing the Academy has done by nominating ‘popular’ entries is damage their artistic integrity.
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