As I belong to a specie in danger of extinction – those who have not yet subscribed to Netflix -, I had to wait for a rare public screening of Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón‘s film ‘Roma‘, which almost won the Academy Award in the Best Film category, in order to form an opinion to myself. I’m trying to avoid discussing the ‘legitimacy’ of Netflix and of the other ‘private’ distribution channels. I have an opinion, but it does not matter now that I have seen the movie in a cinema. I am trying to judge ‘Rome’ by the same criteria that I use for any other film, asking the same questions about the way the movie created empathy, taught me new things, impressed me aesthetically and/or I had fun watching it, disconnected from the problems of everyday life. My appreciation according to these criteria is that ‘Roma‘ is a good film, but not a masterpiece.
Inspired largely by the director’s real biography, ‘Roma‘ has as main heroine Clio, one of the two maids in a middle-class family home in the neighborhood that gives the name of the film in Mexico City. The story takes place in 1970 in a world that is a collection of contrasts: the neighborhood is inhabited by relatively wealthy people but we see a lot of poverty on the streets, the family house is well maintained by servants but signs of decay are present everywhere, the marriage in the family itself is about to fall apart despite the four children. Servants are much more than just servants, Clio is also the caretaker and the confident of the kids and is considered a part of the family in many ways, but class differences are always reminded. The story slowly moves away from the bourgeois house and the family cell, gradually the circles of characters and locations widens, it first includes the social milieu with which the maids are in contact, then the extended family and its social circle, until it includes a panoramic view of several sectors of the Mexican society. The crisis whose symptoms we watched at the private level is more general, it is the crisis of a society haunted by corruption, violence and class differences. ‘Roma‘ makes a zoom-out from being a family film to a social and political fresco.
Clio is a character that viewers of this film will not easily forget. The director’s love for the woman who inspired the role, a woman who actually still lives with his family, is obvious. The performance of the young Mexican debutante actress Yalitza Aparicio is gorgeous. It’s worth watching her in the extraordinary scene at the maternity and then you may ask yourself as I did what it means for a woman to play such a scene. It’s not the only memorable scene, there are more in the movie. Alfonso Cuarón has also signed the cinematography and he knows his craftsmanship, combining scenes with camera moving in parallel with the characters, panoramic frames that represent true human and social compositions, long frames, or short frames sequences. The black and white film fits very well and the light is very well used.
Besides many qualities, the film also some flaws. Above all the length – some scenes are artificially extended, others seem to try to say too explicitly ‘this is an art movie’, for example the introductory scene that includes the generic. I wrote a few weeks ago that ‘Green Book‘ seems to have been made with the Academy Awards in mind. So, I think, was ‘Roma‘. Alfonso Cuarón is well acquainted with the American cinema industry, he has worked in Hollywood and has attended several Academy Awards ceremonies. Even the choice he made to distribute the film on Netflix may have been deliberate, the debate between the camps of the opponents and of the fans of streaming channels will soon end with the victory of the latter, and ‘Roma‘ has skillfully used this momentum. If it had been distributed in cinemas as a Mexican film, it would not have been distributed to larger audiences in the US and around the world, and would not have attracted the attention of the Academy members except maybe for the prize of the best foreign film. So it won (on merit) two more awards (best director, best cinematography) and was very close to winning the big one. It did not succeed, eventually the majority of the jury members preferred the ‘Green Book‘ – a much more conventional film and safer choice. Cuarón and his colleagues can console themselves with the fact that many viewers who have seen both movies believe that ‘Roma‘ is a better film. Including me.