Roma - Review Thread

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

We're at that time of year now where the award season contenders have started to become clear and the debates for Best Picture and the other big categories can commence.  Despite it being an arthouse film and finding distribution through Netflix, it seems like everyone has had the latest from superb filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron circled ever since the trailer was released some months ago as the top contender.  Cuaron's first film since 2013's Gravity could not be more different, shot in black-and-white and forgoing the spectacle of Hollywood entirely to focus on an upper-middle class family in 1970s Mexico.  I've always admired filmmakers that can seamlessly transition back-and-forth between large scale Hollywood productions and smaller films like this one, and Cuaron is one of the few contemporary directors able to pull it off.  Equally as impressive is that those big budget spectacles like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or Children of Men or Gravity are handled with the same deft touch Cuaron brings to his smaller but equally terrific movies like his breakout hit Y Tu Mama Tambien.  Cuaron knows how to adapt to the project, but never concedes his emphasis on storytelling and composition while doing so.  In a lot of ways I feel that Cuaron has been severely underrated in the film community.  Sure, everyone knows he's made some of the best films of the last two decades, but his relatively light output has made him sort of less renowned than you would think.  I also feel that, incorrectly, a lot of people haven't been able to attribute him to a certain style or aesthetic outside of what his frequent cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, has brought to their collaborations, notably the expertly executed long takes of Children of Men and Gravity.  For Roma, not only is Cuaron not working with Lubezki on the film, but is shooting Roma himself!  And for anyone thinking Cuaron is looking to fill in as a Lubezki homage payer, think again, as his patient style and quiet camera movements are wholly his own and result in the most beautiful compositions of the year.  Could Cuaron win both Best Director and Best Cinematography?  It's highly possible; Roma is not only a beautifully shot movie despite not calling attention to itself but is easily the best movie of the year thus far that hinges on some terrific work all around from its cast.  Who knows if the Academy will embrace a black-and-white foreign film (though they did recently with The Artist, a movie that was enjoyable but nowhere near the prowess of Roma) for the biggest awards of the year, but what Cuaron has achieved here is a remarkable accomplishment worthy of all of them.

Roma follows a family living in 1970s Mexico City that are dealing with the changes within their family that also mirror the political unrest going on in the country.  Early on it's revealed that the largely absent and haughty patriarch (Fernando Grediaga), feigning that he's on a business trip in Montreal, has left the family in order to run around with his mistress.  While his wife (Marina de Tavira) struggles to maintain her strength while raising her four children and keeping up the facade of their comfortable lifestyle, housekeeper Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is relied on more than ever to keep everything afloat.  While Roma certainly spends a great deal of time observing the family dynamic, without any doubt this story is Cleo's, who has begun a romance with Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), a man who is very into martial arts and demonstrates such in a hilarious sequence showing off his routine in the nude.  All is going well until Cleo finds out she's pregnant, but when she tells Fermin he leaves her and ignores her entirely.  Cleo and Sofia then become beacons of strength for one another, as they're both reeling from cowardly men who have abandoned their duties in order to pursue leisure and freedom, no doubt a parallel to the differing political viewpoints happening in the country.  Much of Roma's plot consists of quiet, slice of life moments that ease the viewer into a feeling of comfort with the family, but that's not to say that it doesn't also have some highly intense moments as well.  One of these sequences calls to mind the chaos of Children of Men where student protestors take to the streets while the Mexican government exchanges gunfire with them.  Cleo, shopping for a baby cradle, finds herself caught in the middle of this as the violence spills into the store.  It's a terrifying moment, made all the worse that Cleo is very pregnant while all of this happens.  What follows next after Cleo's water breaks is a stunningly powerful and heartbreaking scene inside a hospital, which later culminates in a shocking confession from Cleo about motherhood while on vacation with the family.  

Cuaron has established such an ostensibly quiet nature to everything happening, but then slowly reveals such startling revelations about his characters that staggers the audience.  It reminds me of the quiet power behind the work of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who also thrills his audience by disarming them with plot twists after lulling them into a sense of comfort and understanding of these characters.  Some will undoubtedly dismiss Roma with the usual ignorance of "nothing happens", "the film is slow", or some other stock response that contains little to no analysis.  Roma is through and through a genuine portrayal of its subjects and doesn't look to aggrandize their situations.  The direction here is superb, with Cuaron fully immersing the viewer into this family and their daily routines without creating any moments that feel contrived.  There's a real delightfulness to Cleo's interactions with the family, namely the four children.  I have a feeling that Cuaron had his actors spend a great deal of time together even before rehearsals, and it certainly shows here.  Whether the kids are bickering or having dinner or playing games there's a fluidity to the scenes of the family that feels entirely organic and inviting.  Cuaron doesn't need to create derisive situations to establish drama when he's done such a wonderful job creating the family dynamic that the events unfold around them in such natural fashion.  It's yet another testament to the brilliant design of the film by Cuaron, who has put great affection into this work and as a result has created something so special.  Roma, in addition to being a wonderfully crafted story, also contains some of the most strikingly beautiful compositions I've seen in a film, and for all of the attention Lubezki has garnered for his fluid camerawork, some of the lateral tracking shots Cuaron lenses himself in Roma are stunning, namely a sequence at the end of the film as Cleo wades into the ocean.  Roma is a masterwork on every level, a true testament to being in the hands of an incredible filmmaker like Cuaron is.  This is his most mature and accomplished work to date despite being much smaller in scale than some of his more prolific projects.  I wish Cuaron would make movies more frequently, as I believe it would more readily garner him the attention he deserves, but then again if the wait results in Cuaron making films that are this good, then I'm all for it.

9/10