Roma – 2018
Roma was half good and half boring, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why the critics went gaga over it. Several friends who I talked to before watching the film told me they turned it off about half an hour into the movie because it was just so boring. After seeing it for myself, I can’t say they were entirely wrong. The movie starts off with a really slow pace and the first fifteen minutes or so are spent watching a woman cleaning a house.
I think a factor in the slow pace of the film is the director, Alfonso Cuarón’s, choice to not have any underscoring at all in the movie. I think I understand why he made that decision, but the result was a dull opening to his film. I think he did it to add an extra layer of realism to the story. There wasn’t even any music during the opening or closing credits.
Two things the film did have going for it was its realism and its intimacy. The story is that of a young girl named Cleodegaria Gutierrez, or just Cleo, played by Yalitza Aparicio, working as a live-in house maid in Mexico City for a middle-class family. Now, whenever I hear of Mexico City, I immediately have visions of a wildly overpopulated mega-city, and the film certainly showed that. In nearly every scene, there were people everywhere. Inside the house are the two parents, Antonio and his wife, Sofia, played by Fernando Grediaga and Marina de Tavira, their four children, Pepe, Sofi, Tono , and Paco, the mother-in-law, Teresa, played by Veronica Garcia, the cook, Adela, played by Nancy Garcia, the family dog, Borras, and Cleo. Every time they left the house, there were people crowding the streets, along with the noise that always accompanies large crowds and traffic.
The plot follows two different stories, both told from Cleo’s perspective. The two narratives are closely related, though not necessarily intertwined. The first is the tale of Cleo and her unplanned pregnancy. The second is that of the family for whom she works, as Antonia and Sofia go through a painful separation and divorce. Add to that a dangerous riot in the city, in which Fermin, played by Jorge Antonia Guerrero, who was the father of Cleo’s baby, takes part in a murder. He has already told the poor girl that he isn’t the father of the child, even though he is the only man with whom she has ever had sex, and that he would beat her severely if she tried to claim that he was.
The movie’s real intimacy comes into play because over the course of the film, you really get to know Cleo’s personality and how she relates to the world, and I think this is where the critics see the movie shine. She seems to have led a very sheltered life, but she is happy in her place. She feels like, though she serves the family, she is part of the family. She belongs. But when that family fractures, when that perfect bubble bursts, she doesn’t know how to feel. Or at the very least, she is so used to not expressing her own emotions that she doesn’t really know how. The climax of her story is when she breaks down and confesses her true feelings to Sofia and the children.
At one point during the riot, Fermin points a gun at her, and for a moment, you don’t know if he is going to shoot her or not. But as soon as he rushes off, leaving her unharmed, Cleo’s water breaks and she goes into labor. The crowded streets prevent her from getting to the hospital quickly. Unfortunately, tragedy surrounds the birth, and the baby is born dead. Afterword, the family does their best to raise her spirits. They take her on a vacation to the beach in Tuxpan. After she risks her life to save two of the children from drowning, she breaks down and tearfully confesses that she didn’t want the baby. When they all return to the house, Antonio has taken away all his belongings. But Cleo is happy because she has told her secret, and her sheltered life as a domestic servant can return to normal.
It was a strangely abrupt ending. But it also seemed appropriate to finish Cleo’s little story. While the first half of the film was dull and slow, there was plenty of good drama in the second half to make up for it. And through it all, the same high level of realism is maintained. But I guess the question I have to answer is, was the extreme realism and intimacy of the narrative enough to make the film deserve its ten Oscar nominations? It was nominated for, and won, the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. But the Academy voters also nominated it for Best Picture as well. So did it merit all the attention it received? If you ask me, the answer is no. I thought it was alright, but I don’t understand all the awards, all the praise, all the fuss. The drama, at its best, just wasn’t that intense.
But what do I know? To paraphrase from Wikipedia, “Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, said ‘Roma is thrilling, engrossing, moving – and just entirely amazing. Cuarón has reached back into his own childhood to create an intensely personal story.’ Also, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film ‘an expansive, emotional portrait of life buffeted by violent forces, and a masterpiece,’ and praised Cuarón’s use of ‘intimacy and monumentality to express the depths of ordinary life.’” I guess, if you say so.