Preface: I began writing this commentary well before Roma received critical accolades as a possible Oscar contender. When I saw Roma, it was right after Christmas in the year 2018. I remember having to rush to a small arthouse theater located in a fairly known conservative county. My commentary was also written prior to the controversial 2019 Best Picture Oscar win of Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and Steven Speilberg’s (a renowned director and Academy member) public repudiation of Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar nominations, including “Best Picture.” The repudiation was prompted by Spielberg’s notion that Roma did not have the same competitive cinematic caliber of an Oscar film, since its distribution company, Netflix, released it through its media streaming service as opposed to the theater. Spielberg failed to acknowledge or give credit to the fact that the film was actually released in selected theaters but only for a limited amount of time. The much-needed hybrid release of Roma through Netflix will be discussed with greater depth in this commentary.
It is hard to refrain from associating a group of directors from the same country with words such as “movement”, “pinnacle”, “a golden age”, and the most common, “wave”. Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón is apprehensive about the label “wave” since he sees it as a marketing ploy. Most importantly, the label fails to give credence to the distinguished Mexican directors long before the “wave’s” crest. He cautions “You have to remember that there have been lots of Mexican film directors, but that doesn’t make a ‘wave’–it’s not as if we have shared a particular aesthetic” (Wood 1). From this, Cuarón takes a more universal approach to the classification of cinema when he states: “I am not purely interested in ‘Mexican Cinema’; I am interested in cinema” (Wood 1).
However, I prefer to see “waves” as an affront to the status quo—a timely and much needed risk that defies the current climate of the Hollywood industry—and perhaps a rebellion much like the French New Wave who rejected the Hollywood “fluff.” They were considered the young rebels of cinema who “wanted to rejuvenate French cinema, to help it find new paths, to make it more personal and sincere” and “to breathe new life into it” (Singerman 230). Therefore, when a new movement in cinema takes flight, there is always something in common—the boldness of a director to push forward a vision that is not compatible with the mainstream audience. Often, movements or “waves” are usually spurred by a new dogma of cinematic aesthetics or the politics of filmmaking, resulting in a revitalization of cinematic vision. This can affect both form and content. Amid the French New Wave Movement, for instance, not only did the French directors scoff at the Hollywood “fluff” and happy endings, but they also took a more economical approach to filmmaking, using handheld cameras and specialized film stock that did not need artificial light and avoiding track shots. This reduced the cost of the filmmaking unlike studio-produced films. The end result was a new “look” that “exuded sincerity, authenticity, and originality” (Singerman 231). They wanted to deal with the social and political issues head-on after decades of having to contend with Post-Second World War malaise. When it comes to a movement, directors will use the cinematic medium to rebel against the norm while offering something that spectators will either embrace or feel too apprehensive, too resistant to be pulled out of their comfort zone of thoughtless or passive screening. A side effect to this is the compartmentalization of entertainment and art. This begs the question: can audiences be mindfully entertained in Hollywood’s culture polluted with competitive blockbuster films?
Nowadays, the restlessness of cinema-making is marked by sudden bold moves from directors who have made it into the mainstream and then have reverted back to their nativist roots—whether it is their own original vision of filmmaking coupled with creating content that reflects his or her cultural background. Risks are involved and they entail rekindling the “filmmaking evils” that eventually make their films esoteric, that is, often appreciated by the patient few. Among these evils include cinematic abstraction (symbolical imagery), unhurried narrative, long takes, black and white photography, and, the most damning, subtitles. They are the ingredients that lend themselves to a different type of engagement that allows only for the patient spectator to transcend entertainment and become active in the cinematic text by pulling together the narrative and interpreting what is intended in the narrative. European films were deemed to be too “foreign” for an audience acculturated in a cinematic discourse that is often quick and easy to grasp and complemented with eye-popping, hyper-sensory visuals. The demand for a film to be overtly conscious removes it from its artistry and inventiveness and retards the spectators’ ability to absorb himself or herself in the visuals before them. This absorption is needed, as spectators work together with the director’s intent. This type of “relationship” or interpretative relationship between viewer and director amid the screening of a film is invaluable—more so than the in-your-face manipulation found in most mainstream films.
A new “resistance” (or movement) is happening in Hollywood, catapulted by the release of Alfono Cuarón’s magnum opus Roma (2018). Cuarón has created mainstream films such as the philosophically dystopian Children of Men (2006) and the science fiction odyssey Gravity (2013) in which he includes a compelling story about space journey with lifelike visuals and sounds. Although the aforementioned films contrast with Cuarón’s auteur nativist roots such as his critically acclaimed work about the rite of passage road trip in the foreign release Y Tu Máma También (2001), Cuarón has created a filmography that is considered versatile and adaptable to the mainstream spectator.
Roma was released at a time when Cuarón’s career in Hollywood has garnered him to be one of the most notable and much anticipated Hollywood filmmakers. But this time, the film is not the typical Hollywood film. Rather, it is a film that harkens back to arthouse cinema. The push for wider spectatorship has been unprecedented with the help of a home media-service provider, Netflix, who bought the distribution rights and the film’s theatrical release. Netflix released Roma on December 14th. Cuarón released the film’s trailer on his Twitter account on July 25, 2018 with the most fitting caption: “there are periods in history that scar societies and moments in life that transform us as individuals.” Since the fall of 2018 and well into the following year, Roma has made it into limited theaters worldwide. With this, Roma’s viewing accessibility has set a new precedence in terms of promoting a film from a Hollywood veteran director but with a film that has pushed Hollywood boundaries. Home streaming through Netflix has made the film easily accessible for those who do not wish to contend with finding a theater that will show Roma. With a $20 million estimated budget to make the film, Roma was shot in a high-resolution 66 mm crisp black and white film stock. Regardless of the choices offered to audiences, Roma deserves to be screened on the “big screen.” However, that is not always the case for everyone.
With this hybrid release, it appears as if Cuarón (and perhaps Netlix) are not aiming for the next big Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps he is hoping for a more varied screening availability that will expose audiences to a more “novel” experience that can be best described as a hypnotic elegance. Ironically, the “newness” or “novelty” is really a return to the past as Cuarón’s work is intertwined with classical European influences. And such approach to filmmaking is not only found in Cuarón’s work but also the works of his Mexican contemporaries: Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzales Iñnáritu.
Mexican Cinema and Intertextuality: Classical Literature and the Canon of European Cinema
Deemed the “Three Amigos” Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonzales Iñnáritu, and Alfonso Cuarón have pulled together two polarities—mainstream or populist Hollywood productions and arthouse cinema, especially when it comes to their foreign releases. Their films are cross-linguistic, which ultimately creates a political intersection—whether it be in the commercial filmmaking from Mexican directors straddling both worlds or in the ideological content of their films. What distinguishes them from other Hollywood directors are their unique visionary appeal and their willingness to take risks as result of it. The “wave” of Mexican cinema is a tapestry of aesthetics. Among them include the unorthodox execution of film narratives, bold imagery that are reminiscent of classical literature, and the poetics of reality stemming from the European canon. They all have been inspired by their exposure to European directors and world and/or classical literature. Thus, their films are richly intertextual—both in the literary and cinematic realms. In a 2014 Los Angeles Times article during the wake of Alejandro Gonzales Iñnáritu’s Oscar nomination for his film Birdman, he mentions “if you’re self-fed by a culture such as the U.S. where it’s rich, you don’t have to look outside. Everything’s already there. But when you grow up in the desert you have to be looking all over for inspiration” (Ali). Inspiration is boundless. It is without borders, limitations, and restraints.
Guillermo del Toro: The Political Mythologist and Cinematic Literati
Guillermo del Toro is known for weaving in classical mythology and effectively contextualizing it in a fairytale-fantasy hybrid such as the Mexican-Spanish Pan’s Labyrinth 2006 release. The film’s setting takes place in 1944, five years after the Spanish Civil War and during the Francoist period. The film focuses on a young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), whose widowed mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) decides to remarry a ruthless militant named Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez)—a Franco (Spain’s fascist dictator) devotee and henchman whose duty is to slaughter anyone who is part of the underground anti-Franco political resistance. The film chronicles a young heroine’s journey, Ofelia, who must face the daunting and perilous task of having to return to her native world or kingdom.
Pan’s Labyrinth is a metaphysical invocation of Homer’s Greek epic The Odyssey. Ofelia (born from noble birth with the title Princess Moanna) is separated from her original home (the underground kingdom from where she originally resides) to live in the mortal world. She is also separated from her mother who later dies from a difficult pregnancy. As in all archetypal journeys, the narrative follows the typical pattern of the trials and tribulations of a hero, which can best be linked to Joseph Campbell’s “monomythic hero” from his most renowned work, A Hero with a Thousand Faces.[1] Del Toro recreates a mythological pattern that coincides with his vision of a heroine’s journey in a fantasy-fairytale narrative. Ofelia gets the help of a mentor, a faun, much like the equivalent of Athena who helps Odysseus make his way back home while combating monsters, temptresses, and witches. The return home for Ofelia will also consist of a childhood feat that is purely archetypal. During her journey she must practice restraint, successfully pass a series of tests, and not give in to temptations—as instructed by her mentor. She learns her lesson the hard way when she visits the underground world of the child-eating monster, Pale Man, who sits at the end of an elongated table garnished with mouth-watering foods. When she eats the succulent grapes she has been eyeing, she rouses him and must use her wits to escape his dangerous wrath. Food is also a common motif in The Odyssey. For example, the Lotus-eaters give Odysseus’ men the intoxicating fruit of the lotus that causes them to become less motivated to return home during their journey. Ofelia, like the Lotus-eaters who succumb to temptation, eats the forbidden fruit and forgets the purpose of her journey. Moreover, the Pale Man is Del Toro’s version of the Cyclops. However, the Pale Man is eyeless. In order for the Pale Man to see, he has to manually plant his eyes on the inside of his palms. With raised palms facing outward, he is able to direct his vision, especially when it comes to capturing his prey.
To capture the magical world, such as the labyrinth, in which Ofelia must travel through, Del Toro employs rich colors, grotesque or mythical images, and storybook locales enriched with dramatic and melancholic low-key lighting. Del Toro’s storytelling stems from his love of literature and from the visual style of Italian director Federico Fellini. He states “Fellini touched many of the keystone stages of film: He did films in black and white; he did films in color using vibrant palettes or neorealist stones” (Salvesen 36). Pan’s Labyrinth’s colorful cinematography is symbolically phantasmagoric; it lends itself to an ominous mood of mystery and suspense in which we have the pleasure and excitement to experience with Ofelia.
Through Del Toro’s robust literary and mythological vision, he is able to create an allegorical tale wrapped in a timely political commentary that focuses on the “us versus the other” theme while sympathizing the other, the misfit, or the outcast. This theme is eloquently depicted in his 2017 Oscar winning Hollywood release fantasy-genre Shape of Water. The film centers on a mute custodian, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who is employed at a top-secret government laboratory where she meets and falls in love with an amphibian-like creature. The creature is an Amazonian native who was worshipped like a god. The film has all the conventions of magical realism that reminds me very much of Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” It is a tale about a downtrodden angel-like creature that inadvertently takes residence on a poor couple’s land. The couple allows him to reside on their property just so they can profit from the nearby villagers who are willing to pay for an admission price to see the spectacle. Marquez’s work discusses how the sacred later turns into the profane since the “angel man” is exploited for profit while being reduced to a freak show.
Similarly, The Shape of Water is an allegorical story that deals with the plight of an outsider or alien, an amphibian man (Doug Jones) that takes on both literal and figurative forms. The main character, Elisa, is an outcast herself because of her muteness. She finds solace in her friendship with Giles (Richard Jenkins), her homosexual neighbor, who also has a hard time integrating into society. Elisa understands the amphibian man’s loneliness and the hostility that surrounds the creature. He is the “other” that is held captive by the government against his will. Elisa’s loneliness is alleviated when she befriends and falls in love with the imprisoned creature that is described as beautiful and magnificent. She is attracted to his otherworldly grandeur. He is like a male mermaid—minus the long fin. In place of a fin are powerful long legs that hold him upright.
But like the old man with enormous wings in García’s tale, there is the temptation to exploit those who are considered different. In The Shape of Water, the amphibian man is considered commodity for competing countries—in this case, the United States and the USSR—as the film is set in the 1960s amid the Cold War and the space race. The amphibian’s fate becomes capital leverage for the country that is able to determine its fate. General Frank Hoyt (Nick Searcy) is eventually persuaded by Colonel Richard Strictland (Michael Shannon), the lead person in charge of the Amazonian captive, to cut it open for further study. The Soviet doctor and spy, Dimitri Mosenkov (Michael Stuhlberg), hopes to keep the amphibian man alive for further study. However, he is later ordered by the Soviets who hired him to euthanize the amphibian man. Caring for the amphibian man, the doctor decides to sacrifice his own life in protest of the order. Del Toro does not waver in drawing sympathy for those such as Elisa, Giles, and the Soviet doctor who are willing to go through great lengths in preserving the dignity and life of the “other”—as they are the “other” themselves in mainstream society.
Del Toro’s political zeal stems from the story’s plot where the amphibian man is subjected to becoming an undignified, displaced caged animal. Strictland revels in racially motivated sadism when he gratuitously uses a cattle prod to exert his command and power over the vulnerable “other.” The perilous predicament of the beautiful and misunderstood “other” becomes a metaphor for the harsh political climate of xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and nativist superiority or elitism—all of which still resonate in today’s politics. Those who are not welcomed in new territory are treated with cruelty and disdain. Del Toro’s mythological and literary artistry become a political criticism of those in authority (past and future) who perpetuate cultural and ethnic intolerances. His timeless “magic” prompts us to reevaluate the politics of our reality.
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñnáritu: The Avant Garde
Iñnáritu was also influenced by European cinema—mainly the Italian and the French—in which he calls “a blend of universality” (Ali). His earlier works such as the foreign release Amores Perros caught the attention of American audiences and critics because of his powerful use of cinéma vérité—translated cinematic truth. Iñnáritu’s gritty vérite filmmaking approach lends itself to a brutal realism of the desperate and the hapless in Mexico City—portrayed as an objectively cruel world. This is underscored in Iñnáritu’s “unmanipulated” film world that consists of frenetic quick cuts, intimate close-ups, gritty and unpolished cinematography, energetic camera work, and disturbing images that are not for the fainthearted. The images of suffering dogs work alongside the desperation and tribulations that cut across social and economic classes (i.e., the poor, the middle working class, and the rich).
Amores Perros is retold three times in overlapping narratives, which effectively underscore the thematic mosaic of human suffering and human desperation in an objective reality that takes place in the underworld of Mexico City. Iñnáritu’s auteuristic signature “can be seen most specifically in the reliance on a network narrative, the film’s rejection of a single hero, and the disruption of chronological time” (Shaw 101). With this narrative technique, we are exposed to different characters with hapless circumstances. All of the key characters, from different social classes and backgrounds, come together in a car crash. The first narrative, which opens the film, is visually disorienting. It involves a car chase and a gunfight that ends in a car crash. What precedes the crash is Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal) participating in a dangerous dog fight gambling ring. Octavio is hopelessly in love with his hoodlum brother’s girlfriend and must earn enough money to run away with her, which prompts him to exploit his dog, Cofi, in a dog fight. However, the dog fight gambling ring goes awry when Cofi was shot after killing a champion dog fighter. The incident leads to a violent car chase. The second narrative depicts a couple who just moved into an apartment. The couple consists of the adulterous Daniel (Alvaro Guerro) and his model girlfriend, Valeria (Goya Toledo), for whom Daniel leaves his family. As she recovers from a broken leg caused by the same car accident depicted earlier in the film, her dog becomes trapped under a broken floorboard for days. The dog’s suffering creates conflicts between the couple and later carries over to the couple’s feeling of uncertainty and struggles within the relationship. The last narrative includes a professional hitman, El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria). En route to carry out a murder-for-hire job, El Chivo gets involved in the car crash that allows him to steal Octavio’s money from his winnings along with his wounded dog, Cofi. When he takes Cofi to his home, Cofi kills the other dogs El Chivo has been caring for. Cofi’s ruthlessness and untamed depravity become a striking and horrific epiphany for El Chivo who eventually faces his own demons as a hitman.
Because the translation of the film’s title Amores Perros translate to the expression “love’s a bitch,” it is able to transcend the dog-eat-dog metaphor. The characters are victims of their own circumstances they have created for themselves as they reside in a brutal world that is inescapable—and all three narratives do not falter in reiterating this from different perspectives.
Narrative experimentation reaches its zenith in Iñnáritu’s Birdman. [2] This has eventually led him to multiple Oscar winnings in 2015, which include best picture, cinematography, director, and screenplay. Like Del Toro, he became inducted into Hollywood’s excellence. But Iñnáritu has not cowered away from a dare—especially when it comes to taking narrative risks. This also becomes a metacognitive exploration of his alter ego Riggan Thomas’ quest for artistic redemption (but this time, a director for a Raymond Carver stage play). This need comes decades after relishing in mainstream Hollywood populist films during his career heyday (a far cry from what he is attempting to do in his current life as a washed-up action-hero-turned-director).
This creative crisis is metaphorically underscored by Iñnáritus’s uninterrupted narrative. (The film relishes in the illusion of a continuous take, which “appears” to have no cuts). Like his other Mexican contemporaries, Iñnáritus’s narrative was influenced by the Argentine writer Ernesto Sabáto’s The Tunnel, which is noted for a having a continuous narrative form. The technique looks like an impossible feat to emulate in cinema. According to Iñnáritu, “’everything in [the novel] is stream of consciousness with no commas or dots. It’s like a runaway train’” (Ali). It is a novel about a painter who kills a woman with whom he has been obsessed. I have read Sábato’s work during my post-graduate studies in a course titled “The Modern Confessional Novel,”[3] which explores first-person narratives from existential prototypes that are often filled with anguish and uncertainty. They are also contradictory, mentally dis-eased, confused, and unreliable characters. In The Tunnel, the narrator is a dark, brooding individual who has never integrated himself in society. His incarceration, after the murder of Maria Ibarne, the object of his obsession, intertwines with the novel’s metaphorical title, The Tunnel. Similarly, the claustrophobic labyrinthine shots follow Riggan Thomas throughout the bowels of the theaters (on and off stage) and later in the chaotic streets of New York. This represents how Riggan is trapped in his own vulnerable and bi-polar ego that oscillates between self-deprecation (as the lowly, irrelevant passé action hero, inattentive father, and egomaniacal abusive husband) and the neurotic and narcissistic stage director. Birdman breaks new grounds with his “in-the-moment narrative” as the camera snakes through the tight corridors of the theater, suffocating Riggan’s existential freedom.
Birdman’s cinematic stream of consciousness eloquently coincides with Riggan Thomas’ inability to separate his past from his present. In other words, his life as an action hero bleeds into the present. His alter ego, Birdman, taunts him via voices in his head (in the form of voiceovers) or “appearing” in his conscious world, stalking his every move as he tries to work. Such narrative pastiche is Felliniesque—more specifically, Federico Fellini’s 8 ½. Fellini’s work chronicles a director’s creative crisis as he reflects on his past life as a sexually curious young boy who is later punished by the Catholic Church’s strict codes. The past bleeds into the present often in the form of cutaways. Through this type of narrative layering, we experience Guido’s (Marcello Mastroianni) creative and personal angst. In the midst of creating his next film, Guido, like Riggan Thomas, contends with his current shameful transgressions such as his infidelities and his creative tyranny, which manifest in his cruel dismissal of aging actresses he once employed when they were young, viable, and attractive.
Birdman was a personal film for Iñnáritu as he and his alter ego attempt to redeem himself as a relevant artist—but this time in unfamiliar territory. Creative risks can be frightening for the visionary, the creator. Because of this, Iñnáritu’s Birdman captures the same self-reflexive tone that is reminiscent of Fellini’s chaotic and tumultuous stream of conscious narrative and self-deprecating tone filled with uncertainty, doubt, admonishments, and misplaced emotions.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma: The “New”Realist Poet and the Art of Nostalgia
It is Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma that becomes the pinnacle for this new wave to date. When watching Roma, I was taken back to days when I have discovered Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Francois Truffaut, and Michelangelo Antonioni. And in the wake of Bergman and Antonioni’s death in 2007, which happened just days apart, I lamented about the possible end to a filmmaking era marked by rich and poetic imagery and moving insights about the world and humanity that awaken us to a deeper ontological understanding. But then came Roma. This is why I see it as a wave or movement—perhaps regressive to the “olden days” and progressive to the present or current world—in content, in the aesthetics, and in the politics of Hollywood populist films. Roma epitomizes the revisiting and revitalization of key cinematic movements that come to mind such as the French New Wave or Italian Neorealism—all of which are a self-conscious rebellion to the mundane, the polished, the hurried narrative, and the overt and the apparent found in the typical Hollywood film. It is both new and nostalgic—reinstating the art back into cinema. Roma reglorifies the authenticity of art.
Roma’s pastiche originates from Italian and French influences that become a great part of the film’s graceful essence. It is the quintessential foreign arthouse with a nostalgia that is two-fold—on one hand, it pays homage to films of the European’s golden age marked by the insurgence of the great “heavyweights” such as Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, and Truffaut—to name a few; and second, it is nostalgic for Cuarón himself, the auteur, as he was inspired by memories of his childhood nanny while growing up in Mexico. In a 2018 Vanity Fair Interview Cuarón mentions “I was forced to approach [my nanny] for the first time in my life, to see her as a woman, and a woman with the complexities of her situation. And a woman that comes from a more disadvantaged social class, that also comes from an indigenous Mixteca heritage in a society that is ridden by class, but very perversely, like in the whole world, race and class are intimate” (Keegan). Cuarón’s heroine is Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a nanny for a middle class family in a Roma district in Mexico City circa 1970s.
Roma’s opening sequence consists of a static camera that captures the repetition of a broom manually swishing water on a floor tile. We later come to learn that it was one of the menial tasks Cleo has to do on a regular basis. Its purpose is to rid the driveway of dog feces. The opening sequence conjures up the memory of Emmano Olmi’s 1961 Il Posto—translated “the place.” The film was released at a time when Italian Neorealism was starting to wane or taper off. However, Olmi decides to embrace the aesthetics of neorealism to criticize Italy’s economic boom where the working class suffers from a different type of impoverishment—of one having to deal with a lack of identity or being robbed of one’s identity due to a workforce that is impersonal, automating, and inhibiting. The sequence I am referring to is the film’s unforgettable anticlimactic ending. It consists of a young man who forgoes his education to take on a job during the height of Italy’s corporate boom. The protagonist Domenico (Sandro Panseri) is at a new job where he must sit next to a noisy copy machine. He must contend with its rhythmic deafening drone. The jarring sound of the machinery becomes a metaphorical representation of Domenico’s repetitive life at his new job. This is underscored by the camera lingering on a forlorn Domenico who listens to the sound of his new life while seated in his new place. With this static shot, the film finally ends with a fade out and then the title card “Il Posto.” Although Olmi’s final sequence leaves a despondent tone that coincides with the plight of the main character, Cuarón’s opening sequence belies the insignificance of Cleo’s life. The tile imagery is actually a false conceit that subverts the ordinariness of her place as a nanny.
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Heroes and protagonists in neorealist films have one thing in common—their experiences (especially struggles) amid an objective reality where circumstances are influenced by race, class, and in some cases, gender. Cuarón’s vision of neorealism is eloquently poised while exploring social placement of women. Roma follows the point of view of an indigenous heroine whose marginal social status makes her almost invisible in the greater society. But her social marginalization lends itself to a more personal authenticity in the way she approaches life. She does not succumb to victimization or martyrdom as some neorealist heroines such as the poor simpleton Gelsomina (Julieta Massina) whose mother sells her to a brutish traveling circus performer, Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), in Federico Fellini’s neorealist drama La Strada (1959).[4] As a result, Gelsomina must put up with her husband’s abuse while they travel from village to village to earn a meager living during the freshly scarred war torn Post-fascist Italy. “La strada” is translated “the road”—the road of life and the places that contribute to the life that Gelsomina must endure. Roma is specifically about place and placement—and their transcendent symbolisms in terms of class and identity.
Cleo’s occupation as a nanny for an upper middle class family, places her in Cuarón’s prominent center rather than the periphery. It takes place in a Roma-district (a place of nostalgia for Cuarón because it was where he grew up). From this, we learn that she is tender and patient. In the household, she is an important figure. She is a secondary parent to four of Sofía’s (Marina de Tavina) school-aged children. The film is only conscious through the movements that surround her (captured by Cuarón’s slow, lateral pan shots). From this, we are able to see her day-to-day domestic duties. Sofía, married to a physician who is always away to do medical research, must contend with making paternal and household decisions on her own—delegating duties to Cleo in regards to the cleanliness of the house and making sure the children are fed, dressed, and tucked in bed when appropriate. Her position in the house becomes more central when Sofía’s husband abandons the family for another woman. This also happens during a critical time for Cleo who finds out that she is pregnant and the father of her child abandons her. This explicit parallel between the two women underscores the common grievance that cuts across class amongst women. The abandonment of a partner (husband and father) creates devastation for women who depend on their male counterparts for their security. Their trying predicaments force them to reconsider their place and identity as soloists amid their own desolation.
Therefore, if I were to reflect on Roma as a whole, it is a narrative about responding to place or placement—figuratively and literally. There are numerous scenes in the film that illustrate Cleo and Sofía’s feeling the threat of losing their place. For Cleo, the anxiety of losing her place as a nanny is prompted by her sudden pregnancy. She must confess to her employer about her pregnancy and whether or not her pregnancy will conflict with her expectations of being the family’s nanny. Not only does it affect her employment, but also her residence. As a live-in nanny, she as well as her co-worker Adela (Nancy García García) are able to reside in a small house not far from the main house. Fortunately, Sofía, who is sympathetic to Cleo’s plight, decides to give her the care she needs for her child—which includes a crib for the newborn and hospital care during the delivery of her baby.
As for Sofía, who is a foil to Cleo in regards to class, heritage, and education, she must decide whether she wants to return to her job as a researcher in order to maintain her residence in a middle class neighborhood as well as her status. As her husband’s financial contributions start to wane, she must take control of her identity and her place in life. In the meantime, Cleo’s presence is necessary—as the day-to-day care for the children becomes more essential while Sofía is able to feel the threat of her middle class eroding and is forced to make decisions to maintain it. The symbiotic relationship between the two women is significant to their identity and the maintenance of place. Their humble sensibilities of what to do next are profound and emotionally gripping.
Place coincides with atmosphere and sounds—or lack thereof—at least from Cleo. As we are observers of Cleo’s life, especially when it comes to the sudden transformation of her spirit, from a tender nanny to a jilted woman whose romantic passions for her lover has led to rejection and abandonment, we are able to feel Cleo’s turmoil, which is amplified by her silence. For the most part, peripheral sounds stem from supporting characters and the atmospheric world around her. Her former lover and father of her child, Fermín, coldly rejects her and the baby. This happens twice in her life. The first takes place in a movie theater where she first tells him she might be pregnant. The scene ends with a full shot of her waiting for him in silence outside the theater; he never returns to the theater after leaving to use the restroom. When she follows him to a military training camp to tell him that she is certain he is the father, he flat out denies being responsible for her pregnancy and threatens her if she returns to him again. Again, she is left alone in silence. Her pregnancy makes her visibly invisible to him.
The silent moments are not only moments of disappointment and rejection but also moments of fear and tragedy. This also provides a more poignant look at the reality and helplessness of Cleo’s situation. When she is in downtown Mexico City with her employer’s mother to look for a crib, she faces Fermín again in the town’s local shop. Fermín is part of a paramilitary group whose job is to slaughter student protestors who are against President Echevarria’s democratic reforms. As some students take refuge in the local furniture store in which Cleo was coincidentally shopping for a crib, she witnesses a violent killing of a student. Immediately afterwards, she is face-to-face with a gunman (a militant) and she comes to realize that the gunman is Fermín. She is dumbstruck while she confronts the maddening stare of her father’s child. But her most poignant silence was when she gives birth to a stillborn—which happens hours later after her frightening confrontation with the father of her child. Cuarón captures Cleo’s harrowing reality. Cuarón’s framing is intentionally conscientious of the tragedy. Cleo is foregrounded on a gurney with a backdrop of the lifeless baby being wrapped in towel by the nurse. Through this ordeal, she is paralyzed in a painful silence that lingers even after her return to care for Sofía’s children. It is a different silence that is far from personal musings, but rather a ruminating silence.[5]
Cleo’s spoken words come at a time of personal reconciliation—a spiritually climactic moment that takes place in the film’s most beautiful and emotionally evocative sequence. The scene takes place at a beach. Sofía’s urges Cleo to join her and the children to a short recreational trip while Sofía’s husband removes his belongings from the house. Sofía hopes the trip to the beach will help console Cleo’s feelings of despondency over the recent death of her child.
The event at the beach is the pinnacle of Cuarón’s poetic realism. The scene conveys the impression of one continuous take. The footage was spliced together in which the sand, sea, and sky are digitally manipulated to create a visually seamless match in the color grade. When Cleo realizes that the children are too far into the ocean, she, knowing that she is not a strong swimmer, wades into the water. The scene is glittered with sparkling reflections of the sun penetrating the water as Cleo goes deeper into the water. Although the seawater engulfs her, she manages to successfully pull the children out of the water. When she and the children make it to shore, the children laud her bravery. The scene culminates into a triangular shot of the kids nestled against Cleo who is positioned at the center. The brightness of the sun outlines their image—and Cuarón creates a breathtaking composition pulling together the sky, sea, and sand. Cleo’s brush with death prompts her to come into terms with her dark secret, which consists of a cruel rejection of her unborn child. Since the days of mourning for her child, she was submerged in guilt. This baptism into reconciliation and personal redemption (especially as the children’s savior) manifests in a form of self-renewal.
Therefore, it is hard to reduce Roma’s narrative about a maid or a nanny’s hardships and how she works alongside her employer’s personal hardships as well. Roma is also about the inventiveness of life; it is about class distinction and class unification; it is about female identity and female reconciliation; it is about placement after displacement; it is about timelessness in the throes of nostalgia. Cuarón includes visceral themes of human frailty, social and political upheaval, and worldly longings in a nostalgic realism with a profoundly different aesthetic that is more thoughtfully conscientious as opposed to being overtly conscious. Like the early pioneers of French cinema in which Cuarón has invocated in Roma, his artistry embraces a “poetic realism [that] encompasses the most disparate currents, the most personal preoccupations, and the most diverse influences” (Singerman 67).
May 26, 2019
This commentary is dedicated to the 2019 Film Criticism and Theory classes whose intellectual intuitiveness and openness as film critics have made them understand that a great film does not necessary have to be conscious to be compelling. The pulse of a film stems from the spectators’ ability to awaken the film’s cinematic unconscious—and such intuitiveness goes beyond entertainment.
Works Cited
Ali, Lorraine. “Alejandro G. Iñnáritu on Directing His Own Career.” Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb 2015, www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-retrospective-20150203-story.html. Accessed 4 Mar 2019
Keegan, Rebecca. “Alfonso Cuarón on the Woman Who Inspired Roma, Making Harry Potter, and What He Learned from His Worst Movie.” Vanity Fair, 9 Sep 2018. www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/alfonso-cuaron-telluride. Accessed 4 Mar 2019.
Salvesen, Britt, et al. Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters: Inside His Films, Notebooks, and Collections. Britt Salvesen, Jim Shedden, and Matthew Welch editors. San Rafael: Insight Editions, 2016.
Singermann, Alan. French Cinema: The Student’s Book. Cambridge: Hacket Publishing Company, 2006.
Shaw, Deborah. The Three Amigos. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.
Wood, Jason. The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema. London: Faber and Faber, 2006.
Notes
[1] Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949.
[2] Please refer to my essay “Birdman: Portrait of an “Artist” as Man, Myth, and Unredeemable Hero.”
[3] “The Modern Confessional Novel” from California State University Long Beach 1998
[4] For further understanding of Federico Fellini’s La Strada, please refer to my essay “Magical Neorealism” in La Strada’s Tragedy.”
[5] The New Yorker included a criticism of Roma’s lead character by Richard Brody on December 18, 2018. The criticism pointed out how Cleo’s voiceless characterization did not do justice to Cuarón’s tender sentiments towards the woman who raised him. I beg to differ. Although her character may seem to follow the character tropes from independent cinema, an argument Brody strongly suggests, her silence was powerful. It brought realism to her class and her personal identity—especially as a woman of servitude.
Brody, Richard. “There’s a Voice Missing in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.” The New York Times, 18 December 2018. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/theres-a-voice-missing-in-alfonso-cuarons-roma. Accessed 27 May 2019.