Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Roma



Roma (2018)

Dir. and written by Alfonso Cuarón
Starring Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Jorge Antonio Guerrero

Well, Alfonso Cuarón can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned; his last film was one of the best films of that year, and so was his previous one, and I have every reason to reserve a space on that list in advance for whatever he makes next. But after the bombastic GRAVITY, I was a little surprised to see him turn so intimate for his next project, producing his first Spanish-language film since 2001’s Y TU MAMA TAMBIAN, and likewise returning for the first time since that film to both his home country (Mexico) and, after more than a decade as a fantasy/sci-fi guy, to something resembling a realistic setting. Quite realistic, in fact, in the sense that the film is reportedly out-and-out autobiographical, though an autobiography with an interesting twist: it’s the story of a period of his childhood, told from the perspective of the family’s indigenous maid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, an untrained actress of Mixtec and Triqu heritage, making her film debut).

The result is a unique and affecting bit of storytelling (to the extent that the film is interested in anything that could be called a “story”), with the expected domestic drama happening around the periphery, seen from the perspective of someone who is deeply enmeshed with the family without exactly being part of it, while we simultaneously examine the hidden life of someone that the world is generally taking very little notice of. It’s about a world experienced entirely from the outside, both by its central character and the audience; it doesn’t so much present its characters to us as it forces us to enter their world and experience them on their own terms. It’s a curious strategy, which unexpectedly uses our alienation from the characters to draw us closer to them, resulting in a deeply, almost painfully intimate immersive experience which fiercely resists pat, easy characterization or cheap sentimentality. Though the whole film takes place from Cleo’s perspective, we almost never directly hear what she’s thinking and feeling -- mostly because no one ever asks, but I’m also inclined to think there’s more to it than that. She’s so completely powerless and detached from her life that I’m not even sure she could tell us what she feels if she could break the fourth wall and speak directly to the camera; she’s a character whose life is completely reactive, defined and dominated by other characters who see her (if they see her at all) as a mere supporting player. It’s the Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead of low-key domestic dramas.



You could argue -- and I’ve seen it argued-- that this is an infantilizing, even dehumanizing way to portray an already marginalized character,* but I see it as quite the opposite: a very honest and empathetic examination of the psychological alienation that results from being so entirely invisible and ignored that you begin to see yourself as a bit player in someone else’s story. Humans are social animals, and our lives and feelings exist, to some extent, only to the extent they can be shared. Left entirely apart from humanity, adjacent but parallel, Cleo’s experience is curiously half-formed, like a dream related by someone else. It’s not that she’s a cypher as a character, it’s that without an outlet, her thoughts and feelings must remain entirely internal, unarticulated and roughly formed. For my money, this makes for a far more intriguing approach to the character than the weepy, hectoring melodrama this would surely have been in someone else’s hands, though I certainly understand why some critics felt otherwise. It’s a unique way to structure a film, at any rate, and a testament to the profound strength of the filmmaking that something so deliberately alienating can be so evocative and moving.

It’s little surprise that the filmmaking is exemplary, of course, given that Cuarón’s superlative talent is already a matter of public record. But even so, the film is full of surprises; for something so intentionally intimate and authentic, it has a curious tendency towards spectacle and visual poetry. In fact, Cuarón’s fussy visual style is so fastidiously committed to capturing the chaotic detail of real life that he ends up overshooting realism and landing in some kind of meticulously curated hyper-realism, which seems mythic and timeless while still evoking something that feels very honest and specific. The production is deeply rooted in everyday reality, but it feels hypnotic and dreamlike just as often as it feels mundane and grounded, particularly during a few bravura long takes which wander meditatively through strange, fastidiously constructed dreamscapes that hover just on the precipice of the surreal. You could argue that this is a misstep which distances the audience from the gritty reality that the film seems to think it’s offering, but for my money it just makes it that much better. What kind of nut would stage an elaborate and jaw-dropping battle scene in the middle of his quiet little character piece? The kind of nut who knows his way around great damn cinema, that’s who. ROMA (the title refers to the neighborhood in Mexico city where the family lives) may not be quite as naturalistic as it believes itself to be (or at least as it present itself), but what’s not in dispute is what it is: vital, patient, masterful cinema, and very possibly a new high-water mark for one of cinema’s most virtuosic modern auteurs.




*And the fact that it’s a movie being made by a rich, Academy-Award-winning director about his childhood maid doesn’t exactly help matters, regardless of how much affection and sympathy he obviously has for her.


THE BEST OF 2018, AS SEEN FROM 2019: THE SERIES


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