☆☆☆☆
At two critical points in Alfonso Cuarón's nostalgic and melancholy Roma, characters go to the movies, and Cuarón emphasizes the scope and grandeur of the cinema and the outsized role that moviegoing plays in many lives. Earlier in the film, he has shown us a family cuddling and laughing together as they watch a silly sitcom on their tiny TV, but the movies ... ah! The movies! They do something altogether different: They incite passion, they mark milestones.
So, wow, here's the irony: Roma can be seen almost exclusively on Netflix. Cuarón didn't actually make the movie for the streaming service, but the rapacious Netflix scooped it up after production and effectively locked it away from all but a handful of movie theaters in just a few big cities.
By all means, watch Roma on Netflix, because it should be seen by anyone who says they like movies. But Roma is more or less the antithesis of the Netflix style; it's long, slow and takes its own sweet time getting to its story, which it finally comes at in sort of a roundabout way, almost sneaking up on it. Roma is made for the singular experience of sitting in a movie theater and staring at a big screen.
You'll put up arguments to that idea, no doubt: The movies aren't what they used to be. They cost $15 for a ticket, but Netflix is only $10 a month. People use their cell phones and talk. They arrive late and munch on popcorn and they're downright rude. Going to the movies is a terrible experience! Netflix saves us from all that!
Yes, Netflix at home, where you can pause the movie and come back to it later, never mind that you're screwing with the very rhythm the director intended. Netflix at home, where you can check your phone anytime you want while the movie plays. Netflix at home, where you can get up and go grab a snack and go to the bathroom and have a conversation while the movie plays, because they're in their own home, and they can do whatever they want there.
So, yeah, the movie theater may have horribly behaved audiences from time to time -- but, guess what? No audience is more horribly behaved than the average person when watching a movie at home. The living room experience was simply not designed for long, concentrated attention, and the movies were simply not designed for the living room experience.
Go ahead, watch Roma on Netflix, but I fear that there's a good chance many viewers will give up before the opening credits are even over, before Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is finished scrubbing down the family's driveway as this black-and-white film with no musical score meanders through its story and takes a good 45 minutes to find itself. When it does, it's moving, sometimes harrowing and painful, and hypnotically compelling.
Roma is named after Colonia Roma, the Mexico City neighborhood in which it takes place, a neighborhood and a house very much like the one Cuarón lived in when he was a boy. One of the boys in the family for whom Cleo works may be a mildly fictionalized Cuarón, it's hard to say, but word has it that the set of the family's house looks exactly like the house in which Cuarón grew up.
Cleo is one of the family's two maids; she and her compatriot are dark and ethnic, while the family is caucasian and upper class. The mother, Sofia, learns early on that her husband is leaving her, but she maintains an air of grace for the sake of her family. Cleo, whose housekeeping skills seem of questionable efficiency, quickly becomes the grounding that the remaining family needs.
She does have her own life outside of the family, but it's seen in maddeningly fleeting bursts, which might be the movie's biggest shortcoming: It should be Cleo's story, but we learn less about her than almost anyone else. Her life outside of Roma leads to Cleo getting pregnant, visiting doctors, getting reassurance from the family that they won't fire her, and participating in a holiday getaway that ends when fireworks ignite a field. It's one of the movie's most dreamlike scenes, with men and women filling tiny buckets to try to extinguish an out-of-control fire, one of the metaphors that Cuarón loves.
All throughout the background of Roma the specter of angry, violent political unrest looms. But Cleo has little education and a simple view of the world, while the kids who are frequently in the foreground of the shots, know nothing about the world outside their windows. Roma is very much a film about innocence -- not merely innocence lost, but the real and constant need people have to remain innocent long after they have learned hard truths.
Roma is filled to the brim with visual effects of the "invisible" sort (that opening shot of cleaning the driveway among them), and Cuarón makes the most out of his visual prowess. In shots of Cleo and the family on the streets of Mexico City, Cuarón fills every corner of the frame with some sort of movement and half-glimpsed little drama, and even the most common experiences, like shopping for furniture, hold the possibility of being a life-or-death moment.
A lot happens in Roma, but very little in a common cinematic narrative way. This is a movie that washes over you like the waves that Cleo braves in the film's climactic scenes, and it's a movie that demands attention and patience. It also boasts, in lieu of that musical score, an extraordinary soundscape that pulsates with the life that is ever-present in the film.
You get the sense that Cuarón desperately wanted Roma to be experienced on the big screen, not just in the way he made the movie but in the way movies play such an integral role in the story. And it is, indeed, a movie to savor. It is a bold experiment, even an unintentional one, to see how much of the film's lush artistry comes through on the small screen, even a 70" home theater, because watching something on TV at home and watching something in a cinema are two entirely different experiences. It's ironic how much Roma knows that to be true.
Viewed December 19, 2018 -- Laemmle North Hollywood
1910
So, wow, here's the irony: Roma can be seen almost exclusively on Netflix. Cuarón didn't actually make the movie for the streaming service, but the rapacious Netflix scooped it up after production and effectively locked it away from all but a handful of movie theaters in just a few big cities.
By all means, watch Roma on Netflix, because it should be seen by anyone who says they like movies. But Roma is more or less the antithesis of the Netflix style; it's long, slow and takes its own sweet time getting to its story, which it finally comes at in sort of a roundabout way, almost sneaking up on it. Roma is made for the singular experience of sitting in a movie theater and staring at a big screen.
You'll put up arguments to that idea, no doubt: The movies aren't what they used to be. They cost $15 for a ticket, but Netflix is only $10 a month. People use their cell phones and talk. They arrive late and munch on popcorn and they're downright rude. Going to the movies is a terrible experience! Netflix saves us from all that!
Yes, Netflix at home, where you can pause the movie and come back to it later, never mind that you're screwing with the very rhythm the director intended. Netflix at home, where you can check your phone anytime you want while the movie plays. Netflix at home, where you can get up and go grab a snack and go to the bathroom and have a conversation while the movie plays, because they're in their own home, and they can do whatever they want there.
So, yeah, the movie theater may have horribly behaved audiences from time to time -- but, guess what? No audience is more horribly behaved than the average person when watching a movie at home. The living room experience was simply not designed for long, concentrated attention, and the movies were simply not designed for the living room experience.
Go ahead, watch Roma on Netflix, but I fear that there's a good chance many viewers will give up before the opening credits are even over, before Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is finished scrubbing down the family's driveway as this black-and-white film with no musical score meanders through its story and takes a good 45 minutes to find itself. When it does, it's moving, sometimes harrowing and painful, and hypnotically compelling.
Roma is named after Colonia Roma, the Mexico City neighborhood in which it takes place, a neighborhood and a house very much like the one Cuarón lived in when he was a boy. One of the boys in the family for whom Cleo works may be a mildly fictionalized Cuarón, it's hard to say, but word has it that the set of the family's house looks exactly like the house in which Cuarón grew up.
Cleo is one of the family's two maids; she and her compatriot are dark and ethnic, while the family is caucasian and upper class. The mother, Sofia, learns early on that her husband is leaving her, but she maintains an air of grace for the sake of her family. Cleo, whose housekeeping skills seem of questionable efficiency, quickly becomes the grounding that the remaining family needs.
She does have her own life outside of the family, but it's seen in maddeningly fleeting bursts, which might be the movie's biggest shortcoming: It should be Cleo's story, but we learn less about her than almost anyone else. Her life outside of Roma leads to Cleo getting pregnant, visiting doctors, getting reassurance from the family that they won't fire her, and participating in a holiday getaway that ends when fireworks ignite a field. It's one of the movie's most dreamlike scenes, with men and women filling tiny buckets to try to extinguish an out-of-control fire, one of the metaphors that Cuarón loves.
All throughout the background of Roma the specter of angry, violent political unrest looms. But Cleo has little education and a simple view of the world, while the kids who are frequently in the foreground of the shots, know nothing about the world outside their windows. Roma is very much a film about innocence -- not merely innocence lost, but the real and constant need people have to remain innocent long after they have learned hard truths.
Roma is filled to the brim with visual effects of the "invisible" sort (that opening shot of cleaning the driveway among them), and Cuarón makes the most out of his visual prowess. In shots of Cleo and the family on the streets of Mexico City, Cuarón fills every corner of the frame with some sort of movement and half-glimpsed little drama, and even the most common experiences, like shopping for furniture, hold the possibility of being a life-or-death moment.
A lot happens in Roma, but very little in a common cinematic narrative way. This is a movie that washes over you like the waves that Cleo braves in the film's climactic scenes, and it's a movie that demands attention and patience. It also boasts, in lieu of that musical score, an extraordinary soundscape that pulsates with the life that is ever-present in the film.
You get the sense that Cuarón desperately wanted Roma to be experienced on the big screen, not just in the way he made the movie but in the way movies play such an integral role in the story. And it is, indeed, a movie to savor. It is a bold experiment, even an unintentional one, to see how much of the film's lush artistry comes through on the small screen, even a 70" home theater, because watching something on TV at home and watching something in a cinema are two entirely different experiences. It's ironic how much Roma knows that to be true.
Viewed December 19, 2018 -- Laemmle North Hollywood
1910
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