Movie Review: Roma

Roma **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Alfonso Cuaron.

Written by: Alfonso Cuaron.

Starring: Yalitza Aparicio (Cleo), Marina de Tavira (Sra. Sofía), Diego Cortina Autrey (Toño), Carlos Peralta (Paco), Marco Graf (Pepe), Daniela Demesa (Sofi), Nancy García (Adela), Verónica García (Sra. Teresa), Andy Cortés (Ignacio), Fernando Grediaga (Sr. Antonio), Jorge Antonio Guerrero (Fermín), José Manuel Guerrero Mendoza (Ramón), Latin Lover (Profesor Zovek), Zarela Lizbeth Chinolla Arellano (Dra. Velez), José Luis López Gómez (Pediatra), Edwin Mendoza Ramírez (Médico Residente), Clementina Guadarrama (Benita), Enoc Leaño (Político), Nicolás Peréz Taylor Félix (Beto Pardo), Kjartan Halvorsen (Ove Larsen), Felix Gomez (Transeunte). 

 

Many filmmakers get to a point in their career (some start there) where they want to look back at their childhood – which is why we get so many sentimental, nostalgic films for the years gone past (we’re stuck in a wave of ‘80s nostalgia right now, probably because the people who were teenagers then are in control of things now). In some ways Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma is another one of these films – as it is clearly set in the time of Cuaron’s own childhood, and yet he has not made a hazy, nostalgic film at all. And he hasn’t even made a film about a young Alfonso Cuaron. Instead, he has made a film as a tribute to the women who raised him and formed him – most specifically, a film about Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), the maid and nanny for an upper middle class family, seen through own chaotic year of her life in the early 1970s. The film is very aware of the world around Cleo and this family – it shows it us often (mostly, in the background), but it remains a personal story.

 

We get to know Cleo slowly during the course of the film. The style Cuaron has chosen for the film is mainly made up of master shots – taking in the entirety of a scene, that he then let’s play out. There aren’t a lot of close-ups in the film, the editing allows shots to play out at length. He shot the film himself in beautiful black and white images, and doesn’t feature any score at all. And yet, while this may make Roma sound like “slow” cinema – this is hardly Bela Tarr territory here. The film feels alive, in large part because the sound design seems so intricately constructed. The film will call to mind the early (perhaps later) films of Federico Fellini (the movie does share a title with a Fellini movie from 1972, also based on the director’s life). But make no mistake, this is an intensely personal film for Cuaron.

 

Cleo does seem fairly happy in her life – for the most part, the family treats her nicely, almost like one of the family (not quite, she has more riles to follow – some of them very petty), and the four children she helps to raise really do love her – and she loves them. But will follow for the next year plunges the family and Cleo into personal chaos – first when the patriarch leaves the family for his mistress (but they don’t tell the children – they think he’s away doing “research)) and second when Cleo finds herself pregnant after a brief relationship with a young man, who takes off literally the minute she tells him (they’re watching a movie – and he says he needs to do to the bathroom). She is worried about her job – but the family is supportive, taking her to the doctor, taking her to buy a crib for the child, etc. She is still worried about how she is going to raise the child on her own. Meanwhile, the wife and mother of the family tries to keep everything together after she herself is abandoned – and money stops coming in, apparently because the father says he has none – although he has enough to take up scuba diving with his new girlfriend.

 

Roma is the rare film that is both very episodic, and yet feels like a whole coherent picture, rather than just snapshots of a life. The style helps a lot, because it remains the through line of the film. As does Yalitza Aparicio’s wonderful, subtle, quiet performance as Cleo – someone who mostly keeps her thoughts to herself. The movie does build to two large emotional payoffs in the final minutes – and they do not feel like cheating. They feel earned – as did the tears I shed during them.

 

The film will be released mainly on Netflix worldwide – with a few screenings in theaters. If you are lucky enough to see it on a big screen (like I did at TIFF), run don’t walk. Yes, the images are beautiful – and deserve to be seen on the biggest screen possible. But the sound design is perhaps even more intricate – and more deserving of the theatrical experience. I’m not blaming Netflix here – they have their business model, and it’s good they finance films like this. Yet, I do wish more people outside of festivals or big cities could this remarkably beautiful film on the big screen – as it so clearly demands to be seen.

Movie Review: Gravity

Gravity
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón.
Written by: Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón.
Starring: Sandra Bullock (Dr. Ryan Stone), George Clooney (Matt Kowalsky), Ed Harris (Mission Control), Paul Sharma (Shariff).

Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is one the greatest technical achievements I have ever seen in a movie theater. The combination of breathtaking cinematography (in 3-D no less), special effects, art direction and sound design mean there is not a second of the film that isn’t a pure joy to behold. But the technical achievement – no matter how great it is – is only part of the reason why Gravity is one of the year’s must-see films. Sandra Bullock delivers her best performance to date in the lead role – where she is more often by herself than in a scene with another actor – and, with only a few bare facts about her character, she makes you care deeply about her. It is one thing to be visually blown away by a movie –it’s another to be visually blown away, and also care deeply for its central character.

The plot of the movie is exceedingly simple. Three astronauts are on a spacewalk to install a new piece of equipment on the Hubble telescope. This is Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) for first time in space, and she is the one who designed the equipment. By contrast Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) has been in space so much, he’s approaching the all-time space walking record. Things are going okay, until the Russians (it’s nice to have them as the villains again) blow up one of their own satellites. This causes debris to fly through space, smashing other satellites, and creating more debris, to come hurtling at the astronauts, who do not have the time to get back to safety. Eventually, they become untethered and have to slowly make their way to safety. The problem – there may be nothing left for them to get to safely.

Cuaron has always been a gifted visual stylist. His modern adaptation of Great Expectations may not be a great movie, but is visually stunning – especially in its early scenes. His Y Tu Mama Tambien is a fascinating ménage a trois relationship drama that while low-key, is still well directed. And Children of Men is a dystopian masterpiece – that is at its best during the action sequences that Cuaron shoots with long takes with his endlessly roaming camera.

In Gravity, Cuaron takes his love of those long, unbroken takes to the extreme. His camera moves around the astronauts as they float through space, circling back towards them, and even sometimes through their helmet and back out again. It is dazzling to behold – and refreshing as most movies these days seem to think that in order to be exciting, they need to have rapid fire editing, with images cut up so much that they verge on incoherence, and use special effects for the sake of using special effects, and 3-D simply to milk a few extra dollars for the audience. By contrast, Cuaron uses these long takes – in conjunction with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who he worked with on Children of Men, and has also worked with Terrence Malick on his last few films, so he knows how to do these long takes. Although the film was converted to 3-D after shooting, you wouldn’t know it – every shoot seems to have been designed for 3-D, and it never seems like a gimmick. The special effects are used to create visuals that feel real – space has never quite looked like this on film before. It joins the very short list of recent live action movies that actually benefit from 3-D (the list before Gravity perhaps only contains Avatar, Hugo and Life of Pi). This is pretty much a completely digital world that Cuaron and his team have crafted – and while that often annoys me (because when technology allows filmmakers to create anything they can imagine, they often goes overboard), here Cuaron uses it to disorient the audience in an effective way. In essence, he uses visual effects to have the audience float in space alongside his characters. The effect is stunning.

If it were just the technical elements in Gravity and nothing else, it would still demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible (I fear that the movie will lose a lot when viewed on a TV screen). But Bullock’s performance in the movie is also one of the best of the year. The film gives her a little backstory, that makes her instantly sympathetic, but her performance goes deeper than that. It is impossible not to relate to her on a human level – as a woman struggling to do whatever she can to survive. It’s a remarkably physical performance, and Bullock never oversells the emotion behind it, like she has done in the past.

In short, Gravity is nothing less than masterful in its every moment. While the story is simple, the ambition of the project is huge. That Cuaron attempted it should be commended – that he pulled it off is nothing short of remarkable.