Roma - Film Review
Feb. 24th, 2019 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI've now seen six of the eight films nominated, and I can safely say that the only two that I'd have nominated would be Black Panther and Roma. (I haven't seen Green Book or The Favorite -- so can't comment on either.)
There is a discernible pattern emerging -- all the films that I've seen do in some respect critique our society and societal context.
Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody are to a degree, separate indictments of the fame machine, looked at from separate perspective. Bohemian is the most problematic of the two and the more I think about Bohemian, the more problematic it becomes. At the end of it -- I felt a stirring need to strangle the two remaining band members of Queen and if Mercury were alive, I can't help but wonder if he'd be forgiving of his band-mates or those who adored the film, overlooking the appalling homophobic subtext. Maybe. I think he was a realist, who knew full-well the world that he inhabited. Also, the cinematography and direction was off in different places and the story jumps about -- and I could on and on. I have to say that of the films nominated, I had the most problems with Bohemian and I'd have kicked it to the curb and replaced it with either Avengers Infinity War or Wrinkle in Time. But hey, that's why the Oscars shouldn't be taken too seriously and are just fun.
Roma directed by Alfonso Cuarón is what I'd call hyper-realism, in which the filmmaker is concerned with providing an as realistic as possible rendering of events and perception. It's also a character piece - told solidly within the perspective of "Cleo" the live-in nanny and cleaning lady of a prominent upper middle class family of four in 1970s Mexico City. It was inspired by Curaron's mother and dedicated to her memory.
Filmed entirely in black and white and in Spanish with English subtitles, it's a moving film if a bit slow in places. (I admittedly kept dozing off, so it took three-four hours to watch it on Netflix. I started at 11 and finished around 3. Let me put it this way -- we spend fifteen minutes watching Cleo clean. Hyper-realism in art isn't necessarily exciting or entertaining, but it can be compelling.)
The film is a brilliant piece of film making. The cinematography at times is spot on and the acting is as naturalistic as you can get without going full-scale documentary. By the end of the film, I'd fallen in love with Cleo, and my heart was in throat.
But the pacing is slow, and I'd have edited some of it out. Also it is at times a bit too heavy-handed an indictment of the male gender. So much so that I began to wonder about the filmmaker and his unresolved feelings towards his own father and the toxic male culture in which he'd been raised. The culture depicted in the film through the innocent and somewhat pained gaze of Cleo is a toxic one, run by men, who care little for anything but their own pleasure and individualistic pursuit of success and fame and pleasure, often through violence. Throughout we see guns, at one point the family visits relatives at a hunting cabin in the mountains. They are surrounded by stuffed taxi-dermied animals -- either dead from natural causes or killed by the men of the house. And at a party outdoors, the men fire handguns across a lake for sport.
In addition -- the only nudity is male nudity. A change of pace. And the male nudity is not displayed in a...erotic manner but more as a bit of a joke. It's full frontal. The guy is showing off his martial art prowess with a pole while completely nude to Cleo -- before he sleeps with her. I laughed during it, and Cleo has a sheet over her mouth suppressing her own laughter -- at his penis and balls jumping about unprotected. Fermin, the man, in question, who impregnates Cleo, but refuses to take responsibility for the child -- is depicted as a man who has embraced a lifestyle of violence. Towards the end, he comes across Cleo in an department store, where she and her employer's family are hiding from gun-fire in the streets, he holds a gun on her, recognizes her, and backs away in shock and remorse. Cleo goes into labor immediately afterwards.
The only adult men depicted in this film -- are the employer's husband, who at the beginning of the film leaves his family for a mistress and doesn't continue to support them -- instead he buys scuba gear and his own lifestyle. He lies to them about doing research in Canada. We are shown a man who is rude to his support staff, smokes, drinks, and cares only for himself. There's only one scene in which he is decent and that's to Cleo before she's about to deliver her child at the hospital.
And it is less than five minutes. Men in this film are shown to be selfish assholes, toxic to everyone around them, and their culture and their authority to be similarly toxic and cruel.
Even the clips of two films shown, Marrooned and another television show (that the characters are watching) depict this toxicity.
I felt that it may been a bit too heavy-handed in this regard, and as a result, a touch preachy.
What I'm picking up from the nominated films is a heavy critique of our culture. Only Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born seem to back a way from that a bit, but not completely and with mixed results.
Other than that, and the pacing, it was a good film. And I recommend seeing it.
[I was going to try and see either The Favorite or Green Book -- but they cost $14.99 to rent/buy on Amazon and just, no. ]
Roma is available on Netflix.
we need to be careful about engaging in this type of criticism. Art is not mean
There is a discernible pattern emerging -- all the films that I've seen do in some respect critique our society and societal context.
Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody are to a degree, separate indictments of the fame machine, looked at from separate perspective. Bohemian is the most problematic of the two and the more I think about Bohemian, the more problematic it becomes. At the end of it -- I felt a stirring need to strangle the two remaining band members of Queen and if Mercury were alive, I can't help but wonder if he'd be forgiving of his band-mates or those who adored the film, overlooking the appalling homophobic subtext. Maybe. I think he was a realist, who knew full-well the world that he inhabited. Also, the cinematography and direction was off in different places and the story jumps about -- and I could on and on. I have to say that of the films nominated, I had the most problems with Bohemian and I'd have kicked it to the curb and replaced it with either Avengers Infinity War or Wrinkle in Time. But hey, that's why the Oscars shouldn't be taken too seriously and are just fun.
Roma directed by Alfonso Cuarón is what I'd call hyper-realism, in which the filmmaker is concerned with providing an as realistic as possible rendering of events and perception. It's also a character piece - told solidly within the perspective of "Cleo" the live-in nanny and cleaning lady of a prominent upper middle class family of four in 1970s Mexico City. It was inspired by Curaron's mother and dedicated to her memory.
Filmed entirely in black and white and in Spanish with English subtitles, it's a moving film if a bit slow in places. (I admittedly kept dozing off, so it took three-four hours to watch it on Netflix. I started at 11 and finished around 3. Let me put it this way -- we spend fifteen minutes watching Cleo clean. Hyper-realism in art isn't necessarily exciting or entertaining, but it can be compelling.)
The film is a brilliant piece of film making. The cinematography at times is spot on and the acting is as naturalistic as you can get without going full-scale documentary. By the end of the film, I'd fallen in love with Cleo, and my heart was in throat.
But the pacing is slow, and I'd have edited some of it out. Also it is at times a bit too heavy-handed an indictment of the male gender. So much so that I began to wonder about the filmmaker and his unresolved feelings towards his own father and the toxic male culture in which he'd been raised. The culture depicted in the film through the innocent and somewhat pained gaze of Cleo is a toxic one, run by men, who care little for anything but their own pleasure and individualistic pursuit of success and fame and pleasure, often through violence. Throughout we see guns, at one point the family visits relatives at a hunting cabin in the mountains. They are surrounded by stuffed taxi-dermied animals -- either dead from natural causes or killed by the men of the house. And at a party outdoors, the men fire handguns across a lake for sport.
In addition -- the only nudity is male nudity. A change of pace. And the male nudity is not displayed in a...erotic manner but more as a bit of a joke. It's full frontal. The guy is showing off his martial art prowess with a pole while completely nude to Cleo -- before he sleeps with her. I laughed during it, and Cleo has a sheet over her mouth suppressing her own laughter -- at his penis and balls jumping about unprotected. Fermin, the man, in question, who impregnates Cleo, but refuses to take responsibility for the child -- is depicted as a man who has embraced a lifestyle of violence. Towards the end, he comes across Cleo in an department store, where she and her employer's family are hiding from gun-fire in the streets, he holds a gun on her, recognizes her, and backs away in shock and remorse. Cleo goes into labor immediately afterwards.
The only adult men depicted in this film -- are the employer's husband, who at the beginning of the film leaves his family for a mistress and doesn't continue to support them -- instead he buys scuba gear and his own lifestyle. He lies to them about doing research in Canada. We are shown a man who is rude to his support staff, smokes, drinks, and cares only for himself. There's only one scene in which he is decent and that's to Cleo before she's about to deliver her child at the hospital.
And it is less than five minutes. Men in this film are shown to be selfish assholes, toxic to everyone around them, and their culture and their authority to be similarly toxic and cruel.
Even the clips of two films shown, Marrooned and another television show (that the characters are watching) depict this toxicity.
I felt that it may been a bit too heavy-handed in this regard, and as a result, a touch preachy.
What I'm picking up from the nominated films is a heavy critique of our culture. Only Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born seem to back a way from that a bit, but not completely and with mixed results.
Other than that, and the pacing, it was a good film. And I recommend seeing it.
[I was going to try and see either The Favorite or Green Book -- but they cost $14.99 to rent/buy on Amazon and just, no. ]
Roma is available on Netflix.
we need to be careful about engaging in this type of criticism. Art is not mean