Roma (2018): A Film Review

There is a point in “Austerlitz” where W.G. Sebald gives a dry, almost clinical, description of the architectural profligacy of Fort Breendonk. Then, switching to his trademark wistfulness, he says, “No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open.” Throughout its runtime of 135 minutes, Roma kept on reminding me of Sebald’s semi-autobiographical novel “Austerlitz”— narrators trying to uphold indifferent personae while examining social upheavals of their respective childhoods, yet ceaselessly losing their superficial nonchalance while delving into the lives of women who shaped their very beings, women with whom they had no blood relations (and hence, no obligations of gene perpetuance that we so often talk about in evolutionary Darwinism).

Roma is a childhood reminiscence from Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, who helms camera duties in ways that would have given his long-time collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki a run for his money. There is this opening shot where a reflection of an aeroplane on soapy water seemingly heralds Cuarón’s reflections on the people from his childhood. This particular shot was made possible due to the efforts of famed VFX company MPC’s Bangalore unit, a reason why the closing credits feature a multitude of Indian names.

The film swiftly shifts to the humdrum of a typical middle-class household in 1970s Mexico City — the neighbourhood of ‘Roma’ in particular where Cuarón grew up. Helping the family in its daily chores are native Mexican maids, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) and Adela (Nancy García). Cleo, however, appears to be the one closest to the three children. She juggles her duties as a full-time servant with that of a nanny, as she briefly takes a break from her laundry work in order to play with the youngest son, Pepe (Marco Graf). The two lie supine and pretend to be dead, among scores of clothes left for drying on the roof: a scene with which any Indian who has grown up among old city quarters can relate to.

Outside this bubble of playful imagination, however, the family is crumbling, much like the old buildings that populate the actual neighbourhood. The man of the house, Senõr Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), is a doctor who is literally greeted by dog poop inside the garage, struggling to inch in through the narrow passage. His inability to steer a car insinuates his inability to steer his family as well. We find him hurrying to leave on a supposed conference in Canada. Prior to bidding a final farewell, his wife Sofia (Marina de Tavira) clasps him from behind and tells him, “We’ll be waiting”. The scene almost makes it clear that the patriarch is leaving for good, and his wife knows it all too well.

The film features a number of ostensibly strong men hiding under facades of 20th century decaying masculinity. Apart from Antonio, Cleo’s friend Fermín (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) is another such character. After getting her pregnant (and showing off his martial arts skills while starkly naked, thus trying to prove the physical superiority of men), Fermín takes off from the theatre after coming to know of her pregnancy. He even attempts to scare off the heavily pregnant Cleo when she manages to locate him among a group of martial arts practitioners in a not-so-inviting suburb. There is quite an incredible shot here, with a bizarre Professor Zovek performing the supposedly impossible standing-on-one-leg-blindfolded trick. Both the bystanders and the martial artists, the ‘tough young men’ like Fermín, fail to accomplish the feat. It’s only a pregnant Cleo who carries out the stunt, gracefully and perfectly.

"Roma” portrays the resilience of women standing as rocks against violence and hubris of men. From gun-wielding thugs murdering students during the infamous Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971, to a certain family friend named Billy trying to grope a clearly distraught Sofia during Christmas celebrations, the men in Roma look like they’ve been plucked right out of some Margaret Atwood novel, deliquescing in a dystopia they’ve created themselves. The women, however, are more humane, breaking down in dire times, but coming out of the labyrinth stronger than ever. Cuarón’s dreamy pan shots and close-ups, as if a homage to Antonioni, take the viewer right at the centre of action. Cleo’s helpless sobbing after holding her stillborn child will make even a stone cry. The gorgeous monochrome — a lately hip style employed by everybody from Paweł Pawlikowski to our very own Ronny Sen — only accentuates the immediacy of Cuarón’s

work.

The single-shot closing scene perhaps outclasses even the celebrated sequence from Cuarón’s “Children of Men”. After Sofia tells the children that their father had indeed abandoned the family, the kids jump into the sea next morning. The breakers, however, suck them in with Sofia oblivious to the situation. It is up to Cleo, a non-swimmer, to save the children, and she does exactly that. The family huddle together later and cry on each others’ arms.

Although while reviewing a film, the reviewer is supposed to act like a participant observant from a sociological investigation, I could not help but lose myself time and again in the myriad sights and sounds that Cuarón serves us on small-screen Netflix. Being myself raised by a nanny whose origins I had never cared to find out, I could relate almost every frame with my own life. A knife- grinder passing down the street, announcing his services in a characteristic high-pitched call, or the matriarch admonishing her servants for trivial issues — all these scenes conjure a sense of nostalgia that crosses boundaries of space and time, and lead Mexico City right into the heart of a post-colonial South Calcutta. The mundane and quotidian find a lease of life at the hands of the auteur, as if Solzhenitsyn himself had penned the script after reading “Ulysses” for the umpteenth time. “Roma” at the very least reminds me of Vera from “Austerlitz”, coaxing me on a journey to rediscover my own Cleo.

Reviewed by Debaditya Sinha Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram

Photo by @carlossomonte