This is plain simple: Roma must be seen on the big screen.
To miss it, and be content with the reduction in size, frame, ambition and monumental re-imagining of 1970s Mexico by watching it on Netflix, is to miss a chance to appreciate cinema at its most pristine and moving. The film lands at Scala and House RCA tomorrow. Do yourself a favour and go see it.
Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children Of Men, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban) directed Roma for Netflix. Initially, the film was supposed to go straight to the streaming platform, save for a theatrical release in a few countries, such as Mexico, where the film is based, and the US, in anticipation for Oscar season. But after it premiered in Venice and Toronto, everyone was baffled: why on earth would Netflix not release this gem in cinemas everywhere? Because to admire Roma in its full splendour and heartbreak, and to honour Cuarón's vision, there's no question that the film has to be projected onto the biggest theatre screen possible. Netflix's staunch, paradigm-bending philosophy of equating television with cinema may still warrant debate, but in this case, thankfully, they've realised it's a no-brainer. For the sake of their own prestige, they've finally allowed Roma to be shown in cinemas in many countries at the same time as it is uploaded on its streaming service from Dec 14.
My advice is to savour this wonderful film in the theatre first. Then you can watch it again (and again) in your living room.
Set in 1971, Roma (the name refers to the neighbourhood in Mexico City where Cuarón was born and raised) is a black-and-white memory of a particular time and a place -- a remembrance of things past at its most clear-eyed and shimmering. It's unabashedly nostalgic and so beautiful that it flirts with becoming postcard-like (Cuarón is also director of photography). But what lifts it is its heart -- the intimate, sincere heart of a filmmaker inviting you to share his childhood memories. It's all the more impressive for the fact that Cuarón doesn't only remember the good. Roma takes place during a time of upheaval: of familial rifts, rising fascism and organised violence. There are so many indelible scenes in the film. One features a clash between right-wing hooligans and protesting students re-staged in a manner so sweeping and chilling that you'll be thankful you can rewatch it as many times as you want on Netflix.
Roma centres on a middle-class family facing domestic turbulence while Mexican society at large suffers through a traumatic period. Sofia (Narina De Tavira) is a mother of four left to wallow in tears and dog poo (the dogs are persistent) when her husband suddenly walks out on the family. The bulk of the story, however, is told through Sofia's live-in maid Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a woman of Mesoamerican ethnicity who takes care of the kids, cleans the house and cooks the food.
This working-class maid bears witness to the bourgeois crisis Sofia is enduring; the employer is kind to Cleo, yet when tempers flare, her built-in entitlement and class-based arrogance break through the veneer of civility. Meanwhile, Cleo has drama of her own. Her boyfriend, a Bruce Lee fanatic who participates in a weird mass exercise led by a wrestling guru, suddenly ignores her when she tells him she's missed her period. Women have to fend for themselves, regardless of which social class they belong to.
The overlapping of personal and national misadventures is a familiar narrative, and Cuarón refines it through his meticulous craftsmanship. He has created some of the most evocative images of his career here: the long tracking shot that follows Cleo as she skips along a street and emerges at a thronging intersection, neon billboards glaring; the fire in the forest when Sofia and her family visit their American friends, a fire that augurs the disaster to come; the mass exercise of young men on a dirt field, a choreography of brute force and hypnotism; the crackdown of dissent on the street; and another magical tracking shot at the beach, when Cleo, who can't swim, walks into the rolling waves, fear in her eyes but strength in her legs.
These virtuoso showpieces -- the beach scene, for instance, is a marvel even on repeated viewings -- aren't the end in themselves. They're not just there to impress. What makes their power so lasting is that they serve the human heart of the story. Cuarón has a way of staging a scene that builds up to an emotional crescendo through rhapsodic visuals, serene and yet simmering, while his characters hold things together with conviction, joy and sorrow. (And no, Cuarón didn't use a drone, which has quickly become a cinematographic platitude of 2018.)
Roma is a Mexican version of those neo-realist works that celebrate the glory of a city while acknowledging its inglorious shortcomings and the suffering of its people, like Rosellini's Journey To Italy, Cuarón's own Y Tu Mama Tambien, or, in literature, Roberto Bolano's Savage Detectives and Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan novels. Now Netflix, initially reluctant about a theatrical release, is gunning for the max: Roma has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes, and the mission is to push for a Best Picture Oscar. For a film like this -- a film that convinces us to hold on to our belief in cinema -- awards seem superfluous. Roma is one of the best films of the year, and its rightful place is in on the big screen where it deserves to be appreciated by the widest audience possible.
