This 135-minute film, with layers of content and perspectives, leaves the audience with a poetic choreography: it looks like the movie is about the maid Corio, but think about it, the hostess Sophia. She is also the heroine, and her destiny and spiritual journey have formed a resonance with Kelio. In terms of subject matter, the film is full of national political history and distinct ideological factors in the context of the times, but in retrospect, the film is personal and emotional.
Many fans have already parsed the meaning of the title "ROMA", which is the reverse of the Spanish AMOR - love. The director's use of ROMA as the title also hints at the theme of the film: this film is about love, just like the religious motto Shantih Shantih Shantih that appears at the end of the film, it is also about "the harmony and breadth of love". Director Alfonso Cuaron has incorporated many personal memories into the film, which can almost be regarded as his autobiography, and the maid, Corio, is also his Libo tribute at the end of the film.
Perhaps the background of the times, historical events, political movements, etc. involved in the film will cause certain obstacles for the audience to understand this masterpiece - unable to understand the director's reflections on modern politics in Mexico, but even if this film is regarded as a family film Look, you can also feel the sincere and moving feelings.
For autobiographical films involving the director's private memories, there is only one most important evaluation criterion: sincerity. When we recall Fellini's "Amakord" and "Eight and a Half", Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Once Upon a Time in Childhood", Donatore's "Cinema Paradiso", etc., we all win with sincerity. In the process of watching "Roma", I often think of the shadows of these classic works, but "Roma" is not a mere autobiography of memory. In the process of processing memory, Cuaron carefully arranged many artistic elements.
Such as recurring or single occurrences in movies: planes, dogs and shit, cars and door holes, pregnancy and stillbirth, forest fires, crosses, and ocean waves. These images all have relatively clear directions. Obviously, it is not a flash in memory, but the director's ingenuity and choreography.
The director's clipping of memory cannot avoid traces of artificial fiction, but it is this processing that makes the film's connotation more profound, still worthy of the word "sincere".
Different from other typical autobiographical films, the portrayal of family in "Roma" is all fine-grained, but there are many foreshadowing connections in the small pieces, and the audience needs to carefully discover that the film does not have too many comedy elements, but more A deep and distant connotation, and there is a clear political attitude. It can be said that this film is a meticulously processed autobiography, a private reflection on the social and political history of Mexico by director Cuaron using the shell of childhood memories.
A large number of ingeniously designed lateral moving environments in the film are the director's perspective of memory, and it is also the perspective of the director leading the audience to appreciate his memories. The two aspects that the film wants to express, society and family, are separated for the audience (at least in the film, the social politics does not directly affect the family, except for the love tragedy of Corio and Fermin, but this paragraph Love is more of a personal choice, not directly related to the political movement at the time), so it will make some viewers a little confused: when it comes to history, the perspective of onlookers is ambiguous, and when it comes to family, it is implicit and euphemistic (in the end the male host Why did they leave the family, and what was the conflict between the husband and wife, it was not clearly explained).
The audience may not be interested in the social and political history in it, or they may not be able to receive the information conveyed by the director smoothly (the performance of these major events in the film is from a bystander perspective and does not directly introduce them), and they are more focused on the possible The personal encounters of the two heroines Leo and Sophia.
——The beauty of this film is this: on the surface, social reality and private memory are separated, but after the director's processing, we can feel the close connection between the two in subtle and rich details.
For example, Christmas at the country manor is the most ideological part of the film, the hierarchy between the rich and the poor (different banquet scenes), land conflicts, hints of forest fires (the old manor housemaid had doubts, because the land Disputes, the dog in the house was poisoned by farmers, and the audience can reasonably infer: the fire may also be set by them deliberately), many specimens of dog heads (allusion to the identity of servants), in the seemingly chaotic carnival scene There is a strong sense of irony and criticism.
In the scene of the manor, there is a small detail that is easy to overlook: when Ke Leo was in the basement to attend the servant party, the old maid had just expressed her blessing to the child in her belly, and when she was about to raise a glass, someone accidentally knocked it The wine glass was dropped and shattered, and the director gave a close-up shot: obviously, this was a bad omen, and the wine glass was the uterus of Corio.
Then, there is a thrilling scene: the production of Cleo.
Kleo's production is directly related to social movements. Kleo witnessed the brutal suppression and killing of students by a government-employed "martial arts group" in a furniture store, and then met his lover Fermin again - pointing a pistol at She, at this moment, her amniotic fluid broke, came to the hospital in confusion, and gave birth to a stillbirth. The moral of this episode is very clear: the abortion of the revolution, the shatter of hope.
It seems that this story should not be classified into the category of "the fate of the little people in the torrent of the big era", but the state of the fate of the little people and the torrent of the big era - this kind of elusive state is more real, just like People who grew up in a particular historical period recall childhood joys and sorrows that were beyond the times. In this respect, Cuaron's film is quite unconventional, without the intense social and family conflicts we expect - such as parents participating in sports, being arrested or killed, etc. It is also a common setting in period-family-themed movies.
In this way, the film remains largely faithful to memory, allowing no such dramatic conflict of fiction to appear. Rather than reflecting on social and political history, Cuaron focuses more on the discussion of "love". "Roma" touches on the essence of "love" - selfless and broad.
Keleo is an almost perfect maid, conscientious, gentle and tolerant, and an angel of the children in the family - perhaps the identity of a maid, the understanding of many fans, will involuntarily move closer to ideology: the maid is in this family It is a humble existence, such as the dog named Boras, and the contrast between the host's class and the servant's class banquet in the Christmas plot of the manor, this meaning is more and more obvious. But I don't think this ideological theme is the director's focus. His focus is on human "love" that goes far beyond these.
In the end, Cleo fully integrated into the family, participated in family meetings, rescued the child swept away by the waves, and became the most loyal friend of the hostess Sophia (at this time, the different love tragedies of the two women overlapped together, forming a kind of The alliance of sadness and self-improvement), which clearly conveys the director's understanding: love is beyond ideology, it is broad, to have the ability to love, you need to achieve a real state of self-forgetfulness in the soul.
Therefore, in the martial arts group training that Fermin participated in, after the strong man performed the yoga tree-style balancing movement, the academy and audience present followed suit. Only Cleo could do it easily. Obviously, she had not experienced this. Class training, but she can naturally achieve "self-forgetfulness", she is born to love people, she is born to transmit love.
Even though she is poor and not beautiful, even though her family suffers (the land of her mother's house was seized by the government), but we don't see her complaining once in the movie, even when we find the unscrupulous Han Ferming. There was no conflict, instead Fermin threatened to force her to leave. In Keleo, we vaguely see the shadow of Jesomina in "The Road", happiness is happiness, sadness is sadness, always pure, dedicated, full of love, shining "Saint" 's brilliance.
The glorification of this female image may make some feminists feel dissatisfied, thinking that it is a manifestation of weakening class and ignoring oppression, and losing criticality, but the greatness of human nature is often beyond ideology, and love is not Replacement is not the oppression brought about by class differences - of course, like some domestic film and television dramas that unprincipally praise maternal love (women who are abducted and sold to the mountains have no regrets and love dedication, etc.), that is indeed What is despicable and inferior still depends on the work, and the realm of "Rome" is naturally different.
If it is said that director Cuaron has a "female worship" complex, it is not groundless - "Gravity" has already revealed it very clearly, and "Roma" is also full of praise.
It may not be suitable, but it can be compared with one or two: this film also has something in common with "Sister Peach" directed by Xu Anhua. A hardworking woman who does her duty faithfully. If we only stay at the critical level of ideology, class, wealth and poverty, we cannot fully feel the greatness of Kelio and Sister Tao, and we also miss the love that the director wants to convey (ROMA or AMOR) the truth.
As an autobiographical family film, "Roma" does not seem to be full, but as a feature film that reflects the style of the times, "Roma" appears to be a bit slick (the same advanced shooting techniques, in terms of expressing the times, "Son of Sol", "Son of Sol" "In the Crosswind" has achieved a super high level), but the ability to blend the two together is precisely the power of director Cuaron, which is not only anti-traditional, but also profoundly tells us what love is.
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