The protagonist of this story is an outsider from his own place. The history of this land was written in the blood of others who threw their wives and killed their children. Even with the water of the Shanghai Sea, it could not be washed away. Alfonso Cuarón, the director of "Roma," invokes wet personal memories, detached because of their privacy—probably the distance between a plane in mid-air and a Galaxy RV walking on the ground. Curran's deep feelings were covered by the turbulent political situation and suppressed in the shadow of gradual gray tones.
Although "Roma" is Courant's personal video memory, it is laid out through the experience of the maid Cleo. Cleo is a native of Mexico, descended from European settlers who served in the Roman quarter of Mexico City. For hundreds of years, people who belonged to this land have been driven away by forces under various names: colonization, enclosure, reform, and development are all synonymous with plunder. The story follows a man on the ground floor as the scene changes, and a silhouette of the Mexican era of the early 1970s unfolds. Regardless of class, gender, or race, Cleo belongs to the oppressed. Courant followed her involuntary footsteps: at the bottom, unable to see the intricate social structures and political intrigues.
Courant just wanted to tell the story of a person who, despite the torrent of times, when his fragile heart was broken and shaky, he still mustered the courage to hold on to the person he loved - even if it was someone else's child. The prototype of Cleo is Libo, a maid who grew up taking care of Courant, and is now 74 years old. "Roma" is derogatory: the family Cleo served, the father abandoned his wife and four children because of an affair; Fermin, the boyfriend who made Cleo pregnant, knew that she was pregnant, and immediately ignored her, and later denied it or even said He killed his own flesh and blood indirectly; the rulers of the corrupt dictatorship of Mexico slaughtered students fighting for justice. Fermin and the youths who practice martial arts with him are the killing machines that the regime recruited to be trained by the CIA, a militia group called "Los Halcones." Only women suffer: Cleo, her sister and other domestic helpers, and Cleo's hostess, from babysitting to cleaning up shit. In contrast to the occasional outburst of the hostess, Cleo is always patient and repressed. The director who avoids sensationalism uses a low-key and calm photography style and cooperates with the restrained interpretation of non-professional actors to dilute the blood and the suffering of the weak.
Among the brothers and sisters, Pepe, who clings to Cleo the most, occasionally spits out mysterious words about the past and present in his dreams that are not like that of a boy his age. This boy who went to the sky in the dream is probably the incarnation of the director. The movie "Blue Fireworks" that the Pepe family watched in the cinema was the sci-fi work that inspired Courant to create "Edge of Gravity". And Cleo, the silent and patient nanny, showed greater maternal love than the hostess. She's an ideal projected by the desires of everyone -- including Pepe and Courant -- rather than a flesh-and-blood figure. So the biggest problem with Roma emerges here: Cleo becomes a vessel or medium used by Courant to reflect the memory of his time as a middle-class intellectual who inherited European colonial culture. Many critics have pointed out that the film's description of Cleo's origin is lacking, the character is too taciturn, and the audience can't understand her thoughts and feelings; although the film also depicts Cleo's personal experience of being rude and losing his flesh and blood. , but still not deep enough.
If "Roma" simply looks back through Cleo's eyes on the political turmoil in Mexico in the early 1970s, then we can understand why the film doesn't address the massacre of authoritarian regimes and land-grabbing class struggles. From the point of view of an ordinary domestic helper, of course, what an individual knows is very limited, and what is more important seems to be only the love and pain that he has personally experienced. But that's not the real Cleo/Libo experience, but Courant borrowed her eyes to see. Cleo is more like a robot that directors use to travel through time and space in the ocean of memory, and "Roma" is the result of its return.
Author's Note: The title of the article is quoted from "The Puppet of a Wife", written by Lin Xi.
Originally published in "Times Forum" issue 1637
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