"Roma" has many of the hallmarks of a historical documentary—black and white, restrained shots, and period houses and street scenes. Although it looks back at the times through the story of a family, it does not deliberately exaggerate the turmoil and vicissitudes of the family, there is no color, no music, and the camera is always peeking at everything in a corner, which seems quite objective. But in fact, after careful reflection, I can feel that the film has been injected with deep personal emotions, and the whole gives people a real, peaceful and beautiful feeling. In my opinion, this kind of calm and beauty from the perspective of documentary may be more deceptive than the peace and beauty of color rendering, and many contradictions are actually hidden in its apparent tranquility.
First of all, this seemingly objective, yet very personal, warm and emotional impression comes from the way the camera moves and the details of the picture. Although the camera often observes the characters and the environment in the corner, and rarely closes up the characters and switches the screen quickly, it is like the eyes of a person in a corner, following the characters out of the screen, entering from one room, and exiting from another room. He will also slowly look around the surrounding environment, like an old man calmly looking at his past room, old furniture, posters on the wall...people and dogs in the house, the daily life of the babysitter, the play of children...the storefront on the street, the hawker who sells , and old movies. In this way, the characters move slowly, and the characters are placed in a fixed space to look around, which makes the plot extremely slow, and the macro era and the inner emotions of the characters give way to specific details. The family environment is the main object to be looked around and scrutinized, which reflects a very personal sense of reminiscence. Not only that, but the content presented in the slow-moving footage is so trivial, everyday, delicate, and real that even if the picture is calm and restrained, it can feel a deeply personal emotion. The playful dialogue of children seems meaningless, but it is so true to restore the fun of children. The trivial housework, from cleaning up shit to turning off the lights room by room at night, may seem uninteresting, but it's a real day for a nanny. The posters on the wall, the dolls scattered on the ground, the programs broadcast on the TV, these countless details, especially the details of family affection, I am afraid that only people who have strong and real emotions for a memory can recall so many details. The moving part makes the whole film more warm and emotional on top of the record
Although the use of the camera lens and the selection of the content of the picture will lead the audience to feel that the whole film is so calm and real, so kind and loving, the essence of the story is not as calm as it seems on the surface, because there are quite a lot of scenes in "Roma". Contrasts and contrasts, as well as symbolic images, quietly reveal the division and oppression between men and women, whites and indigenous Mexicans
The first is the contrast between men and women. The few close-ups in films often focus on male characters. Unlike many movies that stare at women, the men in this film are instead stared and dismembered. Fermin plays a big stick in front of his girlfriend naked before going to bed, trying to show the "stick" underneath him. "As powerful as the stick in his hand, however, after learning that his girlfriend was pregnant, he ran away in a hurry, and finally used the stick to point at his girlfriend and his child in his girlfriend's belly. Fermin wears a cartoon T-shirt with the words "amos es..." (Love is...) implying that Fermin doesn't know what love is, and it's absurd to think that everything can be achieved by force. The first shot of the male employer is also a close-up. The close-up part is just his car and the part of him holding the steering wheel in one hand and the cigarette butt in the other. Although his car was ramming from side to side in the garage, there was elegant music playing in the car, and the ash shivered in style. This male employer who rarely returns home, doesn't care about family affairs, but only puts on airs and complains about shit in the garage has finally abandoned his wife and several young children to pursue his own relaxed and beautiful life. In contrast, the women in the film are much stronger and better. The female employer's decision to find a job and survive with her children after being abandoned reflects the perseverance of women under oppression. Silent, loving, and confined to a small ashlar floor for a lifetime, a Mexican woman from the bottom - the nanny Polly's mother, can even sacrifice herself into the turbulent sea to save other people's children.
Another important contrast is the contrast between the invading white civilization and the degraded Mexican indigenous living environment. From the beginning of the film, what we see is a stone brick floor. What is this stone brick floor? We can't see it from the beginning as an audience. It may be the ceiling or the floor. On the stone and brick floor, we saw the planes in the sky from the reflection of the water mixed with foam, as if in the reflection of the dirty water, we saw a civilized world outside. But this civilized world will always be a reflection to the nanny who is cleaning shit on the stone floor. The symbols of the civilized world—airplanes, bustling streetscapes and the desolation of the Mexican indigenous living environment—are repeated multiple times, constantly reinforcing the juxtaposition of this polarized world. The intrusion of the white world against the indigenous Mexicans was even more stark in the event when the female employer came home for Christmas, with white people shooting animals in the Mexican jungle with pistols. In the face of the danger of the Mexican jungle being engulfed by fire, the indigenous Mexicans are fighting the fire in the front, while the white people watch from the back with wine glasses. This may also imply that after the white people destroyed the original environment of Mexico, it was the native Mexicans who paid.
These contrasts reveal the profound contradictions and conflicts in that era. However, in the whole film, the contrast picture is still a small proportion, and most of the shots are still aimed at babysitters, women, children, trivial daily life and Mexican indigenous people. life scene. The small proportions suggest profoundly contradictory details and the larger proportions but trivial and loving pictures seem to imply the latter's ignorance and calmness in the estrangement and conflict.
At the dinner table, they casually chatted about terrifying things in the outside world (the little boy was killed), went shopping on the street and encountered turmoil. They didn't know why such a thing happened. And Polly's mother even miscarried in the chaos and never complained to anyone else. Only after she rescued her employer's child from the sea did she weep and say that she once wanted the child in her womb to die. The guilt of her own child, but obviously the death of the child was not her fault, but she took the blame for herself. The lives of women and children in the family are peaceful and ignorant. Facing the chaos and disasters that break into their lives, they can only survive in silence. The young Mexican indigenous men represented by Fermin are involved in the turmoil and take sticks at them. People are also ignorant.
At the same time, looking back on all the family trivia before, although Polly's mother under the director's camera is often quiet, beautiful and hard-working, she is often "aphasia". Compared with her female employer who can vent her temper wantonly, Polly's mother, under double oppression, often appears in the camera as a "silent" image, she rarely complains, we do not know that she is under the seemingly calm and tranquil appearance. How much pain has been endured. After being abandoned by Fermin, we couldn’t hear her talk; after being scolded by a female employer, she could only endure silently; when asked by a white doctor about her condition, she couldn’t speak her mind directly and needed to be guided by a white doctor; family travel, She can only accept it, it is difficult to refuse.
The women at the bottom of Mexico that she represents, as well as the indigenous people of Mexico, their residences are either in closed white homes, or on the dilapidated barren hills, they either use violence to point to their own people like Fermin, or like Polly Like mothers, at the bottom of the chain of oppression, they can only be quiet and work hard without complaining, and no one knows their voices. The serene and trivial appearance created throughout the text seems to suggest a deeper ignorance and aphasia.
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