If you ask me what kind of story "Rome" tells, I can hardly describe it, because it is more like a documentary full of personal memories. What it records is only a family, four women, four children, two cars, and a bit of life for a period of time around 1971.
The most terrifying thing about the director is that it gives the audience a sense of separation. A large number of single shots, long shots, or 360-degree shooting at the origin, all the pictures are extremely stable, only moving left and right. He brings you a god-like or ghost-like perspective to observe the lives of a family, master and servant.
I didn't understand it at first, because this kind of mirroring is too cold, and with the black and white pictures, it is difficult to integrate into the plot or bring in my own feelings. Entering the second half of the film, I suddenly realized that this is the effect the director is pursuing. He uses his icy lens to walk you through this house, every corner of this house. Take you on the sidelines to observe the dullest life of everyone under the same roof. You understand each of them's personalities and thoughts, but you can only watch them silently, watching them a little bit of joy and a little bit of pain.
All emotions and even all conflicts are straightforward. Like a scroll shaken open on a long table at once, there is no ups and downs to tell you, all reunion and separation, life and death, despair and death. And it is this absolute peace that brings extreme reality to each picture. Because life is actually cold, both happiness and pain are fleeting. Even if the adult's heart is turned over and over, the face may be numb.
But with the director's intentions, you look at the joy and sorrow of these characters withdrawn, and you can feel the director's compassion from it. Even though people are selfish, fragile, or even immoral, the goodwill between people still unknowingly reveals. The love and vitality that people and birth have is the most terrifying force in the world.
The director's personal aesthetics and artistic accomplishment are impressive. Each frame of the movie is separated into an oil painting. All of the service is carefully selected, in order to achieve the best effect of black and white painting. There is no script for shooting. The director updates the shooting scenes one-on-one daily, just like living day after day, you never know what will happen tomorrow.
The role of the two maids is a blank sheet of paper, touching the lens for the first time, and has never had any shooting experience, and only speaks Spanish. But their performance is so natural and smooth. I can't help thinking that what the so-called actors currently lack is not high-quality professional education, but just a down-to-earth normal life.
In "Rome", he only told a story that was not a story, and the most terrifying thing was that he only told a story that was not a story.
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