Although the film is called "Roma," the "Roma" here is actually the name of a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City. Alfonso Cuaron , one of the "Three Mexicans" who has been in Hollywood for many years, used the camera to make an affectionate retelling of his long childhood memories.
On the list of Oscar nominations just announced, [Roma] leads the list with 10 nominations including Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film.
Although in the interview, Caron admitted that 90% of the content in [Roma] came from his childhood memories, but [Roma] is not as simple as a memoir.
Cuaron wrote his own script, shot his own, directed his own, and at the end of the credits, he dedicated the film to Libo——
Libo, his childhood "nanny mother", is also the protagonist and perspective of [Roma] , through the eyes of this young maid (Cleo), we follow Cuaron's memory back to the late 60s and 70s Early Mexico.
Some direct, some roundabout, but it’s all about the era that shaped me, or the era that shaped Mexico, 1960-1970 was the starting point of a long transition in Mexico.
Although [Rome] is personal and does not speak directly about the era, the atmosphere of that era is everywhere.
They permeate the narrative, sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically participating in the life and life experience of the individual protagonist.
[Roma] (Roma), there is another name, called "México '68" , that is, Mexico 68.
Mexico in 1968, this year, Mexico hosted the 19th Summer Olympic Games; two years later, in 1970, the 9th World Cup was also held in Mexico.
The time line of [Rome] probably spans the period from 1968 to 1971, and there are traces of the World Cup in the posters of the children's rooms in the movie.
Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) began to carry out large-scale social and economic reforms in Mexico from the 1930s. By the 1960s and 1970s, the economy had continued to grow at a high speed for 30 to 40 years, which was called the "Mexican Miracle" .
The "Mexican Miracle" allowed Mexico to develop from a backward agricultural country to a middle industrial country.
Whether it is the Olympic Games in 1968 or the World Cup in 1970, it is undoubtedly a signal that Mexico is actively showing its economic achievements to the international community.
However, in fact, behind this kind of "economic miracle" is hidden years of domestic repression and exploitation.
The "economic miracle" is based on a long-term strategy of import substitution (that is, vigorously developing industrialization), and the exploitation of cheap labor is inevitable.
The living conditions of Mexican workers, peasants and the urban poor remain miserable.
Violence against the countryside has even been the backbone of the PRI regime for years, and one of their legacy is the so-called "Dirty War" waged against rural insurgents in the 1960s and 1970s .
According to a declassified document in 2006, during the "Dirty War", the PRI committed a series of atrocities, including violence, rape, massacres, and even the destruction of entire villages.
Galeano writes in "The Severed Vessels of Latin America": Here, development is the voyage in which most people die.
In the days of Alfonso Cuaron [Rome], this violence was permeating all aspects of society.
So you can see the military and police patrolling the streets in the movie, and you can hear the little boy casually recount the scene where he saw another child being shot and killed by the military police.
In the movie, the family went back to the countryside for a holiday, and the story they heard was that villagers killed each other in revenge for fighting for land, not even a dog was spared.
The land in the house of the maid Cleo was also forcibly seized by the government and interest groups.
So she sighed to the land where she was on vacation: This is very similar to my village, it is drier but it feels very similar.
You know, behind such seemingly simple words of nostalgia, there are more unspeakable bitterness.
Of course, these afflictions don't affect [Rome's] elite position and this middle-class family in the film too much.
Because, for the young Cuaron, the only window through which he could experience the suffering of these poor people was his own maid.
Cuaron was born in the 1960s and grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City. His father was a nuclear physicist and his mother was an intellectual. One of the two brothers followed in his father's footsteps to become a biologist, and the other, like Cuaron, was a filmmaker. .
He is a middle-class white child, and his dream since childhood was to be an astronaut or a director, so he said that the reason why he filmed [Rome] may also be due to "some kind of guilt because of class and race."
Personal destiny floats and sinks in the torrent of the times.
He shot from the perspective of the maid Cleo, making this girl with beautiful eyes a silent witness to the changing times in Mexico.
In June 1971, students from two universities in Mexico City organized a march along with striking workers in support of another university.
As a result, the protesting students were attacked by armed forces known as "Falcons" —
The group of young, well-trained paramilitaries attacked first with sticks and then with rifles to capture and kill hundreds of protesters.
In perhaps the most direct representation of the era [in Rome], Cleo, the pregnant maid, was on the second floor of a shop on the second floor of a shop picking out a crib, as she witnessed the repressors clearing the scene with clubs.
Among these clearers, there is the father of the child in her womb, Fermin, a low-level gangster who regards practicing martial arts as his whole life.
At this moment, she understood the purpose of their daily organized stick training, and he was a member of the "Falcon".
Such a campaign of repression has already happened once in 1968 and is famous in Mexico, known in history as the Tlatelolco Massacre.
In October 1968, just 10 days before the Mexico Olympics, thousands of Mexican college students took to the streets, holding signs and chanting slogans against government interference in university autonomy.
In late July, chaotic clashes between students and police quickly escalated into an epic student movement led by the National Strike Committee.
It's like the youth movement in Paris, Tokyo, etc. around the world at the same time of the year.
The French "May Storm", "Prague Spring" and so on have greatly inspired the young people in Mexico, let them raise the head of Che Guevara and protest banners, take to the streets, and demand more reforms and protests. free.
But then-PRI president Gustavo Diaz Ordas dismissed the movement as a "communist conspiracy" and the protests turned into a tragic repression.
A helicopter suddenly appeared over Tlatelolco Square, and two green flares were thrown into the crowd.
Immediately, government snipers stationed on the roof and soldiers stationed on the edge of the square surrounded the protesting students and opened fire in unison...
That's "Mexico 68," and that's the implied meaning of the planes flying over and over again in [Rome].
What is more interesting is the role of the United States in these two overt campaigns of repression.
There is a scene in the movie where Cleo, a pregnant maid, goes to see Fermin, the father of the child, who is training at the base. Some of their coaches, he says, are from the United States.
According to later declassified documents, the CIA has actually been supporting and helping the PRI to suppress left-wing student and peasant movements.
In the case of Tlatelolco, the CIA also provided technical and tactical guidance for the PRI's crackdown.
The hint of this episode in [Roma] actually shows Cuarón's ambitions in this "memoir", [Roma] is not so personal and not so Mexican.
It's just that the Oscar judges understand that they will have the courage to vote for [Roma] for the best.
Anyway, [Rome] is already my selfish best of the year.
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Author / Curly Hair
This article was first published on the WeChat public account [Broken Word]
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