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>what did you feel was lacking about her characterization? > >>I had problems with the ending. > >what part exactly?
After reading some criticism on the movie, I felt much of this piece mirrored my own feelings re: her characterization and many of Cuaron's choices. Re: the ending, it felt unearned to me for many of the same reasons mentioned in this piece.
Not that I necessarily ride with *everything* Brody says here... but his beefs about the character of Cleo and how Cuaron tends to direct his focus? I more or less agree with those.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/theres-a-voice-missing-in-alfonso-cuarons-roma
Even noteworthy filmmakers may not see what they鈥檙e doing. They can reveal crucial aspects of their work inadvertently, bringing to light the cinematic unconscious, hinting at what a movie could and should have been. That鈥檚 what Alfonso Cuar贸n, the writer and director of 鈥淩oma,鈥 did in an interview for a recent magazine article. Set in Mexico City in 1970-71, 鈥淩oma鈥 depicts a family much like the one in which he was raised and is centered on a domestic worker, both maid and nanny, named Cleo Guti茅rrez (Yalitza Aparicio); the character, Cuar贸n has said, is based on a woman named Libo Rodr铆guez, who played a similar role in his childhood (and to whom the movie is dedicated).
In the article, the journalist Kristopher Tapley conveys the substance of Cuar贸n鈥檚 inspiration for 鈥淩oma鈥: 鈥淩odr铆guez would talk to Cuar贸n about her hardships as a girl, about feeling cold or hungry. But as a little boy, he would look at those stories almost like adventures. She would tell him about her father, who used to play an ancient Mesoamerican ballgame that鈥檚 almost lost to the ages now, or about witch doctors who would try to cure people in her village. To him it was all very exciting.鈥
Watching 鈥淩oma,鈥 one awaits such illuminating details about Cleo鈥檚 life outside of her employer鈥檚 family, and such a generously forthcoming and personal relationship between Cleo and the children in her care. There鈥檚 nothing of this sort in the movie; Cleo hardly speaks more than a sentence or two at a time and says nothing at all about life in her village, her childhood, her family. She鈥檚 a loving and caring young woman, and the warmth of her feelings for the family she works for鈥攁nd theirs for her鈥攊s apparent throughout. But Cleo remains a cipher; her interests and experiences鈥攈er inner life鈥攔emain inaccessible to Cuar贸n. He not only fails to imagine who the character of Cleo is but fails to include the specifics of who Libo was for him when he was a child.
In the process, he turns the character of Cleo into a stereotype that鈥檚 all too common in movies made by upper-middle-class and intellectual filmmakers about working people: a strong, silent, long-enduring, and all-tolerating type, deprived of discourse, a silent angel whose inability or unwillingness to express herself is held up as a mark of her stoic virtue. (It鈥檚 endemic to the cinema and even leaves its scars on better movies than 鈥淩oma,鈥 including some others from this year, such as 鈥淟eave No Trace鈥 and 鈥淭he Rider.鈥) The silent nobility of the working poor takes its place in a demagogic circle of virtue sharing that links filmmakers (who, if they offer working people a chance to speak, do so only in order to look askance at them, as happens in 鈥淩oma鈥 with one talkative but villainous poor man) with their art-house audiences, who are similarly pleased to share in the exaltation of heroes who do manual labor without having to look closely or deeply at elements of their heroes鈥 lives that don鈥檛 elicit either praise or pity.
That effacement of Cleo鈥檚 character, her reduction to a bland and blank trope that burnishes the director鈥檚 conscience while smothering her consciousness and his own, is the essential and crucial failure of 鈥淩oma.鈥 It sets the tone for the movie鈥檚 aesthetic and hollows it out, reducing Cuar贸n鈥檚 worthwhile intentions and evident passions to vain gestures.
鈥淩oma鈥 is the story of a family in Mexico City鈥檚 Colonia Roma neighborhood (where Cuar贸n grew up): father, Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), a doctor; mother, Sof铆a (Marina de Tavira), a biochemist who is running the household and not working; grandmother, Teresa (Ver贸nica Garc铆a), who is Sof铆a's mother; and four children (a girl and three boys), ranging, seemingly, from about six to about twelve. And then there鈥檚 the household staff, Cleo and Adela (Nancy Garc铆a Garc铆a); there鈥檚 also a man who drives the family car, but he is utterly uncharacterized.
The youngest child, Pepe (Marco Graf), an imaginative boy who talks about being a pilot, seems to be the Cuar贸n stand-in, though the movie isn鈥檛 dramatized from his point of view. (I鈥檒l avoid disclosing some major plot developments.) The family is solidly upper middle class; they live in a house separated from the city street by a gate and divided from neighboring houses by an alley, in which they park their cars (and in which the family dog, Borras, runs loose and defecates). Antonio, who claims to be heading to Quebec for a temporary research project, actually remains in Mexico City, simply having left his wife and family in order to live with another woman.
Meanwhile, Cleo, quiet and patient, has her own romantic dreams: she鈥檚 dating Ferm铆n (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), a cousin of Adela鈥檚 boyfriend, Ram贸n, and becomes pregnant. The family sympathizes with her; Cleo continues to work for them and receives good medical care, thanks to the family鈥檚 connection to a major urban hospital. But trouble ensues when Cleo goes on a shopping trip with Teresa, during a day of student protests; they know that such protests have been violently repressed, but this time the violence is worse than before, and Cleo and Teresa observe it up close. (Cuar贸n is dramatizing an actual historic crisis, the Corpus Christi Massacre, of 1971, in which soldiers and paramilitaries gunned down student protesters in the streets of Mexico City and pursued them into their hiding places and refuges, including hospitals.
Cuar贸n expands the story with copious, carefully observed鈥攔ather, carefully constructed and planted鈥攄etails that, for the most part, rather than developing a wide-ranging and deep-reaching view of the life of the family and its times, lines them up and points them all in the same direction. But, because his view of Cleo is willfully, cavalierly vague, his view of the public and historical events in which she becomes entangled, and which he dramatizes, is similarly flattened and obscured.
For instance, when Cleo learns that she鈥檚 pregnant, she鈥檚 seen sitting pensively at the window of the small garret room that she shares with Adela. Does she give any thought to abortion? What was the law on the subject in Mexico at the time? Was the practice common, regardless of legal strictures? Or consider the political context that Cuar贸n places into the story. There鈥檚 an ongoing issue regarding land use and ownership; the family鈥檚 wealthy friends living on a large estate are in a dispute with poorer local residents over land, and the conflict turns deadly. What are the issues in question? It鈥檚 all the odder that the movie remains vague when Adela mentions that Cleo鈥檚 mother鈥檚 land, in her native village, is being confiscated. What were the specifics of the political conflicts in Mexico then?
Cuar贸n sets up the story of the Corpus Christi Massacre with a close view of the training of the paramilitaries (with a hint鈥攂ut only a hint鈥攐f the C.I.A.鈥檚 involvement). Yet here, too, he empties the conflict of its ideas. What are the students protesting? What are they advocating? Why do they seem to threaten the regime? In a scene of a political campaign (a rather absurd one, featuring a human cannonball launched into a net) in a distant village, where unpaved streets are fetid with standing water and basic infrastructure is the Presidential candidate鈥檚 main promise, Cuar贸n suggests that Mexico was, at the time, at least a semblance of a democracy. But the film doesn鈥檛 make clear whether it was actually democratic, whether censorship was stringent, whether ordinary people, such as the family at the center of the film, lived in fear of repression.
What鈥檚 missing is, once more, supplied by Cuar贸n in an interview鈥攐ne that appeared in Le Monde several days ago鈥攊n which he discusses the massacre and its place in his family鈥檚 life: 鈥淎t the time of the Corpus Christi massacre, in 1971, I was ten years old. Part of my family was very much on the right, they hated the students who were protesting. But I had a Communist uncle. I repeated to him the rightist remarks that I was hearing and he asked me why I talked that way about the students and got me to realize that I was one of them, at the age of ten. I said to myself: I鈥檓 like them, except they鈥檙e older.鈥 Which is to say that, although the specifics of Mexico鈥檚 political crises were a part of his family life and personal reminiscences, Cuar贸n carefully omits them from the film.
Cuar贸n doesn鈥檛 have any more to say in 鈥淩oma鈥 about whether Cleo has any political sympathies, inclinations, or ideologies. She is not only angelic but devoid of any wider consciousness beyond her immediate well-being. In the film, politics are strictly personal, de-ideologized, dehistoricized. Cuar贸n even manages to empty out the social abrasions that he drops into the script as asides. For instance, in one brief scene at the cousins鈥 country estate, Cleo is brought by another domestic worker, named Benita (Clementina Guadarrama), to a New Year鈥檚 Eve party of fellow-laborers. But Benita doesn鈥檛 want to invite Adela, one of the 鈥渃ity nannies鈥 whom she considers haughty and snobbish鈥攜et there鈥檚 nothing of this attitude, or these social differences, reflected in Cleo鈥檚 interactions with Adela, who鈥檚 her close friend. But, because neither Cleo nor Adela is given the script space to say much at all beyond the immediate demands of the plot, neither has enough dramatic personality to grate on anyone at all.
The film鈥檚 point of view isn鈥檛 clear regarding its characters鈥攁nd Cuar贸n鈥檚 decorative visual style is calibrated to match the script鈥檚 vagueness. 鈥淩oma鈥 is filmed in a silky, digital black-and-white palette that, in eliminating film grain, emphasizes visual details. There are many long takes, staged with a theatrical precision鈥攔ehearsed to death and timed to the moment鈥攖hat offer a sense of disparate fields of action unifying in the characters鈥 lives, and that raise the events to a heroic monumentality, which both emphasizes and depends on the cipherlike blankness of the aggrandizing portraiture. For all the movie鈥檚 respect for physical work, nearly all the scenes of work, of which there are many, have a detached, distanced imprecision, which suggests the checking-off of a scene list rather that an interest in the specific thoughts and demands of the work at hand. (There is, however, one extraordinary moment of observation, when Cleo, holding a downstairs phone until Sof铆a can take the call upstairs, hangs the phone up鈥攂ut not before wiping the mouthpiece on her apron.)
The intellectual core of the drama is the parallel of Cleo and Sof铆a鈥檚 abandonment by the men in their lives. Both Antonio and Ferm铆n behave irresponsibly and leave the two women in dire straits; the movie offers one moment, one line of dialogue, in which their plights are explicitly linked鈥攁nd it鈥檚 Sof铆a who delivers the line, to which Cleo listens mutely. Does she speak of her experience (and Sof铆a鈥檚) to Adela or another friend or relative? Not in the movie she doesn鈥檛; Cuar贸n lends both voice and consciousness to his intellectual character, to the stand-in for his mother.
鈥淩oma鈥 is a personal film, but the term 鈥減ersonal鈥 is no honorific, and it鈥檚 not an aesthetic term. It鈥檚 a neutral descriptor, though it often suggests that a filmmaker is inspired by more than the mere pleasure or power of a story鈥攂y an urgency that taps into a lifetime鈥檚 worth of experience and emotion. The downside is the risk of complacency, the sense that one鈥檚 own account of experience is sufficient for dramatic amplitude, psychological insight, character development, and contextual perspective. Cuar贸n proceeds as if the mere affectionate and compassionate depiction of a Libo-like character were a sufficient cinematic gesture in lieu of dramatic particulars鈥攁nd as if lending the entire range of characters their individualizing and contextualizing traits would risk viewers鈥 judgment of them on the basis of those particulars rather than on the basis of the social function of class, gender, and age that they鈥檙e supposed to represent. In his effort to make his characters universal, he makes them neutral and generic. For all its worthy intentions, 鈥淩oma鈥 is little more than the righteous affirmation of good intentions. My movies: http://russellhainline.com My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/ My beer TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeertravelguide
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