The Best Movie of 2018

Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira in Roma

Spoiler alert: Do not read any further if you have not seen Roma.

Roma: A Visual Prayer

            “Well, my daddy, he was just a stranger

lived in a hotel downtown

well, when I was a kid, he was just somebody

somebody I’d see around…”

--Bruce Springsteen

            Those Springsteen lyrics from “Long Time Comin’” have resonated with me since I first heard them. They speak to the impact that fathers, or more apropos, the effect absent fathers can have on our lives. These lyrics are incarnated in Alfonso Cuarón’s film, Roma. The movie’s title is a direct reference to Roma Sur, a middleclass suburb of Mexico City. These lyrics came to my mind especially though a scene about an hour into the film. “Toño” and his friend, Beto, are at an outdoor magazine stand in the city, and they clearly see Sr. Antonio joyfully playing with his mistress. Toño’s dad and his girlfriend are running, holding hands and laughing. Beto says, “Look, your dad!” However, junior denies it. In fact, he knows it was his father, but, in an act of self-protection, he firmly tells his friend, “No!”  He needs to believe that his dad is actually at a medical conference in Quebec. Believing the lie his dad told the family is better than coming to grips with the fact that his father has abandoned him. Through that scene, and others, the fatherwound is captured perfectly in Roma. Indeed, from this writer’s perspective, the movie is a lot of things, but it is primarily an indictment of the self-absorbed male, the male who cares more about his own pleasure than he does for his family. One thing that makes this film wonderful is that it is not heavy-handed with that, or any message. It doesn’t preach. It simply remembers. It lets us simmer in the harsh personal, social, political, and gender realities of Mexico in the 1970s.

            To me, Cuarón’s Roma is the female affirming film of the year. It is also my very favorite film of 2018, and a very strong contender for the best motion picture of the 21^stcentury, thus far. 

            Another musical lyric that has always resonated within me comes from the song, “Stumbling Through the Dark,” by The Jayhawks:

“The men who proceeded us here left only questions and fears….”

            In this opus on memory, maestro Cuarón has provided this moviegoer with a visual representation of that profound Gary Louris line too. As noted above, Toño would have fears, one of them being that Beto would know the truth about his family. As for questions, what could be a more powerful question than the one Sofi will ask her mother about her dad at the end of the film, “He doesn’t love us anymore?” Abandoned herself, Sra. Sofia tries to assure her children, saying, “He says he wants to see you,” but Toño will have another question, “When?” He’s told, “He doesn’t know, but soon.” This is a “soon” that children of an absent father know rings hallow. Questions and fears indeed. For me, my favorite films are usually ones that cut deeply into my personal feelings. As I watched this scene, a later one, which plays out a beachside restaurant, one very reminiscent of the director’s 2001 movie, Y Tu Mamá También, I harkened back to my own mother assuring me about my own absent birth father: “He loves you in his own way.” Later, as I struggled to bridge the gap between boyhood and manhood, I would come to understand that “his own way” meant forsaking his wife and son so that he could place another tally mark on his very literal sexual-conquests-tracking-sheet. 

            The gender issues in Roma playout in many ways, some of them very subtle. For example, early on in the film we see a meal scene at a table. Everyone is present except for the father. It is the grandma, Sra. Teresa, mom, Sra. Sofia, and four children. Additionally, drawing attention to the class differences, we see that Cleo’s friend, another housekeeper, Adela, relegated to eating her food at another table in the kitchen with her boyfriend. The message is clear, Adela and Cleo might be like family, but they are lesser. Likewise, we see that, as the only girl, little Sofi is treated differently than her brothers, Toño, Paco, and Pepe, even by her mother. Little Sofi is called “stupid” by her brothers. When Cleo is sprinkling sugar on their strawberries, Sofi’s own mom, Sra. Sofia, says, “Not for Sofi, she’ll get fat!” The message is clear: In this world, the standards are different for boys and girls, just as they are for men and women, home-owners and maids. Even as a young girl, little Sofi is being shamed.

            Although there are many layers and subtexts to Roma, for me, the primary, and most interesting theme in the film does has to do with these gender issues, specifically how women are treated and why men are culpable. This is a constant through-line in the film. The above image captures Sra. Sofia telling Cleo, “No matter what they tell you, we women are always alone.” This chilling line speaks to the unreliability of men. The image is also a fitting tribute to the two women to which Roma pays tribute. However, the film isn’t only critical of absent men, it also addresses the entitlement of “present” men, as well as the ways in which women have been treated in general. For example, after the family takes a trip to the country, there is a scene during a party in which Sra. Sofia is sexually harassed. She is minding her own business, and Billy walks up and presses up against her, rubbing her in a sexually demanding way. It is a real Trumpian “grab ‘em by the pussy” moment that certainly women from any country or background have experienced. When she resists and sets her boundary, he quips: “What’s wrong with you? I know you need it.” Get that, “What’s wrong with you?” Like she is the one that has done something wrong. When Billy can’t get what he demanded, he then goes low, saying, “You’re not even that hot, comadre!” So, he finds Sofia attractive enough to have sex with, but when he is denied, he insults her beauty. Since he found her “hot” enough to “proposition” in the first place, what does his lie about her attractiveness say about his character, his insecurities? Again, I saw my own father in Billy. When my father took her hand in marriage, he found his second wife quite the catch, but once they broke-up, he would forever replace her given name with the nickname, “Sperm bucket,” eventually shortening it to “SB” and telling me, “If you ever talk to SB again, I will disown you as a son, and write you out of my will.” I always wondered how a “man” could find someone so desirable at one point, but then dehumanize the exact same person later. As I watched Roma, all of these childhood traumas came back to me. I love Roma so much, because, in the same way that it is a very personal film for the director, it became a very personal film for me.

            Billy and Sr. Antonio are not the only derelict males in this film. Perhaps the starkest example is Fermín. He is Cleo’s boyfriend and a clear representation of toxic masculinity in the film. In a chilling scene, Fermín offers up an indictment to Cleo. After literally threatening to kill her: “And if you don’t want me to beat the shit out of you and your ‘little one’, don’t ever say it again, and don’t ever come looking for me again.” Don’t ever say “it” with the “it” being, “The little one’s yours.” His parting insult is “Fucking servant!” However, the joke will be on Fermin, as, bringing to mind the words of Jesus Christ in Mark 10:43, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” It is actually Cleo’s servanthood that will ultimately elevate her to greatness. We see signs this greatness, indeed, her special uniqueness, in a scene where Professor Zovek, played by Latin Lover, is leading a field of men at a training camp, in a pose that appears to be teaching the power of mind over body. Zovek declares, “Only the Lamas, martial-arts masters, and a few great athletes have been able to master it.” The master then tells the crowd of young men to close their eyes, and strike the pose: arms above head, standing on one leg. Nobody in the crowd, except for Cleo, is able to keep their balance. Again, I recalled Jesus’ words in John 15:20, “Servants are not greater than their master.” But, the visual image of Cleo successfully striking the pose, gives us a clear message: Cleo is a master. Moreover, later she will literally become a savior, rescuing Sofi, the child, in the car ride home tells her, “I love you, Cleo” and places her head on the servant’s shoulder. Indeed, Cleo is the ultimate symbol of love in this film, even the biblical example of love. In John 15:13, Jesus talks about real love: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.” In what I think is the most incredible film sequence of 2018, the beach scene, this is precisely what Cleo did. Given that the remarkable, and now Academy Award nominated actress, Yalitza Aparicio, herself cannot swim, the ocean rescue scene is all the more illustrative of Jesus’ definition of real love.

Balancing Act: Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo

            Roma is a very personal film, yet it is simultaneously universal, even political, hitting on many bigger, far-reaching themes. At its heart though, the movie is a tribute to the women who raised Cuarón: his mother, grandmother, and their live-in nanny, Cleo. In fact, this film is mostly a tribute to Cuarón’s actual nanny/housekeeper, whose real name is Liboria Rodríguez. Now 75 years old, Rodríguez, who goes by the name, Libo, cared for Cuarón when he was a boy. Supporting this fact, the film is dedicated to Libo. On November 4, 2018, at the DGA in Los Angeles, Cuarón spoke to his friend, director Alejandro González Iñárritu about Libo, stating that Libo “comes from a very, very, very, very, very poor background, I would say extreme poverty.” Second, she is a woman. Adding to that, he noted, “On top of that, she has an indigenous background.” In Mexican society, he charged, Libo had been hit with a “triple whammy of disadvantage.” He concluded by observing that “this perverse relationship between class and race permeates the whole world.” I do agree that this film is universal in the sense that it fosters empathy for the characters, causing the viewer to think about class, race, and gender on a very large scale, in this case, the backdrop of Mexican politics, but like the dog poop that lays on the floor of the garage, the politics are merely there. They are simply part of the day-to-day reality. They’re part of the reality, but not the point of the movie. For example, you’ll see a “LEA” on a hillside, a reference to Mexico’s President, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, the PRI leader who held office from 1970-1976. Cleo will witness the Corpus Christi Massacre, an actual historical event which involved the death of over 100 student demonstrators. Incidentally, during this political unrest, Cleo will come face to face with Fermín again. It was not lost on me that Fermín, gun in hand, and pointed at Cleo, is wearing a “Love is…” (amor es…) t-shirt at the time. This was a comic strip from Kim Casali, which was very popular in the 70s. For those that are curious, Fermín’s shirt translates to “Love is remembering your first kiss.” This is, of course, an extremely ironic placement on Cuarón's part. By the time this happens, Fermín has firmly been established as a character who, at best, has a warped definition of love.

Jorge Antonio Guerrero as Fermín

            This violent personal encounter with Fermín notwithstanding, the political unrest is handled like everything else in the film: with no judgement. In an interview with John Horn, for KPCC’s The Frame, Cuarón describes the camera as “almost like a ghost that was observing, looking at the past.” It would be this same cinematic ghost who would haunt me ever since I saw Roma on November 24, 2018. I found that said “spirit” would drudge-up in me memories that would bring me to tears. I must confess that I actually ended up having loud, bawling convulsion style sobs in the theater. It was Cleo’s birthing scene that did me in. For me, this was personal as it brought up memories of the birth of my first daughter in 2002. For all intent and purposes, she was born dead, totally purple, not crying. Unlike my other three children’s births, our doctor didn’t even offer me a chance to cut the umbilical cord. Instead, my limp, silent daughter was abruptly taken over to a cart where they did CPR. In what were surely the longest minutes of my life, I sat there in shock until my daughter gasped her first breath of life. Her name is Zoey, Zoë, or Ζωη in Ancient Greek, means “life” by the way. Fittingly, Roma is a life-affirming movie. This entire hospital sequence is my second favorite scene of all 2018, with the first being the aforementioned beach sequence. By the time Cleo gets to her great confession some 20 minutes later, “I didn’t want her” – I was completely laid-out, and I never recovered. My own memories were far too powerful. Honestly, it was probably the sheer number of tears I cried that made me name Roma my number one favorite film of 2018. I enjoy feeling deeply.

            Despite the tears, though, I also had beautiful, positive feelings of extreme gratitude which also, like a fountain of life, sprung-up inside of me. These feelings involved a realization of how many random humans I love. When it comes to love, people are the key. And, in this sense, this film is about the existence of people, and the importance of relationships. The director himself said, “It’s just such a mysterious thing, existence. In the sense of there’s just no easy answer for anything, but at the same time it was this thing: How existence puts people together. You know, because time and space limit us, you know they create the boundaries that we cannot transgress, but sometimes they put people together, and it was this thing, ‘How the heck did this woman, who is kind of like my mother in many ways, and there’s this bond of affection, when she comes from a completely different microcosm, a complete different universe than mine?’” This concept of how time and space randomly places people together was yet another gift Roma gave me, I am still reflecting upon it. Cleo isn’t a blood relation to the children of Roma, but she is immensely more important, more valuable to them than their own father, their own blood who abandoned them. As I thought about my own life, and the specific people that time and space allowed into my path, I began to well-up with joy and gratitude. The names poured through my heart. Many of these names are names of women who were randomly placed into my life and, like Cleo, became the embodiment of love. Holly, a young woman who is like a daughter to me, came to mind. How did we find each other? Why? I was going to mention all of them by name, but I became worried about leaving someone out, but these non-blood relations matter. Really matter.

            On November 4, 2018, at the DGA in Los Angeles, Cuarón’s friend, director Alejandro González Iñárritu, concluded his interview of the Roma filmmaker by avouching: “For me this is a dream, and a memory, and part of your heart. I don’t think this is a film. I think you just used film as a medium to give us, and to land, and to impregnate your dream, your memory, and your heart with us. I think I will not want to call this a film. We will have to invent some name for this film because it is not just a film.” At first glance, one might think this was hyperbole; however, I would tend to agree with Mr. Iñárritu. Indeed, I spent some time thinking of which term might best describe Roma. I came up with the phrase “visual prayer” to describe Roma. The reason I think this describes Roma so well is because it brought to mind a piece of writing by a thinker I admire. In writing about Prayer and its relationship to compassion, Henri Nouwen wrote:

Many people tend to associate prayer with separation from others, but real prayer brings us closer to our brothers and sisters everywhere. Prayer is the first and indispensable discipline of compassion precisely because prayer is also the first expression of human solidarity. Why is this so? Because the Spirit who prays in us is the Spirit by whom all human beings are brought together in unity and community. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of peace, unity, and reconciliation, is constantly revealed to us as the power through whom people from the most diverse social, political, economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds are brought together as sisters and brothers of the same Christ and daughters and sons of the same Father.

You might want to read that Nouwen quote again. I really do think it captures the heart of what Roma did for me. Roma is a visual prayer for me because it is an expression of human solidarity. It is a vehicle that brings the viewer closer to their fellow humans and the human experience overall. Even more than that, Roma is first and foremost a window into the litmus test that Jesus put forth as the bellwether for his followers: Love. He said so in John 13:35. This film oozes love.

            As mentioned before, Cleo is the ultimate symbol of this love. At the end of the film, as she ascends the metal stairway to the roof, we see an airplane above in the heavens, reminding us of a much bigger, a much higher perspective, something that transcends what we are doing here on Earth. And, for this viewer, I heard again heard the words of Jesus, in John 13:35 this time, “It is by your love that the world will know you are my disciples.” I thought of Fermín’s shirt, “Love is…” I thought: “Love is picking up shit. Love is doing laundry. Love is rising above. Love is staying.” Love is Roma, a true love letter to Cuarón’s mom and nanny. They stayed.

            I wish I could have ended my essay there, with “They stayed.” However, you may have noticed that I have yet to say anything about the actual filmmaking in Roma. This is because, even without the masterful filmmaking, and it is masterful, I would love Roma for what it made me feel, emotionally. Nevertheless, making one random person powerfully feel isn’t enough to make a film great. Only the craft itself can make a piece of cinema stand the test of time to hold its place in the canon of motion picture history. We’re talking movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Schindler’s List. Yes, Roma is like one of those films. Across the board, its below-the-line crafts are outstanding. Having my first viewing in the theater, I was struck by the sound of the film. Both its sound mixing and sound effects editing are remarkable. Because the movie doesn’t actually have a score, the sound production becomes even more important. Think about that for a moment: a movie with no score! Talk about about confidence! There was no soundtrack to manipulate how I felt, the visual prayer did that on its own. The everyday sounds, bird chirps, barking dogs, breaking waves set the tone for this exercise in memory. It was powerful. Production design and art direction in Roma are fantastic too. The way the look of 70s Mexico was recreated is breathtaking. In my second viewing, seemingly unimportant scenes, like the one below, with three motorcycles in the foreground, took my breath away.

The production design in Roma brought authenticity

The cinematography, screenplay, editing, and directing, all done by Cuarón are topnotch. Shot in stunning black and white, the film is a visual masterpiece. Case in point, in a truly original directing feat, early in the film there is a 9-minute scene which simply, yet in a very suspenseful way, “only” involves parking a vehicle. I say “only” because the scene in which Sr. Antonio arrives home in his Ford, Galaxie 500, is laden with symbolism. The automobile’s emblem displays a crown, announcing, “The king has arrived to his castle.” Additionally, the ridiculously narrow garage is like a canal being penetrated in a show of male domination. Finally, there are the actors. Marina de Tavira, as Sra Sofia, and Yalitza Aparicio, as Cleo, give compelling, natural performances. Widely considered long-shots for Academy Award nominations, both of them were nominated, Marina de Tavira for supporting actress, and Aparicio in the leading actress category. In all, Roma received 10 Academy Award nominations, all of them well-deserved. In fact, my biggest disappointment with the Oscar nominations this year is that Roma did not receive one for editing! Whether or not Roma can become the first subtitled film to take home both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture remains to be decided, but, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The technicals, as awe-inspiring as they are, don’t make this my favorite film of the year. When discussing what makes me love a movie, I often say that I like to have my heart ripped out, I like a good sucker-punch to the gut. Roma did that to me, and more. It opened my eyes, it made me grateful, it fostered compassion, and it made me cry. In my opinion, Roma is far and away the best movie of 2018.