Roma

From the very beginning of Roma, we are witness to a young domestic worker taking care of a family and cleaning up the house. This woman is Cleo, and she's played by Yalitza Aparicio. A large part of Cleo's duties is to clean up after the dog. It's Mexico City in the early 1970s, and one thing that hasn't changed is the omnipresence of barking dogs, one of the very worst things about that city. Cleo is also sort of a guardian angel of four young children, no small task. The house they live in is a tidy, upper-middle class house owned by a doctor and his wife. The family of six live there with a grandmother, a dog, and two domestic workers, one of whom is Cleo. The house wouldn't be quite as remarkable if not for the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of director Alfonso Cuaron, who won three Oscars last week for his work. Cuaron had hired his collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki, but Lubezki had to depart from the project after the schedule had augmented. Thus, Lubezki practically trained him.

Cuaron, whose most famous Mexican film up to this point has been Y Tu Mama Tambien and whose most famous English-language films are probably Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, and Gravity (for which he previously won an Oscar for Best Director), has decided to make a film honoring his childhood nanny, Liboria Rodriguez (Libo). Roma has a certain tremendous, palpable feeling of guilt throughout this film, which will likely endure as one of his best.

The parents (played by Marina de Tavira and Fernando Grediaga) do not always come across in the best light. The father is unfaithful and abandons his family, while the mother is concerned about her daughter getting fat and sometimes lashes out at Cleo. In one scene, she strikes one of the boys, quickly apologizes while weeping, and then blames Cleo. The children seem to not notice this cruelty; this youthful ignorance likely is what sparked the film's conception. (Cuaron is not making things up. Domestic workers around the world are undoubtedly mistreated.) In Cleo's case, she is not an authoritarian figure to the children, probably because it's not in her nature and probably because she knows it might cost her her job. Because she's so kind to the children, they really adore her. Her adult employers, maybe not.

Aparicio, whose father is Mixtec and whose mother is Triqui, made her debut performance in Roma, and she was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, making her the first indigenous actor to do so. She hasn't decided if she will continue acting or not, but I hope she does. De Tavira was also nominated, and her performance is terrific as well. There's a lot to read in between the lines with her performance. In the scene where she takes Cleo to the hospital, for example, she practically destroys her husband's car as she squeezes it between two trucks. She either has too much on her mind due to his abandonment, or she just wants revenge, or perhaps it's both. There's complexity to her. This makes sense, as Cuaron has stated that the film is a tribute to both his mother and his nanny.

Cuaron's cinematography, which won him one of his Oscars last week, is remarkable, at times helping him to visualize a marriage of realism and surrealism. Some might find it to be kind of smug filmmaking, and that's fair, I guess, but it does demonstrate his dedication and creativity. The dog heads as decoration and the shooting spree in the woods come to mind as examples, as does the forest fire scene, in which everyone drunkenly tries to extinguish a fire, all while a man dressed as...something...decides to stand around singing. There's also a martial arts scene that most likely be unlike anything you've seen in a movie. Aparicio's acting during this scene, I think, helped secure her nomination. She says everything with just a few looks, most of which express a feeling of bemusement and kind quasi-toleration for another's unique behavior. Unique would be a kind word for this character, Fermin, played by Jorge Antonio Guerrero, one of the most detestable characters in recent memory.

Needless to say, Roma does require some patience, but the payoff is worth it. There's so much calm in the filmmaking here, and it's also proof that it's usually in everyone's best interest to give the film makers as much freedom as possible. After all, this is a black-and-white film from Netflix staring mostly non-actors. I do hope we see more like this.