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. 

Read More →

House of Cards

At first I couldn't stop telling myself that it seemed like I was watching a dumbed-down version of "The West Wing."  At times, the first season attempted to remedy this by throwing in a few paragraphs of jargon regarding education or energy policy. But I soon found out that I was the dumb one. Season 2 of Netflix's "House of Cards" featured a thrilling quorum debacle in which Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey as a man of haunting ambition, navigates. The scenes are fascinating and intelligent. Gone were the certain silly moments that all too easily induced eye-rolling, like when Claire, played by Robin Wright, learns of Frank's adultery and calmly asks what good it will bring them. (Incidentally, they tell us that the Underwoods are not meant to be the Clintons.) In its place were trade wars with China, cyberterrorism, and an energy crisis.

"House of Cards," the groundbreaking Netflix show, seemed at first to take itself a bit too seriously, seeing itself as almost Shakespearean. Ian Richardson (himself a Shakespearean actor) played the character in the original British series with a certain amount of lightness bordering on conviviality; just compare the opening music to both and you'll notice an obvious difference in tone. Perhaps that's a sign of the times; our television heroes today seem to be Walter White, not Jeb Bartlett. "House of Cards" can be good fun, but it can also be toxic. Such are the times.

Underwood, our anti-hero protagonist in an era of television anti-heroes, is a Democrat. The reason is obvious: avoid criticism and make the show transparent. Why bother making him a Republican when just about any viewer--liberal or conservative--would shout allegations of bias? In an era of such pessimism, there's a feeling of a plague on both our houses. Underwood being a Democrat was the only choice. But there is an additional question: why make him a Southern Democrat when there hardly is a thing anymore? The answer is provided in David Sirota's fascinating interview with show creator and head writer Beau Willimon:

There's a catchphrase in the British version where Francis Urquhart [Richardson's character] says, "You very well might think that--I couldn't possibly comment." It was something I wanted to resurrect in a couple of places as an homage. It just felt wrong to do "House of Cards" and not have that line exist somewhere. The problem I ran up against in my mind, is that this is not the way Americans talk, it is not idiomatically part of our vernacular to speak with that diction unless you put it in the mouth of someone with a South Carolina upcountry accent. Then it rolls of the tongue and kind of works.

My dad's side of the family is from South Carolina, and I know that accent well, and then it got me thinking about what Frank Underwood's story might be. The American mythology is that anyone could be president--you could be from a town called Hope and be president--so I thought him coming from a small town and coming from nothing is a much more American tale, as opposed to coming from aristocracy, which is much more a British political trajectory.

And so I asked my dad if there is a small town in South Carolina that would be appropriate and he mentioned Gaffney, which, of course, is perfect. It was represented for years by a Democrat, John Spratt. Underwood is in no way like Spratt, but the fact that a Democrat represented a mostly rural district in a mostly red state is fascinating.

How so?

It speaks to a way that Southern politics works differently than other places; it is a lot more about personal relationships and connections you make. You have a tradition of Southern Blue Dog Democrats being a lot more conservative than many of their peers from elsewhere...a lot of them historically seem to vote as though they should be in the Republican Party, but because their father was a Democrat and their father's father was a Democrat, they are a Democrat.

That means politics there has been, up until recently, less about party affiliation, and that means stuff there is inherently more political as opposed to ideological. I found that to be appropriate for Francis Underwood--someone who doesn't define himself by party of ideology, but operates on personal connections and traverses the political web as a free agent.

Underwood may be a free agent, but he's also a sociopath (and these folks agree). Just look at these common traits of a sociopath and it becomes crystal clear: superficial charm, absence of nervousness, untruthfulness, lack of remorse. egocentricity, inadequacy for love and a sex life that is impersonal and trivial. Frank.Under.Wood. Look at this quote: "Sociopaths, as mentioned previously, can also be dangerous, especially when they feel they have been wronged in some way." Underwood has been wronged--his rejection of being nominated for Secretary of State in the first episode--and so he becomes quite dangerous indeed. (For more on the psychology of Francis Underwood, click here.)

Spacey, as exceptionally talented as he is, does not do accents well. His Southern drawl here is as bad as it was in "A Time to Kill" two decades ago. The character at first is practically two dimensional, so much so that he frequently and annoyingly breaks the fourth wall to have a chat with us, and it's not until Chapter 8 that we see that there's something actually there. Part of me thinks that's the point, that it's meant to symbolize the facade that just about every politician seems to exhibit, or that it's meant to demonstrate that Frank Underwood is a farcical character in a farcical show. I haven't figured it out yet. Nonetheless, despite his accent, he is commendable and also supported by an exceptional cast, most of all Wright as Claire. Her performance is haunting, and yet she is surely the more sympathetic of the two--watch her powerful (and slightly untruthful) interview in Season 2 for an example. Providing the show's most interesting character as Pete Russo, a recovering alcoholic congressman who can't seem to do anything right, is Corey Stoll. There hardly is a bad performance anywhere in the show--also great are Michael Gil as the president, Michael Kelly as Underwood's tough as nails chief of staff, Rachel Brosnahan as a former sex worker caught under Underwood's grasp, and Gerald McRaney as a multimillionaire energy tycoon doing battle with Underwood.

It may seem that my criticisms will make me conclude that this is a show that I don't like to watch. That is totally untrue. I can't think of another show that features such crisp cinematography (by Igor Martinovic, Eigil Bryld, and Tim Ives) and hauntingly beautiful music (by Jeff Beal). I complained that the show takes itself too seriously, but actually there are often shows that don't take themselves seriously enough. There's an enormous amount of effort, skill, talent and thought in "House of Cards," and is reminiscent of that wonderful line in Oliver Stone's "Nixon." When the title character looks up at a portrait of his old adversary, John F. Kennedy, he mutters, "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are." "The West Wing" might be what we want our political system to be; "House of Cards" might simply be what it is.

Read More →