Alfonso Cuarón's most recent film, Roma (2018), is a masterpiece. The film has received unanimous applause; some critics even call it Cuarón's magnum opus (no small thing - ahem, Children of Men). Roma continues to live on in the public conscious. The film became even more relevant after Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (2019) took home the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2020, the first foreign produced film ever to do so. Still, Parasite's worldwide (and highly deserved) success may have not been possible if Roma hadn't paved the way before it. In 2019 Roma won a ton of awards, including Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. But it failed to garner the same clamor amongst Academy voters as Parasite would just a year later. Roma was beat out for Best Picture by Nick Vallelonga's endearing-but-forgettable Green Book.

This did not (and still does not) sit well with me. Green Book is fine. It made me laugh, which I cannot say Roma made me do (I did cry though). But Green Book isn't as important a film as Roma is and was. Movies don't necessarily have to teach us a lesson. At the end of the day, movies are and should be treated as entertainment. But this does not mean that film cannot also change our lives. Movies are moving pieces of art that oftentimes reveal some previously hidden truth. Roma did this. It brought film to a broader audience - anyone with a Netflix subscription can watch it right now. The fact that the majority of the film's dialogue is in Spanish and the rest is in Mixtec (a language indigenous to the Oaxaca region of Mexico) denounces the notion that English is the universal medium for art. Parasite later reaffirmed this lost truth. All films, entertaining or not, contain their own message. The message can range from "this is what a modern-day action movie should be" (John Wick) to "this is what war's really like" (Saving Private Ryan). Hidden within its visual splendor and its cryptic dialogue, Roma has its own profound hidden messages, its own mystery to unveil.

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Roma takes the perspective of a housemaid named Cleo and explores themes like childhood innocence, maternity, and even nationalism. One of the most poignant questions Roma deals with is who belongs in a family. Throughout the story we feel a palpable sense of separation between Cleo and the family who she works for and lives with. Cleo is always on the verge of becoming a part of the family, but she never seems to clear this barrier. Eventually, Cleo arrives to a point where she must sacrifice something of her own in order to bring happiness to her employers. Love is the only thing that is capable of unifying the family.

This is bullshit.

The plot moving before our eyes is nothing more than a fairy tale, a fantasy. In the real world, happy endings rarely occur, because not many things every really 'end'. This is not a theory of my own creation. The director himself indicates to us that we are in a dream, a fantasy of his device and another that is Cleo's. Roma is a struggle between memory and nostalgia. It questions what really happened in the past, whether our perspectives really matter. These contradictions appear in the movie thematically and visually. There are moments in which we see the contrast between both worlds, the real and the imaginary. We see the complications that arise when we frame our lives as 'ideal' when in reality life is oftentimes sad and brutalizing.

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Without Cleo, Roma does not work as a film. Despite her near constant on-screen presence, Cleo's prominence in the scene varies a lot from shot-to-shot. When Cleo is 'the nanny', she can oftentimes be found at the edges of the screen. But when she is alone, outside of the house and in command of the situation, she becomes the center of attention. We observe her as a dependent child might; the camera fixates on her. Consequently we follow her. The cinematography instills a sense of attachment towards Cleo. Like small children, we the audience must follow our caretaker. We have no agency in making this decision, in where we will go. The natural wall that typically exists between the audience and a film's principal character disappears; we enter into a fantasy ourselves, one where Cleo is a part of our lives.

Fittingly enough, Cleo's character is based on Cuarón's  former nanny, Liboria "Libo" Rodríguez (to whom the film is dedicated to). It's actually quite moving that Cuarón structured such a personal film to revolve around his old caretaker; it demonstrates the enduring childhood attachment he held for her. Yet, Cuarón takes advantage of this caring relationship. Roma takes memories from his childhood and imposes them on the spectator. Each scene is intended to create an interpersonal connection between us and Cleo. During the filming, Variety magazine interviewed Rodríguez, providing a behind-the-scenes look at how Cuarón recreated his own childhood from such a unique perspective;

“He was getting all this information without me knowing what it was for; ‘How do you remember this, Libo?’ he said. ‘Help me remember and understand.’ Then it started to become weird. ‘Libo, what did you used to wear? How did you dress?’ Things like that. I never imagined everything I’m living right now, that a film would be based on me.”

Cuarón's lens does not merely emphasize Cleo's importance as a character. He is channeling Rodríguez' spirit onto film.

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There are various recreations of historic events in Roma. Cleo inadvertently strolls through a series of significant events in Mexico's history from 1970-1971. Civil unrest and wildfires break out around her, oftentimes without truly catching her attention. She is fixated on her children. These relevant events in Mexican history are oftentimes put aside to Cleo's personal struggles. Consider this scene, in which **spoiler alert** Cleo's water breaks. What I just neglected to mention is that her water breaks just as she is caught in the center of the Halconazo, better known in America as the Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971. Rather than fixate on the massacre itself and recognize the victims/perpetrators of the tragedy, our eyes remain trained on Cleo. The grandmother of the children attempts to comfort her as they attempt to void traffic in the middle of a mass demonstration gone wrong.

This was an extremely profound event in Mexican history. Why depict it in such a way, considering Cuarón's own Mexican upbringing? Why focus on Cleo, a person who does not exist in reality, rather than confront what really happened that day in El Casco de Santo Tomás? The simple answer is that Cuarón is preserving his own memory while paying tribute to the previously unrecognized sacrifices that Rodríguez and thousands of nannies like her made for the children they helped raise. We can imagine the minor impact these events may have had on someone like Rodríguez. A person like her, who fought every day just to maintain her way of living probably wasn't really affected by what was happening on a political scale. She had a job to do, children to take raise; whatever was happening around her was just background noise. In other words, her reality had nothing to do with what was happening at a larger scale. it was work, fight to survive just as Cleo does. The camera remains dedicated to Señora Rodríguez' recollections of her past life.

Despite her Mixteca roots (which disgracefully enough gave reason to discriminate against in Mexico during the '70's), Cleo acts as the mother of the white children whom she cares for. She is always watching over the children, whether she is cooking, cleaning, or taking care of the dog. Obviously, Cleo is not their real mother (that's just part of the fantasy).  The children's real mother, Sofía, is also in the picture. Like most mothers, Sofía has a built-in defense mechanism that protects her children from would-be intruders. Sofía oftentimes imposes her motherly status when she sees Cleo and the children bonding too closely. When she speaks to Cleo it is most often in a demeaning business-like tone. She is the niñera. Nothing more. When Cleo confronts Sofía to tell her that she may be pregnant, Sofía thinks of it as nothing more than an inconvenience:

This unexpected development means that Sofía will may have to change her lifestyle accordingly. Cleo's absence during her pregnancy will mean an increase in work for Sofía, work that is not fit for a woman of her standing. The script effectively demonstrates the rift between the two; however, Cuarón also constructs invisible physical barriers between them. Take this shot as an example: 

Although Sofía and Cleo are sitting close to one another on the sofa, there is an invisible wall separating the two. The actors aid in constructing this wall; note the difference in posture. Sofía's legs are crossed, her head tilted to hear out her pleas like an HR administrator addressing complaints would. Cleo's body language creates even more tension; she is clearly uncomfortable. Cleo is practically Sofía's opposite, as if she were a rabbit being confronted by a wolf.

The dynamic between Cleo and Sofía feeds doubt into the notion that Cleo is or ever will be a mother. To build one must first destroy. Cuarón temporarily destroys Cleo's fantasy of motherhood so that he can later reassemble it. Cleo does end up being pregnant, giving hope to the idea of her being a legitimate mom. Ultimately this fantasy does not become reality. Cleo cannot seem to escape life's brutal side. Cleo's reality is being a disproportionate member of society, and, perhaps even more painfully, being alone.

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You can find many narratives besides Cleo's in Roma - racism, economic disparity, agrarian reform, and more. Without a doubt these narratives are important to the film and contribute to Mexican history. But the bulk of the story exists in the relationship between Cleo and the children whom she truly loves. What I've chosen to take from the film is that love is capable of deconstructing the walls that we construct around us and those who we mean to protect. Before the film's climax Sofía omits Cleo from her family. She prevents this fantasy from becoming a reality. Only when Sofía truly recognizes the devotion Cleo holds for her children does she finally admit her into the family. Although the family is divided in earlier scenes, here there is only unity and affection.

So, has Cleo broken her curse? Has she become a mother? Will she continue to live in a dream, or will she go back to her old existence, to being just a nanny dancing on the outer edges of maternity?

When they finally return home, the family finds their house nearly empty, stripped of its furniture and a most prominently displayed vehicle. This family's life is moving in a new direction. Who will be included in this new family, already adapting to the change in its structure? Will Cleo be involved?

The camera gives us an answer, just as it has throughout much of the story. As the family begins exploring their new old house, Cleo returns to her life as if it'd never been put on pause. She goes to the kitchen to make a snack for the children and fill up their road-trip famished little bellies. She and her fellow nanny catch up while she's working, asking how the trip went; "how was the adventure? Did you have fun?" Cleo responds be saying she has a story to tell her. And good stories do not stem from reality, from the monotony of life. The best stories retell extraordinary moments, moments which can be felt more than they can be told.

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The film leaves us waiting for some dramatic or inspiring change in the characters, which we never receive. It's an undeniable fact that we as audiences love happy endings. So why give us this gray ending? Maybe it's because that's how it happened during the director's childhood, that as an adult Mr. Cuarón can finally understand the daily battle Libo Rodríguez fought. Or, perhaps Cuarón is simply acknowledging the fact that life is not as simple as we try and make it out to be, that each person enters this world their own condition in life that neither he or she can decide.

I say that life, real or fantastical is complicated. How we navigate it depends on us and those whom we draw close to.

resources

Cuarón, Alfonso, director. Roma (2018). Esperanto Filmoj, 2018

Cuarón, Alfonso, escritor. Roma (2018). Guión.

“The Real History Behind the Movie Roma.” https://time.com/5478382/roma-movie-mexican-history/

“Alfonso Cuarón on the Painful and Poetic Backstory Behind 'Roma'.” https://variety.com/2018/film/news/roma-alfonso-cuaron-netflix-libo-rodriguez-1202988695/