Netflix not only has horror films, fantasy series and romantic comedies on offer, but also really, really great cinema. Among the streaming service’s best films is the triple Oscar-winning “Roma” from master director Alfonso Cuarón.
After his Hollywood breakthrough with “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” as well as “Children Of Men” and the seven Oscar-winning space masterpiece “Gravity,” Alfonso Cuarón was able to devote himself to a heart project in his native Mexico thanks to the money from Netflix: “Roma,” in which the director incorporates autobiographical elements into an incredibly well-directed film highlight full of visually strong ideas, deeply felt humanity and pure poetry.
Roma” won three Oscars: Best International Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography, the latter two for Alfonso Cuarón himself. The film deserved all three awards – and if the author of this article has his way, it would have deserved even more Academy Awards.
For “Roma” is an absolutely exceptional film in many respects. Not only because Cuarón once again pulls out all the stops of his formidable directing skills. Not only because such stories set off the beaten Hollywood track still get the attention they deserve far too rarely. But also because in “Roma” Cuarón inimitably combines the big and the small, the high and the low, the everyday and the epochal.
“Roma” is “simultaneously arthouse and overwhelming cinema,” as the FILMSTARTS editors’ review puts it, an “intimate blockbuster, a titanic gem.” For this, it received an outstanding 4.5 out of 5 stars. Because even though Cuarón actually tells a small story here in beautiful black-and-white images, he does so with means that one would rather expect in expensive blockbuster cinema, namely with highly complex choreographed and elaborate camera movements, countless characters and a multitude of events.
At the same time, there are always several levels, several stories to discover in the many extremely long shots teeming with energy and detail: When main character Cleo goes to the movies with her boyfriend, for instance, Cuarón shows not only the two of them, but also a couple who are friends and the Louis de Funès comedy “The Big Revel” playing in the theater. Which part of this scene to focus on is up to the audience – but in any case, it helps make “Roma” feel like a slice of real life.
For all its technical virtuosity and visual overwhelmingness, “Roma” never turns into a detached finger exercise, because Cuarón is too talented a storyteller and his great lead actress Yalitza Aparicio, nominated for an Oscar for her role, grounds the film in every scene. As a result, “Roma” is always rousing, sometimes humorous, at many moments outright harrowing, and always an event.
THE PLOT OF “ROMA “
Mexico city in the early 1970s: Nanny Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) cares for the four children of a wealthy family. But the days of peaceful coexistence are soon over: the father of the family leaves the mother Sofía (Marina de Tavira), who has a hard time coping with this situation. And while Cleo’s private life is also thrown into turmoil, violence between demonstrators and paramilitaries threatens to escalate in the city…
