
Roma's Wounding Confession - pan_cogito
http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/02/22/romas-wounding-confession/
======
telesilla
I spent time in Mexico City, and moved around a few houses. Each one came with
a housekeeper, a woman either young or old - always with a family she was
supported, or extended family. I came to love them too, quickly - in the same
kind of relationship Cuarón portrayed in Roma - of the one with money who
treated them well but wished there was a more equitable way of living
together. It's a sad kind of thing, in one way I am offering employment and in
another way I am acting in the class system I hate so much.

~~~
todipa
I grew up in South America, one parent Scandinavian and the other local. We
had a housekeeper/nanny the same way in Roma. My Mother was adamant on having
the nanny sit with us for every meal, all together. I was a kid back then so I
didn't understand why my friends would find it weird when they ate dinner with
us.

It is a cultural thing that is probably left over from the colonization era.
Things will change but it takes time.

~~~
_red
A close friend of mine lived in Mexico for many years. I would visit him
occasionally and spend the odd week or two with him. I got to know his home
help.

He being an American of generally liberal persuasion tried, as your family
did, to treat the cook and gardener as 'equals'.

Over time that changed though. One day the maid sat him down and politely
explained that it was sort of insulting to be treated too familiar in this
context. She was speaking of the gardener and said, "What you are doing makes
him feel very uncomfortable". She explained, "the old man there is kneeling in
your garden pulling weeds 8 hours a day, and you come home...breeze in in your
50K auto and ask him if he wants to share a beer with you..."

He realized she was right. These people were not "passionate about their
career", in fact there was no career, nor even the semblance of it. They were
just doing whatever possible work they could do to earn enough money to keep
food on their families table. Treating them too familiar, or even implying
they shared lots of things in common, was sort of demeaning.

In the end, he wound up treating them very formally. "Sr Veracruz" "Sra
Sanchez" etc...always keeping a sort of respectful distance between them.
Posting work schedules, etc and generally treating them like employees.

I'm not at all against what you said, nor implying you guys didn't do what was
right, simply showing there are more than one interpretation of such
situations.

~~~
em-bee
to do that you have to go down to their level. if you spend your free time in
the garden working just as hard, then you can sit down and share the
refreshments together. same goes for housework.

in china, nanny's are generally relatives. the grandparents, an aunt or a
cousin. so they are part of the family. they are there because they are
genuinely needed to share the work, there is no class difference. only when
relatives are not available, someone else is hired, but their status is not
much different.

------
openasocket
This appears to be a part of a series of articles about some of the Oscar-
nominated films:
[http://churchlife.nd.edu/tag/oscars-2019/](http://churchlife.nd.edu/tag/oscars-2019/)

------
ravieira
I'm Brazilian and watched this with my American gf and although she found the
photography and story beautiful she understandably couldn't really relate to
the context.

Here in Brazil (perhaps specially in the older Northeast, where I'm from)
having a maid is still very strong but has changed considerable in the past
two decades.

It used to be the case that these maids would work for a family for decades
without any of the guarantees that Brazilian work laws guarantee. Whether or
not one agrees with those laws is secondary to the fact that these workers
were largely kept out of it for ages.

It used to also be the case that families would require maids to sleep in the
house. Woman who had their own family often had to accept spending nights on
their "patrões" home to make sure they were there ready to work at 6am.

------
loofatoofa
this movie in dolby vision 4k oled with good sound is a completely reinvented
b&w.

------
js2
I really hated _Roma_. I don't say that lightly. I'm in violent agreement with
Richard Brody's review:

> That effacement of Cleo’s character, her reduction to a bland and blank
> trope that burnishes the director’s conscience while smothering her
> consciousness and his own, is the essential and crucial failure of “Roma.”
> It sets the tone for the movie’s aesthetic and hollows it out, reducing
> Cuarón’s worthwhile intentions and evident passions to vain gestures.

[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/theres-a-
voi...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/theres-a-voice-
missing-in-alfonso-cuarons-roma)

It's this way with all the characters. They're all shallow, one-dimensional
tropes you're never given any reason to care about. Except for the domestic
servants, they're all unlikeable.

Worse, I found the film outright boring (I say this as someone who loves
_Barry Lyndon_ ).

The scene shown on the movie poster that I gather is supposed to have a big
emotional impact, just left me feeling manipulated. It's telegraphed to you
from a mile away, and then the family claiming they love the maid, it just
isn't believable given how they've ignored her and mostly treated her like
crap.

Speaking of crap, the dog shit. Why the hell was that so important to Cuarón
that he features it, what, a dozen times?

Finally, I really didn't care for the B&W combined with digital. The overall
effect just looked contrived to me. (I watched it on 100" screen with a
calibrated JVC D-ILA projector, so I think I viewed it pretty close to how the
director intended.)

If you want to see a brilliant 2018 film about the human condition and a
family dealing with trying circumstances, watch _Shoplifters_ instead. I
viewed _Roma_ and _Shoplifters_ the same evening. I'm so glad I watched the
latter and wish I could have my two hours back from the former.

TL;DR: _Roma_ sucks, watch _Shoplifters_ instead. Or _Tokyo Story_ if you want
to see _Roma_ done right.

~~~
dguaraglia
I grew up in Latin America, so I guess I can give you some context about some
of this stuff. I am not going to defend the entertainment value of the movie,
because I personally found it pretty boring (I guess the voyeuristic value
isn't there for me, having grown up in a similar environment).

> It sets the tone for the movie’s aesthetic and hollows it out, reducing
> Cuarón’s worthwhile intentions and evident passions to vain gestures.

The assumption here is that Cuarón should've made the film about Cleo, by
giving her a voice and explaining to us her point of view... when maybe Cuarón
might be trying to show us how _he_ was unable to really understand this
person who had a very rich life outside of his world. If Cuarón's experience
was always defined by a very simple interface (that of the "sirvienta" or
"mucama"), then it's understandable that his version of her is a muted - one
could say desaturated - version of the real person.

> ...and then the family claiming they love the maid, it just isn't believable
> given how they've ignored her and mostly treated her like crap.

Most families' relationships with their maids is super weird. My family was
never affluent enough to afford one, but I had plenty of friends who had a
"sirvienta" (the Argentine equivalent of Cleo's role). To the kids, the
sirvienta was a second mother, to the parents the sirvienta was a friend,
psychiatrist and help. All of them would talk fondly of their sirvientas as if
they were part of the family... to an extent. If a sirvienta falls in hard
times (be it health, money or otherwise), the family doesn't usually offer to
help.

In other words, as long as the sirvienta is in the house, she's part of the
family. The moment she leaves, she's just an stranger they didn't really care
that much for. Very strange.

> Speaking of crap, the dog shit. Why the hell was that so important to Cuarón
> that he features it, what, a dozen times?

I think this is Cuarón's rendering of the kind of things that imprint on you
as a kid. I remember my first time walking around La Boca, in Buenos Aires,
after living abroad for a few years. The amount of dog shit on the sidewalk
was staggering. I was surprised, even though I grew up less than an hour away
from there. I could see myself remembering the dog shit had I grown up in La
Boca.

~~~
subpixel
> If Cuarón's experience was always defined by a very simple interface (that
> of the "sirvienta" or "mucama"), then it's understandable that his version
> of her is a muted - one could say desaturated - version of the real person

That's just rationalizing away the fact that the film's subject was poorly
handled by the film's director. Someone else - and I'm not suggesting that has
to be someone whose experiences more closely map to Cleo's - could have told
this story better, or at least in a way that would have felt less out of
touch.

The film was pretty beautiful but dramatically, a miss.

~~~
dguaraglia
I'm sure there's a great movie to be made about Cleo's life, from her
perspective and showing us more of the underbelly of Mexican society at the
time. My - admittedly half-assed argument - is that Cuarón might have not had
that movie in mind, and analyzing the film as "Cuarón screwed up by not making
the film I wanted to see" misses that point.

I wish I had seen way more about the ship that comes and picks up the baby and
her mother at the end of Children of Men... but the movie wasn't about them.

~~~
js2
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. In retrospect I didn’t
think much of Children of Men or Gravity either, and I can’t even remember
what I thought of Y Tu Mamá También, so it apparently didn’t leave much
impression on me. Maybe he’s just not my cup of tea.

My upset with Roma was given how critically acclaimed it is, I was expecting a
lot more. I appreciate your perspective but I still don’t think the film is
worthy of the praise it’s been given. I went and read a ton of reviews after
to try to understand what I might be missing and I just ended up getting more
and more annoyed. Oh well.

~~~
nodemaker
Let me guess! You probably think the great gatsby is a classic.

~~~
js2
The book is by definition a classic. The movie is not my favorite of Baz
Luhrmann's. What's this got to do with Roma?

Speaking of Great Gatsby, I did enjoy Burning.

The Princess Bride... now that’s a classic.

------
Mr_Shiba
Nice read, thanks for sharing.

------
dstroot
I wonder what it is like to think that deeply about "entertainment"? I can
think in code for hours but writing about the opening scene as done in this
article would be much worse than just watching it. It's hard for me to even
imagine spending that much thought to analyze a movie. I wonder how much time
the author spent on the article? I can't even imagine. I probably need
therapy...

~~~
trip9
Oftentimes it's a matter of "you get out what you put into it". Some people
are content watching film and engaging with it only on the surface level (and
that's fine!), but others enjoy really diving in and ruminating on the
different aspects of the art.

I think there's immense value in being able to engage with something creative
(whether it's music, film, poetry, performance) at this level, and I honestly
feel sadness for people who never give it a chance.

