A talk about the movie 'ROMA', which made me think 'I hate death' for the first time in a while [Spoilers included]

The moment I finished watching it, I was a little confused.

Black and white. Fixed camera angles. No background music. Even though it should be quite unconventional in terms of cinematic grammar, I felt no discomfort at all while watching it. For 135 minutes, I felt like I was in the Roma district of Mexico City. Yet, the moment the end credits rolled, I thought, 'Wait, where am I again?'

Looking back calmly, this movie is too well-crafted. Even though it's black and white. Even though the angles are fixed. Even though there is no music.While watching, it doesn't let you notice any of that. It has a structure where meanings are added one after another as you open it up, and my brain couldn't quite keep up.

Synopsis (No spoilers)

In the early 1970s, in the Roma district of Mexico City, Cleo, an indigenous maid working for a middle-class white family, supports everything in the house, from taking care of the children to cleaning and laundry. Meanwhile, her life proceeds in parallel with her lover's betrayal, an unwanted pregnancy, and the reality of being an indigenous person placed at the bottom of society.

The sky reflected on the water on the floor — The foreshadowing set by the opening

The very first shot is unusual.

Water is poured onto a tiled floor. Soapy water bubbles and spreads slowly, and the sky is reflected on the water's surface. An airplane crosses it. That shot alone continues for several minutes.

At first, it only looks like 'footage of someone cleaning.' But when I look back after watching this movie to the end, I realize thatthat shot foreshadows the structure of the entire movie. The sky reflected in the water on the ground—Cleo's gaze is directed downward. What she is looking at is the floor, the water, and her own labor. The sky is not in her eyes. It is just reflecting.

I will write at the end how this opening is resolved in the finale.

The garage and the car — Was there love between this couple?

The garage scene is shown repeatedly from the beginning. It starts with the husband carefully parking a large car, and eventually, the husband disappears, and the wife starts driving the same car carelessly and crashing it repeatedly.

Every time I saw that garage, I thought,was there ever any love between this couple to begin with?

The car getting more and more damaged is the very image of their relationship falling apart. But the car will eventually be replaced, and you can pretend you didn't even notice it was broken. It's the same as human relationships.

And looking back, there is no man and woman in this movie who are coexisting properly anywhere. The master couple. Fermin and Cleo. The man who was shot at the furniture store and his lover who appear later.Every male-female relationship is either broken or ends in death. Yet the tone of the movie remains quiet, and no one laments it loudly. It breaks down calmly. Calmly, the next day arrives.

The man named Fermin — Only his martial arts skills are sharp

Every time Fermin appears, the movie takes on a slightly different atmosphere.

The scene where he shows his martial arts. Only his sharpness is good. He is imposing, and I can understand why Cleo is attracted to him. But everything else about him is garbage.

Even though he is Cleo's lover, he runs away the moment he is told about the pregnancy. He says he is 'going to the bathroom' at the movie theater and disappears. When they meet again, he points a gun at Cleo. Although he didn't directly do the deed,the one who actually killed the baby in her womb was him. You can tell without the movie explaining it in dialogue that that fear and stress were the triggers for the stillbirth.

However, there is one thing I thought about here.Was it 'love' that made Cleo attracted to Fermin? She is working as a live-in maid at that young age. She seems to have spent little time with her own family, and she has nothing she can call her own place. It wasn't because she wanted a child, but perhaps she wanted'someone to protect her.' Not a child, but a parent. Someone to shelter her.

That is precisely why she clung to that piece-of-shit Fermin. A man who was only sharp when it came to martial arts. And then, she was betrayed.

Things that change, things that don't—the planes are always flying

As the film progresses, you can see the environment around Cleo changing at an incredible speed. Her boyfriend disappears, her employer's husband disappears, and the child in her womb disappears.

Around the beginning, the streets of Rome still felt like Mexican territory. But by the end, it's almost entirely inhabited by people of Spanish descent. It's depicted subtly, but this is a quiet encroachment. It's not just individual lives; the city itself is transforming. The film never explains this, but you can tell by looking at the changing faces and languages of the people in the background.

But,there are also things that do not change.

There is someone who always passes in front of the Velez house making a mysterious sound. They are there at the beginning of the film and at the end. Planes cross the sky. Again and again. From start to finish, there are planes flying in the sky.

Even though people's lives are destroyed in an instant, the planes fly on as usual. That indifference is, conversely, realistic, a bit cruel, and yet somehow comforting.Even if the world leaves you behind, the sky remains in the same place.

The person singing amidst the wildfire—a parade of nature's threats

The New Year's party scene. A wildfire is burning. Amidst those flames, someone is singing a song.

What is that? Honestly, I still don't know. I don't know, butI feel that the very act of singing while things are burning symbolizes the attitude of this film. Even if the world is burning, those who sing will sing. Even in the midst of collapse, daily life continues.

This film has a unique way of depicting 'nature.' It doesn't film nature as something beautiful.Nature is 'always there,' but sometimes it is scary. An earthquake hits. Waves try to carry a child away. Hail falls. A wildfire burns. The threats of nature are scattered throughout like a parade.

But none of them are depicted as catastrophic disasters. The earthquake ends in seconds, the waves recede, the hail stops.Nature rages, but it calms down immediately. It doesn't drag on like human drama. That detachment, conversely, highlights the length of human suffering.

The shooting at the furniture store—a scene that was more 'death' than any horror movie

And then, after the middle of the film, a scene arrives that completely changes the atmosphere.

Cleo and the others are looking at furniture. It gets noisy outside the window. Gunshots. People fall. That's all.

This was the most intense scene in the film. Not the ocean scene, not the stillbirth scene, butthe furniture store.

More than any suspense or horror murder scene I've seen recently, that was 'death.' It wasn't manufactured terror, buta sudden, hollow death where only the fact that someone died remains. It doesn't try to scare you with direction. It doesn't stir you up with music. Someone is just shot there, falls, and stops moving.

For the first time in a while, I thought, 'Death is awful.' This scene hits you with that feeling in one shot, something I didn't feel even after watching 100 horror movies.

And immediately after that. What Cleo and the others see after leaving the furniture store—a woman crying while holding a corpse. I don't know if it's her boyfriend or husband, but someone is clinging to the man who was shot, crying.

Fermin likely doesn't have anyone like that woman. There is nowhere anyone who would cry if that man fell. That is the kind of person he is. The film says nothing about what happens to Fermin afterward, but that silence says it all.

The boy on the beach and the memory of nearly drowning

In the final act, there is a scene where the family goes to the beach. While the children are playing on the shore, a boy suddenly mentions that he once nearly drowned.

That suddenness caught my attention. It flows by as casual daily conversation, but a few minutes later, Cleo actually heads into the waves. It is placed like a foreshadowing.

Cuarón hides this kind of foreshadowing not in dialogue, but within casual conversation. A casual remark becomes reality a few minutes later. The precision of that timing is extraordinary for this director.

The beach scene— 'I didn't want her to be born'

And then, that beach scene.

The waves grow larger. The children are about to drown. Cleo, who cannot swim, enters the waves anyway. Up to her waist, her chest, her neck.

After pulling the children to shore, Cleo is embraced by the family. The words she lets out at that moment:

'I didn't want her to be born.'

She speaks of her stillborn baby for the first time. Immediately after saving lives, she confesses that she did not want a life herself. This contradiction is the most painful part of the film.

At that moment, Cleo is on the 'protected side' for the first time. The person who had always been the one supporting the family shifts to the side being supported the moment she emerges from the waves. By being embraced, her existence is acknowledged for the first time.

The 'protection' she could not get from Fermín is offered by this family, with whom she has no blood ties, after the ocean. So, for Cleo, perhaps the life after that embrace can still be called 'happy.' I don't know, though.

The ending— The camera finally looks up at the sky

And the final shot.

The camera angle, which had stubbornly refused to move throughout the entire film, finally looks upward. As the camera looks up, there is the sky. An airplane crosses it.

The sky, which was nothing more than a reflection on the water on the floor at the beginning, becomes the 'real sky' at the end. The gaze that had been looking down now looks up.

It is just that, yet I feel that everything about this film is concentrated in that camera movement.

Cleo's gaze, which had been looking down and working for 135 minutes, finally rises at the end. Her world opens up just a little. Or perhaps, it means she was finally able to see the 'sky she hadn't been able to see.'

He might be an absolute genius.

I still cannot find an answer to this film

To be honest, I still don't fully understand this film.

What does the contrast between what changes and what remains the same signify? What is the song during the forest fire? Is the relationship between the water surface at the beginning and the sky at the end as simple as I think, or is it deeper?

There is so much I don't understand. But I believe that a film you want to watch again even though you don't understand it is the real deal. If a thick guidebook were published, I would probably buy it immediately.

The only thing I am certain of is that I am genuinely surprised that Netflix allowed such a film to be made. And that Cleo's life is just incredibly ill-timed.

I hope many good things happen to her from now on.

Film Information: ROMA / Roma (2018) / Directed, written, shot, and co-edited by Alfonso Cuarón / Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira / 135 minutes

📖 To you who read this article

I have also written an in-depth analysis of a film about 'people who were visible but not seen'.

• 'First Reformed' — People can only be saved by other people

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