“Roma”: Alfonso Cuaron Finds Beauty and Definition in the Servant of His Youth

In Roma, Alfonso Cuaron’s masterful and beautiful film about the Mexico of his youth, particularly the household servant who helped raised him, Cuaron brilliantly connects (as he notes in an Empire magazine interview) “the personal scars with the socials scars”.

This intersection where personal history and public history collide with memory gives Roma its sweep, drama, power and ultimately its sense of tragedy, loss and hope. It tries to honor time and space, the way it confines and limit human existence, and the way it also bonds.

It is both intimate and epic in the way only great films are. Every scene is a personal scar bled and healed over from Cuaron memories, a mixture of uncertainty with aspiration. Roma is forever striving to go beyond the bonds of gravity and reach for the sky.

Roma is thoughtfully slow and beautifully patient. The rewards it grants its audience is an intelligently emotional experience unlike any other.

All photos courtesy of Netflix.