What's It About?!

Someone asked me what "Roma" (see previous 4 posts), was about. It's funny. For me it's like trying to sum up what life is about. You can tick off the plot points, you can talk about the characters, you can try to sum up the theme. But you know, it doesn't quite capture what it is, what it means to me, why I love the film. In fact, the dissecting of it (like dissecting a cat to explain a cat), is pretty much besides the point, kind of kills the magic of the film.

Here's a quick take: it's a memory piece, about a family (Cuaron's family) in Mexico City, 1971. Lovingly depicted. Every detail fully realized. It's an effort to show "what happened," in a very specific time and place. This time, these human beings. It's about the over-flowing, incomprehensible, joyous and challenging and disappointing, beautiful and tragic, energy of life. It's about these people. But of course, it's about all of us too. Anyone who has lived on this planet.

There is something about the way the camera moves. Every shot is perfectly framed. Layered, complex scenes. Long slow panning shots. It's the method of the film, the specificity, the all encompassing approach. The vividness, the great attention to details, the big and the small things wrapped up together. The lived nature of every scene. The poetry of motion. The light. The sounds of the street. This idea that permeates the film that life is messy, complex, that we don't understand the moments  of our lives as they reveal themselves. Order. Chaos. Energy.

The film captures and embodies the idea that life unfolds around us. We are participants and observers too. Life is a river. Flowing always. We get carried along, we get swamped, we stand against the stream. All things happen simultaneously. We live it, and then, later, try to understand what happened. It's about life, love, pain, chaos, energy, poetry, memory, human beings alive in a world they fully don't understand. Something like that...