A Foul a-Roma

The 2019 Oscar nominations are due to be announced on January 22, but enough precursor awards are being handed out that certain nominees are considered at this point to be a "done deal." And since the current system allows for as many as 10 Best Picture nominees, it's best to get started early with the "sure things" if you actually care to see them all before the ceremony. One of the surest of the sure is Roma.

Roma is the newest effort from writer-director Alfonso Cuarón, who last caught Oscar's eye with Gravity (he won Best Director, though the film itself lost Best Picture to 12 Years a Slave). Now he's turned in a semi-autobiographical movie, the story of a live-in housekeeper in Mexico City in the early 1970s.

There's a lot here that's catnip to Oscar voters. It's presented in and black-and-white (for reasons). It's topical, inasmuch as it focuses on a place and people much maligned in modern politics. It comes from a pedigreed filmmaker who has now cashed in the chips he's earned over time to make a "personal" film.

It is also, in my view, unbearably dull.

You may think me "virtue signaling" to say this, but I'll say it all the same: I'm all for diversification in film. I think there's more accomplished than just "ticking a box" when stories depict a wider range of backgrounds, races, nationalities, genders, sexualities, what-have-you. These films can be just as accessible as more "commercial" (straight white American male) efforts of the past. A film that lets you identify with a different kind of protagonist can be both enlightening and entertaining for anyone, and affirming and uplifting for those in a minority. They matter, whether they'll garner awards or not. (Exhibit A: Love, Simon.)

However, my taste in film is for narrative. There's a strain of film-goer (and certainly of film critic) for whom just "existing" in a place is enough to love a film. For whom cinematic technique is the most important attribute. For whom meticulously composed imagery is the draw. For whom there's little difference between art on a gallery wall and a "motion picture" on a screen. That's not me.

I tried to give Roma a chance. But it stalwartly refused any effort to find a plot. There was characterization aplenty (though as much of a large automobile and a defecating dog as any of the human characters), yet there was no story that pulled me into the film in any way. If anything, it felt carefully crafted to keep a viewer at arm's length. Meanwhile, pretentious filmmaking abounded. The true star of Roma is the camera, and how it slowly pans -- back-and-forth, in half-circles, full circles. Oooooo. 

Add to this the choice to present in black-and-white, and Roma came off to me less like a written film and more like an uncurated batch of old home movies (albeit made with an unusually artistic eye). After 45 minutes (about one-third of the movie's run time), I simply couldn't stand any more. I'd waited long enough, I felt, for something to happen. Nothing was ever going to, it seemed. So I quit.

This movie absolutely will get nominated for Best Picture. I don't know if it will win, but I'm sure it will enjoy enthusiastic support from a segment of voters. And in my opinion, it's the poster child of why many people feel such disdain for Oscar movies. They're not all like this, though many people think they are. This movie is Alfonso Cuarón's The English Patient. Glacial. Sterile.

I suppose it would be unfair to grade a movie I did not watch in its entirety. But I should also note that in my entire life, I've only ever failed to finish watching 7 movies (out of, as best I can tell, around 1800). So there you go. You probably know if you're the sort of person who'd enjoy a movie like Roma. I'm certainly not going to be the person to recommend it to you.