Roma - Allegory Of Self
Thoughts On: Roma (2018)
A husband leaves his wife; their maid falls pregnant.
Roma is an intricate and beautiful film whose understanding of tragedy as more than pain is haunting. In following the maid of a middle-class family in the process of breaking down when the father leaves, Roma constructs an allegory of self through its sculpting of time and splicing of space.
Narrative inherently constructs an ambiguous 'allegory of self'. Roma does more than the average narrative does, however, by presenting change elementally and symbolically; by punctuating its story with flares of the bizarre and surreal. The self--who one truly is--is that part of the soul that endures all attrition and construction. This essence is defined by endurance as it is what you might call the only miracle of being; the foundation of will - will being the miraculous phenomena of pursuit, of envisioning the future, of creating or recognising meaning to strive towards. Narrative inherently and naturally dramatises life, or rather, contrives elements that converge upon the soul constructively and destructively, hence mining out and revealing a self. Cinderella in Disney's 1950 classic, for instance, is the soul that drama attacks and builds upon during the process of the story. The essence of Cinderella is a dream and heart ache. Never does this die despite all narrative change, succession and transformation; this dream and heart ache is a thematic and emotional representation of Cinderella's self. Cinderella is a story about how one carries this through their life, how one essentially ascends with this as their cross or baggage.
Roma makes explicit this phenomena of narrative exuding an allegory of the self living on, and so very directly presents us with a self symbolised by a brilliant opening image that builds as the narrative unfolds: a tiled floor. This floor is one of a partially roofed drive way or garage that so often stores a luxurious Ford Galaxie that must be parked with great care and patience for it is so wide. When the Galaxie - a shadow of cloud - is not in the drive, the family dogs have their run-about, constantly leaving faeces on the floor that cars will run over and smear all over the place. The maids clean this floor, clear the shit and wash the tiles. These tiles come to be an abstract representation of the movie's core: the idea of a self, Cleo's self. Hard, used, yet unchanging, the tiles are a welcome mat for anyone who so enters the property and overshadows them; they are shit upon by animals; they are bathed in water every day. These three characteristics become, if you care to follow the metaphor, three breaths that blow through the narrative.
The floor as a welcoming ground sees it set as foundationally order that must host chaos. Such is a recurrent idea witnessed throughout the film, emphasised by the stillness or controlled movement of the camera; we move through the world of Roma with placidity, grace and patience: we are, in effect, stone that moves. And whilst the camera is stiff in all its subtlety, the world it captures moves upon its own volition; what enters the frame comes independent of the mood of the camera, its movement and, indeed, its grey, smooth, silken gaze. Kids scream, waves crash, traffic bustles, life crumbles, but the camera watches unperturbed. The camera seems bound, however, to our protagonist: Cleo. It embodies her stillness, her patience, her controlled, leisurely glissando through drama. The camera moves upon waves of Cleo's self's breath, and so like the floor, it welcomes the chaos of life and is that place upon which external personal dramas play out. That is to say, like the garage or drive way is the place where the children welcome and wave off their father, wait for him, where the mother makes her final silent pleas as he leaves for his mistress, Cleo is a person constantly in the background of the family's drama, in the background of her boyfriend's personal drama, a venue, a domain, sometimes an active agent, sometimes human, more so observer. This passivity is what endures, is what cannot be abraded from the self of Cleo; it appears to be who she is.
Alas, where Cleo is like wood baring weather, an observer, she is also used. Dumped upon by a dog destined to become a head on a mantle in a backroom of memory, Cleo is impregnated and abandoned. She, like the many women of this world, is stranded. She, like us all, is shit upon by life. We see this projected constantly by the film, often in surreal interims in which background juxtaposes harshly with foreground (narratively or proxemically), where joy and sorrow are captured in the same frame, life and death, harmony and chaos, tragedy and fortune; a marriage and a broken family eating ice cream; violence and labour; a saved child and a still-birth. Irony, it seems, is the most pungent dropping of all - yet it is rife, yet it is far from shy.
The final breath blown through Roma's narrative is one of resolve. Like dirtied floors may be washed, the soul can be cleansed. There is a deep pit within us all into which the waters of life may drain, and it is into this, the drain at the heart of Cleo, that we fall. Clouds drift, waves crash, planes glide, night descends and yet a great blue perseveres. The self sustains; it is unchanged yet wiser, beaten yet stronger, cleaner yet impure, closer to heaven and yet also demise, all at once and forever more.
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The Favourite - The Lanthimos Film?
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End Of The Week Shorts #91
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A husband leaves his wife; their maid falls pregnant.
Roma is an intricate and beautiful film whose understanding of tragedy as more than pain is haunting. In following the maid of a middle-class family in the process of breaking down when the father leaves, Roma constructs an allegory of self through its sculpting of time and splicing of space.
Narrative inherently constructs an ambiguous 'allegory of self'. Roma does more than the average narrative does, however, by presenting change elementally and symbolically; by punctuating its story with flares of the bizarre and surreal. The self--who one truly is--is that part of the soul that endures all attrition and construction. This essence is defined by endurance as it is what you might call the only miracle of being; the foundation of will - will being the miraculous phenomena of pursuit, of envisioning the future, of creating or recognising meaning to strive towards. Narrative inherently and naturally dramatises life, or rather, contrives elements that converge upon the soul constructively and destructively, hence mining out and revealing a self. Cinderella in Disney's 1950 classic, for instance, is the soul that drama attacks and builds upon during the process of the story. The essence of Cinderella is a dream and heart ache. Never does this die despite all narrative change, succession and transformation; this dream and heart ache is a thematic and emotional representation of Cinderella's self. Cinderella is a story about how one carries this through their life, how one essentially ascends with this as their cross or baggage.
Roma makes explicit this phenomena of narrative exuding an allegory of the self living on, and so very directly presents us with a self symbolised by a brilliant opening image that builds as the narrative unfolds: a tiled floor. This floor is one of a partially roofed drive way or garage that so often stores a luxurious Ford Galaxie that must be parked with great care and patience for it is so wide. When the Galaxie - a shadow of cloud - is not in the drive, the family dogs have their run-about, constantly leaving faeces on the floor that cars will run over and smear all over the place. The maids clean this floor, clear the shit and wash the tiles. These tiles come to be an abstract representation of the movie's core: the idea of a self, Cleo's self. Hard, used, yet unchanging, the tiles are a welcome mat for anyone who so enters the property and overshadows them; they are shit upon by animals; they are bathed in water every day. These three characteristics become, if you care to follow the metaphor, three breaths that blow through the narrative.
The floor as a welcoming ground sees it set as foundationally order that must host chaos. Such is a recurrent idea witnessed throughout the film, emphasised by the stillness or controlled movement of the camera; we move through the world of Roma with placidity, grace and patience: we are, in effect, stone that moves. And whilst the camera is stiff in all its subtlety, the world it captures moves upon its own volition; what enters the frame comes independent of the mood of the camera, its movement and, indeed, its grey, smooth, silken gaze. Kids scream, waves crash, traffic bustles, life crumbles, but the camera watches unperturbed. The camera seems bound, however, to our protagonist: Cleo. It embodies her stillness, her patience, her controlled, leisurely glissando through drama. The camera moves upon waves of Cleo's self's breath, and so like the floor, it welcomes the chaos of life and is that place upon which external personal dramas play out. That is to say, like the garage or drive way is the place where the children welcome and wave off their father, wait for him, where the mother makes her final silent pleas as he leaves for his mistress, Cleo is a person constantly in the background of the family's drama, in the background of her boyfriend's personal drama, a venue, a domain, sometimes an active agent, sometimes human, more so observer. This passivity is what endures, is what cannot be abraded from the self of Cleo; it appears to be who she is.
Alas, where Cleo is like wood baring weather, an observer, she is also used. Dumped upon by a dog destined to become a head on a mantle in a backroom of memory, Cleo is impregnated and abandoned. She, like the many women of this world, is stranded. She, like us all, is shit upon by life. We see this projected constantly by the film, often in surreal interims in which background juxtaposes harshly with foreground (narratively or proxemically), where joy and sorrow are captured in the same frame, life and death, harmony and chaos, tragedy and fortune; a marriage and a broken family eating ice cream; violence and labour; a saved child and a still-birth. Irony, it seems, is the most pungent dropping of all - yet it is rife, yet it is far from shy.
The final breath blown through Roma's narrative is one of resolve. Like dirtied floors may be washed, the soul can be cleansed. There is a deep pit within us all into which the waters of life may drain, and it is into this, the drain at the heart of Cleo, that we fall. Clouds drift, waves crash, planes glide, night descends and yet a great blue perseveres. The self sustains; it is unchanged yet wiser, beaten yet stronger, cleaner yet impure, closer to heaven and yet also demise, all at once and forever more.
Previous post:
The Favourite - The Lanthimos Film?
Next post:
End Of The Week Shorts #91
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
