Cuarón is so self-assured behind the camera that this masterful effort of cinematography and editing feels as though it were easy for him. He’s happy to move at a slower pace and draw you in. Yalitza Aparicio is incredible and deserves every bit of praise she’s getting.
At one point during the film, I was thinking about Harmony Korine’s quote:
“After 100 years, films should be getting really complicated. The novel has been reborn about 400 times, but it’s like cinema is stuck in the birth canal.”I wonder if Cuarón agrees. As much as Roma looks back — the film is in black and white, for crying out loud — it looks forward. There are sequences here that play like dreams, where the camera is characterized in ways that no novel could mimic. It’s inspired by artists like Fellini — there’s one sequence that echoes the opening to 8 1⁄2 — but it somehow feels so modern in Alfonso’s hands. It’s a black and white film that has so much texture and, yes, so much colour.