Nominated: Cuarón’s Roma is a very personal project

Editor’s note: Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma received two Academy Award nominations on Tuesday. Roma was nominated for Best Picture and Best Foreign Film. Last month, I wrote about Roma after seeing a sneak preview in Washington, D.C. As I wrote at the time, “It’s a film you can definitely watch with your ears, but you’ll want to see it with your eyes. It’s in theaters and available on Netflix.

In Roma, Academy Award-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men, and Y Tu Mama Tambien) has delivered an artful love letter to the women who raised him. Presented in Spanish with English subtitles, this immaculately photographed 135-minute film presented in black and white is a beautiful ode to his Mexican childhood. It draws upon Cuarón’s early life experiences growing up in a middle-class family in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma district to create both “a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s.” It’s a film about resilience and survival.

As Roma begins, one critic describes its opening as “a mesmerizing four-minute credit sequence – the mopping of a courtyard – the flow of foamy water establishes a rhythm as well as a cleansing metaphor about life and memory.”

The film follows its protagonist Cleo (portrayed by first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio), a young live-in domestic helper, and captures both her devotion to Cuarón’s family as well as detailing her personal problems. She becomes the focal point of the film in what becomes a collection of childhood memories about Cuarón’s family, the house he grew up in, and his neighborhood.

As the film’s writer, Cuarón wrote the script as a stream of consciousness. So, we see a combination of personal and social issues unfold in front of us. It seemed that because Cuarón allowed his emotions to play out, some of the scenes run long without tight editing. However, as the film unfolds it becomes its strength and not a liability.

Roma is meant to make us think. It’s an art film not an entertainment movie. Because Cuarón chose to film it in black and white, we gain more intimate details – and it lends itself toward recalling memory. After all, memory can be subjective – but it can also be objective, too. There is a lot of subtlety, a touch of humor, and plenty of honesty. Several things that are foreshadowed play out later in the movie such as an earthquake, a massive fire and the Corpus Christi massacre of 1971 that is shockingly detailed and restaged by Cuarón.

Roma opens in theaters just in time for the holidays and it’s sure to gain momentum as the awards season comes into full view. It will also be released simultaneously on Netflix, which will allow the film to reach a wider audience. However, Roma is best seen on a large screen and preferably in a classic, single-screen cinema like I saw it on a recent Sunday morning in northwest Washington, D.C. Its directionality of sound is truly amazing. Recently, one critic described Roma’s sound as a “bewilderingly intricate tapestry of distant street sounds, ambient noise and close-up conversations.” It’s a film that you can definitely watch with your ears, but you’ll want to see it with your eyes, too.

A Tuesday Night Memo: Thoughts on turning nine

My blog, “A Tuesday Night Memo,” turns nine later this month.

People who know me well know that I've been interested in writing, reporting and storytelling for a long time. So, it's only natural that I turned to blog writing because it gave me an opportunity to hone my writing skills and provided a forum for writing about things that truly interested me that I wanted to share with others.

Here’s a little history about my blog:

I started writing “A Tuesday Night Memo” on January 26, 2010, as a means for sharing musings about my life filled with music, sport, and urban travel, and to foster community with my friends, family and Facebook acquaintances. More recently, I added a Twitter profile, which has allowed me to reach a wider audience across the country and the world.

People who read my blog know that I'm passionate about music, sport, and urban travel. Additionally, I have used “A Tuesday Night Memo” as a vehicle for writing about art, food, fashion, religion and gardening – and, in the age of Trump, about politics. Before we moved to the east coast, sharing news and photos about our former Oakland, Calif., flower gardens at home always seem to generate great interest and enthusiasm. Maybe, it was the pretty shapes and colors of our flowers that others found appealing, especially since we could maintain a garden all year long.

Up to now, I have "blogged" 439 entries for “A Tuesday Night Memo,” which collectively have received more than 161,700 page views. Among many subjects I have written about, some of my favorites have been: my appreciation of tennis champion Roger Federer; how the city of Seattle fosters community through international cinema; a history of the world as seen through 100 objects; classical music conductor Gustavo Dudamel; Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr; my music love affairs with Pink Martini and Elvis Costello; validating our travel through our photographs; and Jerry Seinfeld's Internet comedy Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Among my recent posts, I have written about the Golden Globe-winning film “Roma”; the humanitarian work of Washington, D.C. chef José Andrés; and recent books written by American historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham. Also, I have shared my interest in digital photography since beginning my blog, which has enabled me to illustrate many if not all of my posts with colorful visuals to match the words I've written.

The feedback I have received not only is very much appreciated, but I also find it very useful. Much of it has been positive, but sometimes it's also been critical. Whether good or bad, I've found the feedback readers provide to be a valuable learning tool. Occasionally, I like to sneak a look at my blog's statistics, which are the key indicators that show how many total "hits" my blog has received, which stories have been read the most, and what countries comprise the blog's readership. The numbers are modest but nevertheless interesting.

Here are a few fun facts about “A Tuesday Night Memo” I thought you might enjoy:

• Since my blog's debut, it has been read in dozens of countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and Hong Kong – even Brazil, India, Vietnam, and Australia. The top five countries reading my blog include the U.S, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany and France. I hope Russia's interest in my blog has nothing to do with their wanting to hack me because of my occasional blog posts about President Donald Trump.

Looking ahead, two years since he was inaugurated, the Trump presidency continues to garner my interest and attention from time to time. How could it not? However, there's so much more to write about. Among things that I look forward to learning about include my continuing interest in exploring museums – and what we can learn from them. Also, I would like to explore the effect digital music and media have in connecting our world.

In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoy sharing my writing week in and week out, and I look forward to contributing more of my words and thoughts in what is shaping up to be another exciting year awaiting all of us.

Stay tuned! 

On film: Cuarón’s Roma is a very personal project

In Roma, Academy Award-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men, and Y Tu Mama Tambien) has delivered an artful love letter to the women who raised him. Presented in Spanish with English subtitles, this immaculately photographed 135-minute film presented in black and white is a beautiful ode to his Mexican childhood. It draws upon Cuarón’s early life experiences growing up in a middle-class family in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma district to create both “a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s.” It’s a film about resilience and survival.

As Roma begins, one critic describes its opening as “a mesmerizing four-minute credit sequence – the mopping of a courtyard – the flow of foamy water establishes a rhythm as well as a cleansing metaphor about life and memory.”

The film follows its protagonist Cleo (portrayed by first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio), a young live-in domestic helper, and captures both her devotion to Cuarón’s family as well as detailing her personal problems. She becomes the focal point of the film in what becomes a collection of childhood memories about Cuarón’s family, the house he grew up in, and his neighborhood.

As the film’s writer, Cuarón wrote the script as a stream of consciousness. So, we see a combination of personal and social issues unfold in front of us. It seemed that because Cuarón allowed his emotions to play out, some of the scenes run long without tight editing. However, as the film unfolds it becomes its strength and not a liability.

Roma is meant to make us think. It’s an art film not an entertainment movie. Because Cuarón chose to film it in black and white, we gain more intimate details – and it lends itself toward recalling memory. After all, memory can be subjective – but it can also be objective, too. There is a lot of subtlety, a touch of humor, and plenty of honesty. Several things that are foreshadowed play out later in the movie such as an earthquake, a massive fire and the Corpus Christi massacre of 1971 that is shockingly detailed and restaged by Cuarón.

Roma opens in theaters just in time for the holidays and it’s sure to gain momentum as the awards season comes into full view. It will also be released simultaneously on Netflix, which will allow the film to reach a wider audience. However, Roma is best seen on a large screen and preferably in a classic, single-screen cinema like I saw it on a recent Sunday morning in northwest Washington, D.C. Its directionality of sound is truly amazing. Recently, one critic described Roma’s sound as a “bewilderingly intricate tapestry of distant street sounds, ambient noise and close-up conversations.” It’s a film that you can definitely watch with your ears, but you’ll want to see it with your eyes, too.