Use of Symbol in Cuaron\'s Film Roma

Roma: Analysis
Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, is a black and white film, stylish in nature yet reflective of reality. It is a period drama set in Mexico in 1970. The film opens with a long still shot of water swooshing over the tiled floor of driveway within a Mexico City mansion. The sounds are like waves washing over a beach (they foreshadow a climactic scene at the end of the film). The credits roll over this opening scene and when they finish the camera pans up to reveal the heroine of the film, the diminutive Cleo, who is a live-in maid in the mansion of the upper class Mexican family.
The main ideas of the film are captured evocatively but subtly by the camera’s framing, by the use of light and shadow, and by the suggesting nature of mise-en-scene. For instance, a great deal is suggested about the patriarch in the scene wherein he is trying to navigate his large Ford into the drive inside the home. He backs up, pulls forward slightly, bumps into a wall, reverses, corrects the wheel, and does it all again, slowly and painstakingly while smoking a cigarette and ashing in the car’s ashtray. The camera never shows his face throughout the scene but rather only shows his hand, holding the burning cigarette before cutting to a wheel correcting, showing a side mirror clipping a corner, cutting to the fender bumping a pillar and so on. Everything is suggestive and dramatic moments are highlighted by this kind of stylized approach. What it says about Antonio is that he is a mysterious figure, whose presence is elsewhere: he possesses these things—this house, the car, yet struggles to fit his own life into it all—which is why he is having an affair in Quebec, and why the matriarch, Sofia, will eventually divorce him in the end. The main idea of fidelity is depicted in another way—via long, slow, ponderous shots of Cleo, doing her duties in the home, caring for the children, holding the dog so that it does not get out. Every long, panning shot in which Cleo is situated reinforces the main idea that she is part of the home; she is the heart of the family, humble as she may be.
Camera movement in the film is careful thought out. Most shots are still shots, with the camera angled to show a specific, such as dishes being washed, or the maid picking up children after school. When the camera moves it is typically a tracking shot or a panning shot. For example, in the scene where the woods catch fire during the New Year’s celebrations, the camera moves from right to left in a slow tracking shot that shows the full extent to which everyone is pitching in trying to put out the fires. The camera always moves at the same pace, is never rushed to capture something, but glides along slowly as if set on auto-pilot and allowed only limited range. Then lens is extra wide, however, to pick up as much action as possible. So it never feels as though anything is left out.
Camera placement ranges from up close shots to long shots of action on a grand stage, such as during the fire or such as when Cleo is cleaning the house in the opening sequence. Long shots help to establish the scene. The up close shots provide a perspective—like that of Cleo as she sits in bed while her boyfriend practices martial arts naked in the room.
One of the most important aspects of the film, for that reason, is shot framing. Every shot is framed with symmetry in mind. Whether it is the shot of the people watching TV or the shot of the nude martial artist, every frame is balanced and symmetrical. The TV for instance is in the center of the frame, an object on either side of it. The martial artist is framed from waist-high and is himself framed from behind by the doorway to the bathroom.
This type of framing allows Cuaron to use a point of view camera style that is at once personal and yet clinical. One feels that one is in on the action yet not really part of it either; the action feels close, but the way premeditated movements and pacing of the camera, the angles and the framing, all feel so calculated and predetermined that the viewer always feels like he is a viewer rather than one who is immersed in the action.
The mise-en-scene is grand and encompassing. In the shoot-out scene in the latter half of the film, when the city has erupted into violence, the mise-en-scene (assisted by a sweeping panning shot that moves, once more, at the same slow, laborious, pre-determined pace as every other panning shot) reveals a street where rivals fire guns at each other; as the camera pans in 360 degrees, Cleo is shown being rushed out of the shop, while at the forefront is a woman holding an injured man and weeping (Cuaron is channeling Malick’s Thin Red Line here) while the camera keeps going in its merciless panning of the street. The mise-en-scene is designed to show real life but in a way that indicates just how choreographed everything is: everything is symmetrically arranged, which in real life is hardly ever the case. So the mise-en-scene reveals Cuaron’s artistic preferences but also fails to really produce an immersive effect for the viewer.
Camera angles are typically waist-high but since the main figure, Cleo, is very short, the angles never seem too low. High angle shots, low angle shots, eye-level shots and reverse shots are rare if used at all. Cuaron does not present the film in conventional cinematic ways. It is like a cross between Wes Anderson set obsession and Malick artistic nuance. It is somewhere in the middle never finding a home in either sphere.
Light and shadow are effectively muted for the most part; it is not a neo-noir where light and shadow serve to symbolize the balance of powers—darkness and light—in a world where everything seems tinged by gray. Here, there is never too much light nor too little.
Visual symbols, such as the Ford, reflect the wealth of the family; the pipe that drains water from the rooftop to another drain (with water pooling at the sides) is another image that symbolizes the nature of Mexican life (good enough yet not so thought-out that draining systems are perfect). The image of Cleo on the beach at the end, hugged by the children after saving them from drowning is the crowning symbol: after losing her own child (stillborn) she is hailed as a hero, savior, mother and protector of all the children she has been serving as a live-in maid. It is a symbol that satisfies and makes the film’s slow, ponderous panning shots and numerous still shots all seem to make sense somehow, finally.
The use of space is deftly utilized throughout. When Cleo and the other maid are washing the dishes, they are shown at far right with the expanse of space behind them filling up the rest of the mise-en-scene. The rooftop is spacious, the home is spacious—the only tight space is the hallway and the motel where Cleo is impregnated by her boyfriend. Tight spaces are reserved for when men are in the room who ultimately abandon the room, as though the tight spaces reflect the idea that they themselves feel constrained and want to escape in to the open. Locations are indoors and outdoors and are always presented authentically.
The images the film focuses on are simple ones: birds in a cage (representing homelife), Cleo holding the dog (representing her ability to protect), Cleo’s runaway boyfriend aiming the gun at her before running off once more (representing the revulsion of men in the film towards patriarchal responsibility) are all subtle images that help to convey the main ideas of the film.