New comer Yalitza Aparicio in ‘Roma’ and Luis Gnecco as Pablo Neruda
Gone are the days we suffocated for hours waiting in film festival lineups to see great movies which usually don’t make it to local theatres unable to compete with superhero flics. Netflix it is changing all that.
Two Latin American classics available from the streaming giant is Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma’ and ‘Neruda’ made by Chilean director Pablo Larraín.
Cuarón’s ‘Gravity’ won seven Oscars but the 57-year-old’s Spanish language films like ‘Y Tu Mamá También’ and ‘Sólo con Tu Pareja’ will be well remembered internationally.
Netflix which has bankrolled ‘Roma’ is widely criticized for its intentions to release the film on digital platforms permitting only a small cinema release but what is heartening to note is that Netflix seems to be laying the foundation for a new frontier for parallel cinema which usually records dismal box office earnings in conventional theatres.
Netflix too has on offer some Third World films banned in their own countries bringing them wider global attention. One such film is Malayalam language Indian movie ‘Painted House’. When this remarkable movie sought public performance permission the Indian censor board refused asking the directors to remove three naked scenes where the main actress Naya Mahajan bares her body. The director refused to budge and consequently it was never shown in India.
Coming back to Cuarón’s film, named after the Mexico City neighbourhood (Colonia Roma), where the director grew up, the black and white masterpiece revolves around the life of his nanny Cleo played to perfection by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio.
Soft spoken, kind-hearted live-in maid’s tragic life is unravelling as her employer is facing marital problem after her husband elopes with his mistress leaving behind four adorable kids. Cleo fears losing her job but she is well taken care of by her boss after the maid loses her infant at birth. In a tearful confession she says she secretly wished the baby to die after her boyfriend refuses to believe it is his child and deserts her to join the socialist revolution.
Beautifully shot in open Mexican landscapes in wide angles with no close ups the director dedicates the film to his maid just like Michael Ondaatje did with his beautiful collection of poetry ‘Handwriting’ as a tribute to his childhood nanny.
The boy who is talking to the maid about storms, waves, lightening and dreams, saying that he had seen it all previously, could be ‘Cuarón The Dreamer’ himself as a kid.
‘Neruda’ is about Nobel Laureate’s political exile
Neruda by Pablo Larraín about the Nobel award-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s life when he was forced go into hiding is the second film I have seen on the life of the great poet after The Postman (Il Postino) made in 1994 by Indian-born British director Michael Radford. The film is about Neruda’s relationship with a postman while the poet was living in a small Italian island during his exile. Neruda had also worked as the Chilean consul general in Sri Lanka and revisited the island in 1957 to meet his old friends like the celebrated painter Lionel Wendt.
The movie directed by Pablo Larraín, is a beautifully-filmed narrative about the poet going into hiding while maintaining one step ahead of the partly fictional policeman, played by the great Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernel, who is in a cat-and-mouse chase to capture the poet.
The film is interwoven with flashes of the poet’s bohemian life style and his penchant for poetry-and-booze-fuelled revelry with beautiful young women in dimly-lit, smokey interiors and intimate moments of his famous love affair with his second wife Delia del Carril.
Neruda is smuggled from house to house till he escaped to Europe through Argentina and his nemesis cop meets a tragic death on snow, as the poet prophesied in poems ‘surrounded by many red marks’, bringing a Hitchcockian finale to their dark game of hide and seek.
The character named Jara driving Neruda from place to place in the nights can probably be Victor Jara who was tortured and shot dead after Augusto Pinochet came into power in a coup. An actor playing the dictator who worked as the commander in a concentration camp during the time the poet goes under ground appears briefly.
Neruda’s character is played by actor Luis Gnecco who has an uncanny resemblance to the poet. His role in ‘Il Postino’ was played by late French star Philippe Noiret.
Reviewing the film for New York Film Festival, critic Rania Richardson said the film is ‘a must-see for both its sly, intelligent filmmaking and its seductive portrait of an artist-cum-political fugitive’ and deserves multiple viewings. It was Chile’s Oscar submission for best foreign language film. – Somasiri Munasinghe
