{"id":9724,"date":"2019-01-02T13:57:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T13:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=9724"},"modified":"2020-09-02T14:18:49","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T14:18:49","slug":"a-critics-lament-do-you-see-what-i-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=9724","title":{"rendered":"A critic’s lament: Do you see what I see?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013\u00a0Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear? Those imponderables challenge a critic with every review. For me, Alfonso Cuaron\u2019s \u2018Roma\u2019 is the best film of 2018 but a friend has a problem with it. Experienced and wise, an artist himself, a cultured man of taste, he writes: \u201cI need your help. I haven\u2019t been watching a lot of films for the past several years and am finally starting to do so again. The other night I decided to watch the screener of \u2018Roma\u2019. There was nothing in the first hour that made me want to sit through the second hour. What am I missing? Besides the second hour, or is it all in the second hour?\u201d<\/p>\n

One of us has failed. It\u2019s not Cuaron and it\u2019s not my friend. It must be me. I have failed as a critic to convey what it is I see and what it is I hear in this, to me, wonderful film. As we know, all taste is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and one man\u2019s meat is another man\u2019s poison. We know all that. But it is a puzzle when you find yourself alone in an approving crowd. Why do so many love the musical \u2018Les Miserables\u2019 when it drives me up the wall? Why does the rock band Queen have so many fans when I just want to shut my ears?<\/p>\n

In a review of a West End production of Samuel Beckett\u2019s \u2018Endgame\u2019 many years ago, I tried to explain what it\u2019s like when other people seem to get something and you don\u2019t: \u201cIt\u2019s like watching a sport you didn\u2019t grow up with in a culture you don\u2019t know. You always seem to miss the action and wonder why there\u2019s cheering. Or it\u2019s like being at a display of modern art where everyone else is nodding, yes, or sighing in awe, but you can\u2019t see the faces for the cubes.\u201d<\/p>\n

With \u2018Roma\u2019, I suspect it\u2019s the slow pace the filmmaker has chosen with which to tell his story. It might also be the story itself. Most films are about\u00a0<\/span>exceptional, gifted, strong, powerful and iconic figures \u2013 kings, queens, politicians, businessmen, superheroes, sportsmen \u2013 who gradually are revealed to be vulnerable, weak and ordinary, just like us. \u2018Roma\u2019 tells of an ordinary woman who is unexceptional with no gifts other than fortitude and dignity but who over the course of the film is shown to be a power of strength, the very backbone of a family for whom she is simply a maid, a cook, a cleaner.<\/p>\n

Her day begins as she swabs the carport of a middle-class doctor\u2019s home cleaning the dog-shit that the family carelessly steps around until the maid\u2019s work is done. It\u2019s symptomatic of what Curaon suggests ails Mexican society in the 1970s as will become clear when the film opens up and events come tumbling down including a violent street riot, an earthquake, a forest fire, surging tidal waves and personal tragedies for key figures. To me, they are vivid and epic sequences with indelibly subtle and nuanced acting; joyful filmmaking.<\/p>\n

Perhaps my friend is right and it is the second hour and a quarter when everything happens but it takes the slow development to make it all so powerful. I think the key, however, is that he started to watch it at home. No matter how big your screen is at home, it\u2019s simply not the same as watching at a cinema. Going to a movie theatre is an appointment and sitting in a crowd demands the kind of attention in which the distractions of home do not intrude. I truly believe that when we watch at home we do not see or absorb as much as we do at the movies. \u2018Roma\u2019 is on Netflix and for subscribers it\u2019s as if it were free so it\u2019s no surprise that people will stay at home and millions will. But some pictures are just made for the big screen and \u2018Roma\u2019 is one of them.<\/p>\n

For that, I am sorry for my friend and all the many others who will find nothing to keep them watching, and very sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013\u00a0Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear? Those imponderables challenge a critic with every review. For me, Alfonso Cuaron\u2019s \u2018Roma\u2019 is the best film of 2018 but a friend has a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[4966,1887],"class_list":["post-9724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-film","tag-roma","tag-alfonso-cuaron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9724"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10091,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9724\/revisions\/10091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}