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On Roma's Monumentality
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De Luca, Tiago (2023) On Roma's Monumentality. Interfaces (50). doi:10.4000/interfaces.7978 ISSN 2647-6754.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.4000/interfaces.7978
Abstract
A cursory glance at reviews of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (2018) reveals the overwhelming recurrence of the oxymoron “intimate epic” to describe it. In choosing this expression (or variations), such reviews bespeak a more or less acknowledged recognition of a certain discrepancy in the film as far as its scale is concerned. Roma’s originality, I argue in this article, resides in how it dialectically oscillates between a number of dichotomies, including: the epic and the domestic, spectacle and everydayness, the monumental and the minute, the larger-than-life and the life-sized, foreground and background, and macro and micro histories. Of particular importance for my analysis is be the concept of the event, since, underpinning these polarities is the idea of eventlessness as encapsulated in the small, the mundane and the quotidian on the one hand; and the eventfulness of the extraordinary, the spectacular and the historical on the other. At the same time, the concept of the event provides an adequate lens with which to account for the debates Roma sparked as a Netflix film with restricted theatrical release. Here, “intimate epic” assumes another resonance related to the fact that, while the film was conceived for the largest possible screen, it was predominantly relegated to domestic viewing. To properly account for issues of scale in Roma, one must therefore extrapolate the realms of aesthetics and representation and include questions related to modes of reception and spectatorship.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Film and Television Studies | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Interfaces | ||||||
Publisher: | Open Edition Journals | ||||||
ISSN: | 2647-6754 | ||||||
Official Date: | 31 December 2023 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Number: | 50 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.4000/interfaces.7978 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Description: | Special issue ‘Re-Scale’ |
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Date of first compliant deposit: | 12 September 2023 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 13 March 2024 | ||||||
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