A new subgenre has taken over at film festivals. Inspired perhaps by Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, esteemed filmmakers have been painstakingly re-creating the world of their childhoods in order to excavate the past and explore their own artistic roots. Here at Vulture, we call it “doing a Roma,†and if you’re not quite sure what we mean, here’s a quick primer:
➽ Is one of the film’s themes the power of the movies, that indescribable feeling we get when the lights go down and we go somewhere we’ve never been before?
➽ Is there an adorable moppet who represents the director’s younger self and whose artistic dreams form a key plot thread?
➽ Does the movie zoom out to examine how its characters’ lives were influenced by events happening in the larger world?
If all of these things are true, you may be watching a Roma.
This fall is shaping up to be a banner one for doing Romas, with James Gray’s Armageddon Time, Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans all fitting the bill to some extent. But which of them is the most Roma-y? As luck would have it, all three have been playing the fall festivals this month in advance of their awards-season debuts — meaning it’s time to rank them to see which ones truly deserve the honor of the Roma name and which may as well be Licorice Pizza.
Empire of Light
• It’s a handsomely mounted re-creation of the south coast of England in the early 1980s. (+5)
• Set in an old movie palace that has seen better days. (+10)
• It features an Oscar-caliber performance from Olivia Colman. (+10)
• But she’s the lead, not a warmhearted supporting player. (-5)
• There is no adorable moppet. (-50)
• No one gets divorced. (-3)
• It’s directed by Best Director winner Sam Mendes. (+10)
• And features Oscar-worthy cinematography by Roger Deakins. (+2)
• There’s a bittersweet love story. (+3)
• A romance between Colman and her younger co-worker played by Michael Ward. (+2)
• Who experiences racism. (+5)
• That is being fueled by the era’s conservative politics. (+5)
• All of which is explained on vintage TV newscasts. (+5)
• Someone mentions “all that stuff in Brixton … Thatcher …†(+3)
• Chaos unfurls in a showstopping set piece with long takes and dozens of extras. (+10)
• The theme from Chariots of Fire plays in the background of an important scene. (+5)
• But it’s diegetic. (-4)
• A character gives a speech about how the “motion†part of “motion pictures†is actually just a trick of the optic nerve. (+15)
• Colman’s character learns the cinema is not just a place to be entertained but a place to be somehow reborn together. (+20)
Total score: 48
Armageddon Time
• It’s a gritty re-creation of New York City in 1980. (+5)
• About a middle-class Jewish family in Queens. (+5)
• It features an Oscar-caliber performance from Anthony Hopkins as a kindly grandfather. (+15)
• To an adorable young moppet who’s a stand-in for the director. (+30)
• But who is also kind of a shit. (-10)
• And is more into music and drawing than movies anyway. (-5)
• No one gets divorced. (-3)
• It’s directed by James Gray, who has never been nominated for an Oscar. (-5)
• And who doesn’t really do big action sequences. (-5)
• The moppet makes a new friend played by Jaylin Webb. (+5)
• Who experiences racism. (+5)
• Which is fueled by the era’s conservative politics. (+5)
• All of which is explained on vintage TV newscasts. (+5)
• People complain about Ronald Reagan. (+3)
• Even while they themselves are pretty racist too. (-5)
• The adorable moppet eventually comes of age. (+20)
• By getting a firsthand lesson in the ways whiteness uses social and political power structures to reinforce its own dominance. (-15)
Total score: 50
The Fabelmans
• It’s a loving re-creation of American suburbia from the early 1950s to the mid-’60s. (+5)
• About a middle-class Jewish family that moves from New Jersey to Arizona and then California. (+5)
• It features an Oscar-caliber performance from Michelle Williams as a theatrically emotive mother. (+15)
• Plus an Oscar-caliber cameo from Judd Hirsch as an eccentric great-uncle. (+15)
• To an adorable young moppet who’s a stand-in for the director. (+30)
• Who grows into a budding filmmaker in his teenage years. (+20)
• And who is explicitly positioned as the product of a marriage between “art†and “science,†just like the movies themselves. (+10)
• A character gives a speech about how the “motion†part of “motion pictures†is actually just a trick of the optic nerve. (+15)
• It’s directed by Best Director winner Steven Spielberg. (+10)
• And features Oscar-worthy cinematography by Janusz Kamiński. (+2)
• Plus winking references to Spielberg’s other films. (+8)
• People get divorced. (+10)
• The director’s stand-in experiences antisemitism. (+5)
• But politics otherwise doesn’t come into it. (-20)
• A famous director makes a cameo as another famous director. (+5)
• The young filmmaker comes of age. (+20)
• And learns that in the movies, heroes feel like the best parts of us and stories feel perfect and powerful. (+20)
Total score: 175
Congratulations, The Fabelmans! You are this season’s most Roma-y Roma. You have been entered into a raffle in which you can win the traditional prize of a Roma: a bunch of Oscar nominations and a crushing Best Picture loss.