Roma is big. It’s the pictures that got small

Cuarón film illustrates divide between cinemas, streaming services

In the Cold War between cinemas and streaming services, 2018 will be remembered as a time when the two superpowers faced off in proxy wars around the globe. Sometimes, diplomacy ruled; other times, it got messy.

It was all sabre-rattling at the Cannes film festival where, the year before, Netflix had entered the prestigious competition with Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories, only to be told by jury president Pedro Almodóvar that they needn’t have bothered.

“I don’t conceive of not only the Palme d’or but any other prize being given to a film and then not being able to see the film on a large screen,” he said. (Meyerowitz did manage to win the Palm Dog, a tongue-in-cheek prize, for a performance by Bruno the poodle.)

This year, Cannes made it clear that any film not released on a movie screen wasn’t welcome. Netflix responded by pulling all its titles from the festival, including 22 July from Paul Greengrass, Orson Welles’ long awaited The Other Side of the Wind — and a little picture called Roma, from Alfonso Cuarón.

No one could have known at the time what a success Roma would become, but Cannes jury member and Canadian director Denis Villeneuve said he was “traumatized” by the fact that Cuarón’s opus wouldn’t be seen in theatres. “I don’t know what Cuarón thinks of being released on Netflix — maybe he’s happy, I don’t know. But ... I want to see his movie in a theatre.”

Roma would eventually première at the festival trifecta of Venice, Telluride and Toronto. It has since earned three Golden Globe nominations and almost universal acclaim from critics, and it has a real chance of becoming the first foreign-language film to win best picture at the Academy Awards.

What’s more, the notoriously secretive streaming service eventually decided to not only release Roma in select cinemas, but to do so ahead of its online release, meaning theatre-goers could see it first — provided they lived in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal or one of a handful of big U.S. cities. (It’s still playing until Dec. 27 at the Lightbox, through Jan. 3 at Vancity, and until Jan. 16 at Cinéma Moderne.)

Netflix is clearly looking for Oscar recognition, and has also released Bird Box by Susanne Bier, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by the Coen brothers into theatres. (Academy eligibility rules, less strict than at Cannes, demand only that feature films be more than 40 minutes long and play for at least a week in L.A. County.)

Last year the streaming service received four Oscar nominations for Mudbound — best supporting actress for Mary J. Blige, best adapted screenplay, best original song for Mighty River, and cinematography by Rachel Morrison — but failed to win. It was also shut out of the Toronto critics’ awards since, unlike Roma, it did not screen locally.

But Oscar glory for Roma could significantly change the way Netflix behaves in the years to come. Predictions of the death of cinema are almost as old as the medium itself — radio, television, VHS, DVD, HDTV and PVR have all been cited as nails in the cinematic coffin, and yet the industry is already comfortably past its fourth straight year of $11-billion-plus at the box office, with a decent chance of breaking 2016’s record take.

Clearly, the streaming service is going to have to learn to play nicely with festivals; no concern in Toronto, which this year opened its 43rd annual TIFF with David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King. The director was sanguine about working with Netflix, noting that most of his films have been seen on DVD rather than in their limited theatrical release anyway.

But I’ll predict that, with a year to negotiate, Netflix will find its way back into Cannes in 2019. Streaming may continue to eat away at traditional cinema, but you can’t have a red-carpet première on your tablet.

NETFLIX