Why Roma’s awards-season success is such a big win for Netflix

In the end Roma didn’t win the Oscar for Best Picture, which controversially went instead to Green Book.

But Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece still won three gongs, including a nod for him as Best Director, and broke a dam for the film’s distributor Netflix in so doing.

Critics of the streaming service have no cause to feel schadenfreude at it missing out on the biggest prize.

Those opponents have stirred a heated debate about the film’s status, most recently in the context of the Baftas where Roma did (deservedly) win best film.

The boss of Vue Cinemas, one of the UK’s biggest chains, wrote a furious open letter to Bafta chief Amanda Berry in response to Roma’s presence in the lists, threatening to pull the firm’s support from the annual shindig.

Tim Richards derisively described the film as a “made for TV movie” on account of its limited cinematic release.

He said that it was still unclear whether Roma was screened on more than 13 UK screens at the art house Curzon Cinema chain, “representing less than 0.5 per cent of the cinema market” and for a week at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh.

Richards went on to point to Bafta’s rules stating that: “Films should not be screened purely to qualify them for these awards, and the film committee may not accept entries if they do not deem the theatrical release to be meaningful."

Bafta decided Curzon’s screens made it meaningful enough.

The controversy is far from unique to the UK. AMC Cinemas and Regal, two major US chains, refused to play Roma as part of their best picture Oscar showcases and didn’t participate in its very limited US theatrical run because of the short window available before Netflix subscribers got their hands on it. Even the offer of cheap rentals couldn’t entice them.

Mexico, the film’s home market, was not immune either. Cuarón went so far as to tweet his disappointment that it was showing on more screens in Poland than his native land as a result of big chains saying no.

But are cinema operators right to draw a global line in the sand over the “theatrical window” that Richards says “has successfully served all sides of our industry for many decades and is one of the core differentiators that makes cinema unique”?

How about asking yourself this: how many subtitled films would you normally expect to see at your local multiplex, regardless of how good they are?

Arthouse cinemas are mostly where they live. Roma is different chiefly because it has an A-list Hollywood director and a distributor with enough cash to give it an Oscar campaign.

Awards films don’t always get much of a run even when they’re in English. My local multiplex, for example, supported If Beale Street Could Talk with just one of its 14 screens for barely a week.

The fact that I was able to catch it was greatly assisted by my having booked time off during that week.

Roma, by contrast, didn’t involve my jumping through any of the hoops families usually have to jump through when the parents want to see the sort of film they can’t take the kids along to. It was there, at my convenience, and it has remained in my head ever since.

It’s the sort of film that does that.

At the core of this controversy is a clash of business models, with Netflix’s desire to give its subscribers what it has paid for as soon as possible, clashing with the big chains’ demand for their cherished period of exclusivity.

As ever, in these situations, the customer ultimately loses. I would still like to see Roma on a large screen and I would make the effort to do so, even after viewing it at home. The experience would be worth it.

Richards may be right to take shots at Netflix for scarcely making previous releases available for any sort of cinematic run at all, regardless of the window.

But as regards the “window” as a concept and the terms on which Roma was released, he’s on shakier ground. Note how he says the window has “successfully served all sides of our industry for many decades”. The problem is with that “many decades”. Things change.

Despite people repeatedly calling its doom, the silver screen has adapted to a lot of changes, a bewildering array of them. It has weathered the emergence of TV, the widespread purchase of home entertainment systems, video gaming, the internet, the explosion of choice in people’s leisure options.

It can survive Netflix too, and cinemas’ rising global gross revenues suggests they are doing just that. I’d be willing to put money on their surviving shorter exclusivity windows for Netflix or for other films too.

The latter’s customers, as a rule, tend to go to the cinema more than non-subscribers do anyway. They like movies. If they’re like me, they’ll often watch them more than once. But the first preference will always be to see them on the big screen, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Roma or Captain Marvel, about which my daughter and I are positively breathless in anticipation.

The cinema offers an experience that Netflix cannot, and that is worth paying extra for.

The disruptive threat Netflix poses is being felt much more by traditional television operators than it is by movie theatre chains.

Netflix needs to change its tune too though. It should be more open to giving more of its properties a cinematic release as Amazon, which admittedly has a rather different business model, has done very successfully.

Surely the various sides in this debate ought to be be capable of reaching a compromise?

It should to be in their interests to do so. It would certainly be in the interests of movie lovers and movie goers and, well, art.