I like structure.

I like structure in movies, and I like it both explicitly and implicitly.

I like it when a film is divided into chapters, or falls neatly into sections, or mirrors itself in some way.

But I also appreciate a well-constructed story, in which everything is there for a reason, in which chains of cause-and-effect link the actions of the characters and everything builds to a satisfying resolution. I like it even more if the plot points are artfully concealed, and if it’s at all original or has something to say, than that’s even better, but even building a complete structure like that and successfully hiding the scaffolding from view is not easy, which is why it so often makes me cross to hear critics carping about the three act structure, as if writing according to this template is some sort of paint-by-numbers job. Really? You try it.

Independent films which reject the three act structure often find very little to go in its place. As I’ve observed before, writing a film with no structure, in which a bunch of things happen and then the film ends, may or may not be truer to life, may or may not feel fresh compared to the Hollywood template, but it is certainly a great deal easier to write than a film which requires careful set-ups and payoffs all the way through.

So, films like Boyhood, The Tree of Life or Beasts of the Southern Wild (to pick three previous Best Picture nominees) often leave me cold. On the other hand, I don’t have a single template for movie narratives into which I insist that every story be forced. The three act structure endures because it works and because it’s so flexible, encompassing everything from Dumb and Dumber to Citizen Kane, but other structures are possible – they’re just harder.

In the case, for example, of The Hurt Locker, the only thing I didn’t like was the emergence of traditional Hollywood storytelling in the final third. It jarred and felt artificial next to the terrifying realism of the preceding hour. Or there’s Amour in which the brilliant performances and acutely observed details of the lives of the protagonists, combined with the pitiless direction to make an extraordinary, if harrowing movie experience.

All of which brings us to Alfonsa Cuaron’s Roma. This is not Gravity Cuaron. This is not Harry Potter Cuaron. This is not even Children of Men Cuaron. It’s closer if anything to Y Tu Mama Tambien in structure, if not in tone. A synopsis doesn’t really do it justice, because the story, although it contains many powerful and affecting elements, isn’t really the point. Roma is not a film you watch. It’s a film you experience.

Recreating and lightly fictionalising his childhood, growing up in Mexico City in the 1970s, Cuaron takes us through a year in the life of a wealthy family facing domestic strife, not from the point of view of one of the children, as you might expect, but from the point of view of Cleo, the maid and nanny. Point of view is of course vitally important. It’s what distinguishes storytelling from journalism. This perspective immediately brings harsh realities of class, economics, politics and relationships into sharp relief. There is the sense here that the mother’s story, or the child’s or possibly even the father’s would be good movies in their own right, but Cuaron is never distracted, keeping Cleo at the centre of every event, including momentous ones in her own life, the family’s life and Mexico’s history.

Over some of the bland domesticity which takes up about the first half of the film, there is the constant hum of potential violence. Hard-edged technology creeps into the softness of the family home. Too-large cars crunch into narrow drive ways. Cleo’s boyfriend shows off his martial artistry. Planes whine overhead. When Cleo visits a shanty town, a man is being shot out of a cannon in the background. When, in the last third of the film, this violence erupts, it’s incredibly shocking and what follows is one of the most upsetting scenes in recent cinema history. But like those planes that are so often in view, Cuaron tells us that this too shall pass.

This has no need of any kind of three act structure, and would not be helped by it. The film would have been riveting enough with these performances (among a uniformly strong cast, Yalitza Aparicio is exceptional as Cleo) and this kind of storytelling. What catapults this to the very top of my list of movies for 2018 is the way that Cuaron tells the story visually.

Shooting in gorgeous 65mm black and white in 2.35:1, this couldn’t look less like an old movie, and yet the monochrome images can’t help but evoke the past (as does a cheeky reference to Marooned, a sort of 1969 version of Gravity). But although Cleo is the emotional heart of the film, by giving us a modern lens on an earlier time, Cuaron inserts himself discreetly into the movie too. This is 1971 from a 2018 standpoint.

We know Cuaron loves long takes, but here his style evolves again. Although shot with tremendous flexibility and panache, time and again, the camera tracks sideways or pans left and right across that widest of widescreen frames, almost like a security camera – observing but never intruding, And this unfussy style, combined with the patient editing, means that when the story is told in eye-popping images, which it so often is, it never feels forced, contrived or showy. This may have been bankrolled by Netflix, but you need to see it on a big screen.

Roma is an extraordinary achievement, clearly a shoo-in for Best Foreign Language film this year, and if there’s any justice at all, it will become the first foreign language film to win Best Picture. I’m not saying that’s going to happen – it probably won’t. I am saying I find it very hard to imagine seeing a better film than Roma this year.