| Alfonso Cuaron Grows Up |
| Written by Brad Balfour | |||||
| Friday, 02 March 2007 12:36 | |||||
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Alfonso Cuaron (left) and his brother Carlos Cuaron
(L to R)Clive Owen, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuaron confer while on the set of "Children of Men"
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Clive Owen in "Children of Men"
Alfonso Cuaron and "Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe on the set of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"
Cuarón joins a triumvirate of hot Mexican directors, along with Guillermo Del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") and Alejandro González Iñárritu ("Babel") who are re-writing the book on how to make great films with important messages, passionately expressed in ways that American filmmakers have yet to try. From his retrospective at the Lincoln Center to his current futuristic thriller, and now as a producer of such films as "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Black Sun," Cuarón brings excellence to all of his projects. Along with his brother and frequent collaborator Carlos Cuarón (who co-wrote "Y tu mamá también"), the multi-talented filmmaker recently sat down with us to discuss his past, present and future career. childrenofmen.net Q: With "Children Of Men" finally being released, you fulfill a successful blending of the political and the social. Alfonso Cuarón: You will see the film is overtly political in nature, in the sense that we are using iconography, which is becoming a part of human consciousness--iconography that is bombarded by the media of government. Q: Do you think of "Children of Men" as a studio film? AC: I consider it a British film, but it is a studio-financed film. Yes, it's a Universal film, but it's a British film; the only non-British parts in this film are the producers, the director and the director of photography. Q: So does that give it a different spin, a different temperament? AC: I don't know. Each of my films has its own temperament, but what I'm saying is that it's a British film in the sense that the source material is British while the entire technical crew is not. Q: And the source material is P.D. James? AC: The screenwriters tried to stay true to the British quality of her material. One is American, as is my co-writer, and I myself am Mexican, but the source material is British. Furthermore, everything is shot in Britain, and all the actors and crew were British. We were very specific in wanting to do a British film. We really wanted to convey a sense of Britishness. Q: Does that particular P.D. James book have the tone of a crime novel? AC: We only took the general premise of P.D. James. Carlos Cuarón: But I would say that it is creepy [laughs]. Q: Some of her books have that creepy, weird quality you find in British literature. AC: Yeah, but this is different because P.D. James' books are more about upper class drama, in which the main characters interact with the dictator of Britain in this bubble of a world. In our case, we took the premise that infertility has plagued humanity and no human baby has been born for 18 years. Since we were dealing with a science fiction or futuristic film, we tried to make a film about the fading hope of humanity today. We were actually very specific about not explaining the reasons for infertility because infertility is just a message for hope. Then what we tried to do is bring to the table what we believe are the issues being shaped in the 21st century and situate them in a microcosm--Britain. Q: In a sense, science fiction and fantasy films can no longer be considered genres because they are now mainstream. A film like "V for Vendetta," for example, isn't really futuristic; it's more similar to the world today. AC: I still felt that "V for Vendetta" borrowed too heavily from fantasy and the premise of the comic book, which put the political message in the back seat. The original graphic novel was very specific to its time. It was very anti-Margaret Thatcher, so it had a very specific function. I guess that's why [its creator/writer] Alan Moore shied away from the film. What made it even more confusing was that I thought the filmmakers were trying to make a comment about politics in America. Q: It glorified violence on one hand but attacked the violence of the dictatorship on the other. AC: Exactly. It is very different than the period of Margaret Thatcher and the IRA and all this stuff. Terrorism is a global problem and it may be politically incorrect to try to justify it, even if it is self-contained in Britain. It becomes a completely different equation. On that note, I think [Guillermo del Toro's] "Pan's Labyrinth" is a more interesting example because it's a fantasy film juxtaposed with a historical event in the Spanish Civil War. On one hand, you have the political landscape and on the other, the fantasy. Throughout the film, you catch glimpses of political metaphors, but what makes the film come through so strong is the whole equation eclipses the political aspect and turns into a spiritual experience. Q: In some ways, this movie has a much bigger scope. It was similar to "A Little Princess" in that regard. AC: Yes, but it was more specific in the sense that it wasn't really about ideology. "Pan's Labyrinth" deals a lot with ideology. Consider "Babel," "Children of Men" and "Pan's Labyrinth." Alejandro [Iñárritu] fulfilled his trilogy with "Babel," Guillermo [del Toro] is in the second part of his trilogy, and I completed my trilogy with these three films. I consider them sister films and yet they are so diverse. One takes place in the present, one in the past and one in the future. One is a fantasy, another takes place in modern times in four different countries, and the last one takes place in the future almost like a documentary. However, there are two themes I think they have in common: first, the three films all suggest that ideology impedes communication between people, and second, they indicate very realistically that there is much pain in the end. There is definitely a certain amount of melancholy in "Zorro," but they all offer a ray of hope. Q: In considering the overall picture for your filmmaker community--as Mexicans with your unique social and political experience--it's about Mexico's emergence on the world's stage and also about Mexico's adolescence as well. The country has just begun to emerge from a cultural adolescence and is gradually moving into college age. CC: Spring breaking [laughter]. Q: You're carrying a weight that no Mexican film director has attempted before. Could this be metaphorical? AC: It's just one of those things. I don't really believe in coincidences, but perhaps the coincidence here is that Mexico--and Latin America as a whole--is beginning to influence cinema in a big way. I think there is a relationship between the social and political landscape of what is going on. Remember, ours is pretty much the generation that is following the dictatorships of Latin America. Who called it the perfect dictatorship? CC: [Mario] Vargas Llosa. AC: Vargas Llosa called it the perfect dictatorship so it's a part of what is happening with those dictatorships. I can speak more candidly about the Mexican one, that it was in the best interests of the government. And I still think that there are many such tendencies to keep everything in a bubble--to keep everything inwards. It was a movement inward. Q: You see it in the film world too. AC: Definitively in the film world. Film industry personalities would probably say to us about "Solo con tu pareja," "Nobody cares about Mexican cinema, so don't even try to move your film abroad." Q: Nobody wanted to think about AIDS either, but you brought up the issue in your film, "Solo con tu pareja." CC: But it's not about condoms. AC: No, it was about condoms [laughter]. What is happening is that the new generation is reclaiming the world. We're living in an increasingly globalized world. What's amazing is that both things happened with globalization. You have [Spanish-speaking director/writers like] Fernando Meirelles and Lucrecia Martel, and Guillermo Arriaga and Iñárritu, who feel like they belong to the world. From their individual standpoints, they want to send a message across to the world. As opposed to a lot of other tendencies in Mexico, consider that maybe half of what is happening there is because--and feel free to correct me because you care more about these things--you are right there in the country. |
