‘Children of Men’ is a tough film. It’s London 2027, and humanity is on its last thread.
Mexican film director Alfonso Cuaron (L) and British actor Clive Owen (R)laugh as they pose for photographers after the presentation of their film "Children of Men" at 54th edition of San Sebastian's International Film Festival, in San Sebastian, Basque Country, northern Spain, Saturday 23 September 2006. EPA/Juan Herrero
Infertility means no more population as the cities descent into horror and suicide. There hasn’t been new life in nineteen years and the death of the planet’s youngest person, nineteen-year-old Baby Diego, is the final straw.
Mexican born director Alfonso Cuaron’s bleak world is polluted, life is cheap, immigrants are caged and killed, vandals run free, messages overload our brains and senses and the democratic government encourages unhappy people to kill themselves.
Cuaron says it’s all here now, forget the future. Life as we knew it is disintegrating in, among other places, Iraq, the Middle East, Guantanamo, Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe and Africa.
‘London is a microcosm. This isn’t science fiction’.
‘It’s up to the people. They have to choose hope, they have to choose to make room for hope and decide what to do with that hope. We need to create a new world’.
‘Children of Men’ seems an odd choice for release on Christmas Day, when some people go to the movies for distracting entertainment.
Cuaron, a thoughtful man with wit and an easy laugh, knows he has a powerful story on his hands, leavened by the presence of feel-good stars Julianne Moore, Clive Owen and Michael Caine.
It’s true!
The director of one of the biggest mainstream hits in recent years has a rebel heart. Clearly adept at big pictures, after the success of ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,’ he has proven himself a player.
But Alfonso Cuaron’s heart is in the small films.
After finding easy success in Hollywood directing ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘The Little Princess (his favorite film, he tells us) he felt off kilter.
‘You forget that you write and generate. I was becoming dependent on screenplays, on Hollywood, on material and for me, my new life as a filmmaker that was not where I was. It’s about what I want to do not what they want to do.’
Not to say he didn’t enjoy directing big budget films, but it was time to focus.
‘I remember saying to my agent ‘I am not reading any scripts – I’m making my next film in Mexico (‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’). I went to Mexico, I didn’t come back, and they were calling me saying ‘we really want to go’ (on ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’). ‘But I am in Mexico’.
‘And they say it doesn’t matter, come back, everyone knows a big movie comes before a small one. Amazing. They tell you - you will never work in this town, in their own language, but I want my films to be right.’
‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ was the little film that could, winning an Oscar nomination and nearly sixty additional wins and nominations in 2001 and 2002. And “The Prisoner of Azkaban” is considered the best in the franchise, and earned the studio a fortune.
Those same Hollywood dealmakers, who told him he’d never work there again, are in love one more time.
‘I’ve been so lucky. I am lucky that I can work with the studios and they seem to respect what I want to do. Children of Men was amazing the way they supported me, even though they didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do.’
Including a heart-stopping scene, the film’s climax, that nearly didn’t happen. He had fourteen days to do one, single, nine-minute action sequence. He was losing leading man Clive Owen on day fifteen.
Cuaron choreographed the chase sequence in and out of buildings, up and down urban landscapes, plenty of action on the background, a complex and ambitious undertaking with meticulous, military precision.
But at day thirteen, he hadn’t rolled camera, and the studio was ‘a little nervous’. Special effects, rigging, background business, stunts; everything had to be perfected so that the entire scene could be shot in nine minutes.
Day fourteen, technical problems halted the action. And the light was fading.
Miracle of miracles, the next attempt went off without a hitch.
Nine stand-alone minutes in the can, with everything needed to tell the story.
That is the kind of chance a man with a rebel heart can take.
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