Senior Theatrical Editor
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Raising Hope
Alfonso Cuarón Looks at the Future Today with Children of Men
Note – the following interview contains spoilers regarding the forthcoming motion picture “Children of Men” releasing to theaters Dec. 25, 2006.
“It’s not about the future – I don’t care about the future. The whole intent of the movie was to make an adventure that goes through the state of things, what I consider to be the state of things today.”
Walking into a room with Y Tu Mamá También and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón a person cannot help but be struck by the fiery passion burning behind the acclaimed director’s eyes. His frame, haggard appearance and quiet demeanor do little to mask either this drive or the man’s intelligence, and I got the feeling standing before him this was going to be an individual I could speak to for hours and not grow tired of listening to.
I was at Seattle’s Hotel 1000 to talk with Cuarón about his latest creation, the sci-fi socially conscious action/suspense flick Children of Men, and very quickly it became clear quickly this was a picture near and dear to man’s heart. “The important thing for me, and my experience in the past has been, ‘hope’ is going to depend on the disposition of each member of the audience,” stated Cuarón. “If you have a fateful disposition than [Children of Men] might be a depressing and bleak film. If, however, you have a hopeful disposition than the film is going to ultimately be about hope.”
The film, based on the novel by P.D. James, depicts a world twenty-plus years in the future where woman can no longer have children and the youngest man on the planet, only 18, has perished in a freak accident. This isn’t exactly a scenario one would normally associate with hope, especially considering the director means for the story to be about events happening now, not someplace off in the distant future. Yet that is exactly how Cuarón sees it, and his personal expectation is that audiences will see it that way, too.
Clive Owen and Julianne Moore in a scene from Children of Men.
“Now if the film is about hope,” he states, “than my [desire] after the film, later on; the day after, a week after, whatever; members of the audience that choose to think there is hope will ask themselves what to do with that hope. I don’t believe in cautionary tales anymore. Those were really cool in the ‘70’s, and there is no time for caution now. There is only time for transformation.”
“I believe that if there is hope, and it is hope that comes from a standpoint of a very realistic position, than hope can be a very important springboard for transformation. But only if it comes from a very realistic standpoint in the sense that first you must accept the reality in which we are living; really accepting it, not being in this constant state of denial.”
An interesting take, especially considering that 2006 has been a year of politically conscious and/or intellectually adventurous films like United 93, V for Vendetta, The Fountain, Flags of Our Fathers, Bobby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Children and Babel. Some, including Apocalypto, Pan Labyrinth and The Nativity Story, like Children of Men revolve around pregnancies being in extreme danger during a dark and violent time. Is this a coincidence?
“Well, one of those, [Guillermo del Toro’s] Pan’s Labyrinth that I find is a sister movie with this one and is also my favorite of this year,” says Cuarón. “And, [Alejandro González Iñárritu’s] Babel in a way is another sister movie [to mine] as well. These were three films that three friends conceived parallel at the same time. We followed each other’s film through the process of pre-production, production, post-production and we loved to stick each other’s forks in one another’s salads.”
“So even though the three films are very different thematically they are very similar. Now, while I have not seen Apocalypto or The Nativity Story (although I know more or less what that particular story is about), the same thing that there is no [relation] to these three films [I’m talking about] I think there is a cultural thing that is going on with all of these pictures. I think there is a concern about the possibility of an extinction.”
Cuarón pauses for a moment, letting the weight of his words sink in before he continues. “Now, I’m not talking about the extinction of the species, but a cultural extinction (which is more or less what Apocalypto deals with I assume), an extinction of ideas. I think this is very prescient. If we keep going on this road that we are going as culture nobody is changing anything. We all know about things like global warming and nothing is happening.”
“I think there is the big possibility of the way we conceive our civilization to be and I think there is a big concern about that. In that way, I think that there is a sense of hope and I think that instinctively everybody understands that this sense of hope is the next generation. I don’t think that my generation or the older generation can come up with transformation or with solutions because we are too paralyzed. We grew up as a generation that [lived] in a world that was pretty much alright, and we saw how it went [down the] drain right in front of our eyes. There is a sense of impotency, of not knowing what to do.”
“You can see that with politicians. It isn’t that they are not in many ways frankly concerned about the way that the world is going; it is that they don’t know anything other than archaic solutions. They are about building new bridges, building new walls; they tend to go with the trend and don’t look for new solutions.”
Clive Owen, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and director Alfonso Cuaron on the set of Universal Pictures' Children of Men.
The filmmaker catches his breath. It is obvious this discussion has turned in a direction very close to Cuarón, his passion dripping palpably within each word. “I believe in the possibility of human understanding, of the human spirit. And that evolution, I think, is very likely. I can feel it happening with the younger generation. They grew up in a world that was already going [down the] drain, so they only know things from their personal standpoint, they don’t have a romanticized ideal paradise of the past.”
“What I hope and what is my faith is that this next generation is going to do the equivalent of a Copernican revolution in the sense that they are going to show the world that the world is not flat, that it is us going in circles around the sun. I do believe in that possibility of a revolution, and that’s what gives me hope and what it is instinctively that all of these people doing these films are investing hope in the better understanding of the next generation.”
Turning back to his film, it goes without saying that Children of Men takes many liberties with James’ original novel, not the least of which is the introduction of Kee (played beautifully by Claire-Hope Ashitey), the pregnant immigrant a depressed and no longer caring Theodore Faron (a superb Clive Owen) finds himself charged to protect. “That was the point of departure for the whole thing,” admits Cuarón. “We embraced the premise of infertility for this metaphor of a fading sense of hope, but when you explore the things that are shaping the first part of the 21st Century one of those things is the issue of immigration. So when we created the whole thing around immigration we decided the baby was going to be in the belly of an illegal immigrant.”
“We did this for several reasons. Making her African was a reference to where, as far as we know, life sprang. The other thing was this whole thing of setting the hope of all humanity in one of the disposed. Together with that, by setting her as an illegal immigrant it is a way to discuss the ethics of borders when humanity is in need. The legality of borders when there is something that is bigger at stake, the fate of humanity is at stake.”
“And that is what is that is happening nowadays. We’re just taking this attitude of setting goals as if we dealing with something that is completely alien to us, like we are not dealing with human kind anymore. For me, [this story] was to create and to evolve our understanding of society not repeating [what was in the book]. It is about a renewal in creating new structures, not going back and recreating the old structures.”
But by changing the character so significantly, the roads book and movie take can’t help but be completely divergent. “Well, they are different journeys. Here [in Children of Men] the metaphor is about our hedonistic culture, and instant satisfaction and instant gratification. We live in an economy that is a hedonistic economy where everything is important in regards to the deal now and the economic growth [now] without any respect or concern for what happens after. This metaphor about infertility is about that.”
“Our human culture is so immersed in instant gratification now that they have completely forgotten the next generation. The next generation is out of the equation.” Once again Cuarón become animated as he processes his thoughts before continuing. “Look at the builders of the great cathedrals in Europe. When the designed these cathedrals knowing that they were not going to be alive when their [visions] would be fulfilled. But they had the faith that the next generations would finish what they began, and also they knew that the next generation would benefit from what they began.”
“Right now, in everything it is an instant thing. Our economy is like that. The relationship with consumerism is like that. The amazing addiction to consumerism shapes so many things.”
“In our culture film can be a distorted mirror to what I believe to be the reality of today. It would be so easy to point the finger and only talk about the evil guys in the movie, so simplistic to start talking about politicians who are creating excesses. Sure, whatever they are doing I don’t believe they are doing the right thing.”
“Nevertheless, that doesn’t take away our big deal of complacency in the whole thing. We are a thinking people and we are supposed to be aware. [And yet], we don’t change our habits. We don’t change our relationship with consumerism. If we change our habits it is such a slight, small degree. In a way these big politicians are just bigger projections of who we really are, and that’s the scary thing.”
So what are the differences and how do they relate to the film? “The difference is that the people who get in touch with Kee,” begins Cuarón, “they get in touch with hope, with the possibility of hope. This is way I believe hope can be an amazing springboard for transformation. But hope [comes] again from a very realistic standpoint, because can also sometimes be this big placebo, this thing that you use to invest in.”
“Hope has to come from a very clear acceptance of reality and, from that standpoint, to try and figure a transformation of that reality. When you put people in touch with the possibility of hope then they get in touch with the possibility of transformation. In a way, that makes you fearless.”
And that spirituality and transformational ability of hope is reflected in the film. “As much as the Nativity reference in regards to spiritual archetype [in Children of Men] is present,” says the director, “for Clive Owen’s character his archetype is more Moses. He dies before he sees the Promised Land. The difference is that, in the Bible, Moses died before seeing the Promised Land because he doubted and he was punished while here [Owen] dies because he doesn’t need to see the Promised Land. Once you connect to your sense of hope, the Promised Land is irrelevant because your own sense of hope is the actual resolution.”
