In the first decade of the new millennium, three Mexican directors took cinema by storm. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams), Guillermo del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Hellboy), and Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).
Aptly labeled the “Three Amigos”-they are all good friends and collaborators-the directors spearheaded one of the latest cinematic movements, dubbed the “Mexican Renaissance,” which brought a new perspective on globalization to Mexican film, and a distinctly Mexican voice to the global forum.
To say that the three amigos, Cuarón in particular, had a good year in 2006 would be an understatement, to say the least. With the release of Babel (Iñárritu), Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro with a producing credit for Cuarón), and Children of Men (Cuarón), all to wide acclaim, the new wave seems to have matured and solidified considerably.
Cuarón was in town last month to promote Children of Men, his adaptation of the dystopian P.D. James novel about a global fertility crisis. The lack of a future generation and the accompanying despair lead to widespread conflict as the end of mankind looks inevitable.
The film’s concern with children (or the lack thereof) echoes the recent work of Cuarón’s counterparts. Both Babel and Pan’s Labyrinth are largely about children in dire situations. Cuarón even fondly refers to them “sister movies.” He accounts for the similarity in themes by pointing out that all of the directors are now fathers who are naturally concerned for the welfare of their children, especially considering the violent state of world affairs.
“I think that all of these politicians are completely paralyzed because they don’t know what to do,” Cuarón accuses. “They cannot even imagine what to do. I don’t know what to do. I just know that there’s one first step. Whatever our actions are, those actions have to be from the standpoint of not what is beneficial for us, but what is beneficial for the next generation.”
In adapting Children of Men for the big screen, Cuarón and his writing partner, Timothy Sexton, stayed true to the premise of the novel, but allowed their own vision to take the film in a completely different direction. The most obvious change is the addition of the character Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) a young refugee character who offers the world a new hope by becoming the first woman to become pregnant in over 18 years. While this alteration-with a child offering hope to a condemned world-finds an obvious a parallel in the nativity story, Cuarón is quick to insist that he wanted to suppress any religious overtones in the original novel.
“The book is overtly religious,” says Cuarón, “and I was trying to stay away from the religious elements. Nevertheless, I wanted to embrace the spiritual archetypes, and yes, the nativity in that sense. At the same time we were concerned about cornering the film just in that. Because then it would give religious overtones that I didn’t feel comfortable with. I thought that those overtones would undercut the sense of reality, the sense of today, and also the sense of seeking concrete solutions and transformations, not just hope that the messiah will come and clean all of the mess that we leave behind.”
Cuarón has made it clear that the governments depicted in Children of Men are deliberately similar to ones that exist today. This is in contrast to other dystopian science-fiction films (like Star Wars or The Matrix) which often envision democratic systems being replaced by some militaristic or mechanical dictator. Cuarón states that there was no need to replicate such a scenario, since the shape of democracy today already exhibits scary totalitarian tendencies.
“The problem is what is happening with democracy,” says Cuarón. “Democracy is a very convenient makeup for whatever you want to do. Everyone is talking about the righteousness of democracy, where democracy is going to teach other countries and show other countries. From this standpoint-where people want to impose democracy-the whole concept of democracy becomes corrupt. You cannot impose democracy.”
Cuarón’s concerns about democracy are part of a larger anxiety over globalization that the three amigos all voice in their films: the bitter irony of a morally selective democracy is one of their foremost concerns.
“Part of the problem with democracy in the 21st century is that borders are losing their meaning in an economic way,” Cuarón explains. “Globalization is a myth. Globalization is economic globalization, but it is not human globalization.”
Cuarón intelligently reflects on these sentiments in Children of Men. In the film, every country outside of Britain has fallen apart, and while global resources and landmarks are hastily relocated to the island, refugees are not extended the same courtesy. They are rounded up and locked into cages before being deported to a Gitmo-style prison camp. It’s a bleak vision that Cuarón formulated from the constructs of contemporary society.
Though Kee’s child offers a sense of hope in the film, Cuarón is quick to dispel the possibility of any such solutions in reality. With nearly mathematical precision, he explains how combining hope and democracy solves nothing. “The film for me is about hope. You lose hope and you leave a gap. That gap needs to be filled. In most of the cases, it’s manipulated so that it’s filled by ideology…And now democracy, which is an ideology, has become a matter of faith. There’s almost a religious fervour behind democracy. Either you accept democracy, or you’re against it.”
Children of Men is currently in wide release.
