For Alfonso Cuaron, it wasn't the complicated array of dazzling single shots that won his superb thriller, "Children of Men," an Oscar nomination for cinematography that the director found most difficult.
"I knew that somehow I would be able to solve the technical aspects — but the biggest problem was coming up with the world, with the social environment we were going to portray."
Based on the 1992 dystopian novel by P.D. James, "Children of Men" tells of a world 20 years in the future that is suffering from global infertility, but it pictures a world a lot like our own, only darker, more twisted and violent. It is a world bereft of hope and filled with terror. England has become fortress England, with armed patrols rounding up immigrants, who are sent off to camps, while insurgent groups bomb cafes and stores.
Meanwhile, the general populace — ghostly in their resignation — ensconces themselves in office cubicles, fretting over the death of a celebrity, the world's youngest person (not yet 19), killed by an angry fan.
"We were very clear we didn't want to convey information by exposition," says Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"), who wanted to tell the story
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visually. "And that had to do with the detail in the frame. We were aware that some detail was going to be subliminal, and some it was clear was going to be obvious. It was always a question of where and how and what was the reference in contemporary society that we're referencing."
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The future looks bleak in Children of Men, a sci-fi thriller that has less to do with the plot - centering on a world where disease has left all the women sterile - than with the director's vision of where our culture is headed.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, given that the director is Alfonso Cuaron, one of current cinema's most striking visual stylists - for proof, just check out the soaring majesty of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Children of Men is no less breathtaking, although toward a slightly different end; think of the new film as Potter if Voldemort took over.
But as great as the film looks, the story, adapted from a novel by P.D. James, never quite comes into focus. Is it about the importance of fighting for an ideal? The need to focus on the future, no matter how desolate the present? The redemptive power of love, and devotion? Or is it a determinedly pessimistic ode to the utter (and ultimate) stupidity of men, who spend so much time fighting and looking for scapegoats (thus justifying even more fighting) that they wouldn't know what to do if something good and hopeful happened?
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The end is nigh in “Children of Men,” the superbly directed political thriller by Alfonso Cuarón about a nervously plausible future. It’s 2027, and the human race is approaching the terminus of its long goodbye. Cities across the globe are in flames, and the “siege of Seattle” has entered Day 1,000. In a permanent war zone called Britain, smoke pours into the air as illegal immigrants are swept into detainment camps. It’s apocalypse right here, right now — the end of the world as we knew and loved it, if not nearly enough.
Based in broad outline on the 1992 dystopian novel by P. D. James about a world suffering from global infertility — and written with a nod to Orwell by Mr. Cuarón and his writing partner Timothy J. Sexton along with David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby — “Children of Men” pictures a world that looks a lot like our own, but darker, grimmer and more frighteningly, violently precarious. It imagines a world drained of hope and defined by terror in which bombs regularly explode in cafes crowded with men and women on their way to work. It imagines the unthinkable: What if instead of containing Iraq, the world has become Iraq, a universal battleground of military control, security zones, refugee camps and warring tribal identities?
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's film "Babel" took home best director and jury prizes at Cannes and is up for a slew of Golden Globe awards, including best picture and best director.