Notes from interview with Alfonso Cuaron

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2006)

I saw this movie last night and after the screening Cuaron was there for a question and answer session.
First of all, this is a science fiction movie, set in a fictional future. He did not want to make a science fiction movie, but he grudgingly admitted that this is one. He also said it was a chase film, one big long chase scene. The scene in the car with the motorcycle I believe is one of the most gripping, shocking and best made car chase scenes ever. It looks like one take, but he admitted that that was pretty much impossible given 5 people in a moving car and the camera turning 360 degrees.
What Cuaron kept stressing was that he was making a 'theme driven' movie, not a plot driven or character driven film. In the movie, he didn't even try to explain why women had become infertile, to him it didn't matter. To explain the 'why' would have made the focus of the movie the infertility. His theme was 'Hope'. He said, and I kind of agree, that the movie showed how he sees the world right now. There were some eerily real images on screen at the illegal detention center, scenes straight out of Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo, images of what America had become out of fear and lost hope. Even though this film is set in Britain, the Abu Ghraib images and the 'Homeland Security' references will hit thinking Americans hard.
The long shot, where Theo has been separated from Kee and is trying to find her in the middle of an all out battle, was one shot eight minutes long. They had roughly 16 days to block and rehearse, and it wasn't until the 15th day that he actually rolled off the first take. They got about 3 minutes in when the D.P. slipped. Since it would take about four hours to reset everything, they had to try again in the morning, on the last day. That went about 4 minutes, when somebody missed a major cue. Late in the afternoon of the last day, with the Sun beginning to set, they tried it again. Something went wrong in the bus, and blood ended up on the camera lens. Cuaron yelled 'cut' just as an explosion was set off, so nobody heard him. Owen just kept going, and so did the camera. He claims that was how they got the take. I felt the blood on the lens just made this whole grisly, shockingly violent scene seem that much more real.
Cuaron said that they had initially planned to digitally splash blood on the lens in post-production for the car chase scene when Jullianne Moore was shot, but left it in this other scene instead.
There are some people who aren't going to like this movie, but I was mesmerized by the work. It is a fantastic achievement, one that assaults both your senses and your soul.
This movie is still 5 weeks from being released (at least in the U.S., I'm going to assume it has already been released in Europe) and has already garnered nearly 6,000 votes on IMDb giving it a rating of 8 out of 10, not to mention hundreds of posts on here. That is simply amazing. This is sure to be one of the most talked about movies in years. I thought this was one of the most brilliantly made films I've ever seen.