Alfonso Cuaron – Movies Spotlight – October 2013

Alfonso Cuaron, 51, is one of the Three Amigos of Cinema along with friends (and Mexican directors) Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Cuaron is known for his ability to incorporate spellbinding and seemingly impossible technical feats into his films (usually in the form of long-take shots), often with the help of frequent collaborator and childhood friend Emmanuel Lubezki (who has shot six of Cuaron’s seven feature films). This month Cuaron has a new film in theaters – the utterly brilliant sci-fi thriller Gravity. The film stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and is about two astronauts who find themselves stranded in Space after a catastrophic accident destroys their shuttle. Check out the trailer here. It is a remarkable cinematic experience.

Early Career:

Cuaron studied Philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico before pursuing film at the University’s Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematograficos. There, he made the short film Vengeance Is Mine with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki beginning a very fruitful, lasting partnership. The film was controversial, leading to Cuaron dropping out of school. Not only did he produce it in English but he also commercialized it without permission. Cuaron quickly moved into Mexican television, starting as a technician before moving into the director’s chair. He worked on the series Hora Marcada.

Breakthrough in Mexico:

After building up some acclaim for his television work, Cuaron landed a deal to make his first feature film in 1991. Love in the Time of Hysteria (Solo con tu pareja) played to both critical and commercial success in Mexico. Cuaron wrote, directed, produced, and co-edited the film. It is a wonderful dramedy about a womanizer who is tricked into thinking he has AIDS by a jilted former lover (who is a nurse). Confronted with this news, the man first attempts suicide but then he meets a beautiful woman, also attempting suicide, who changes everything. The film is marvelously shot by Lubezki. While it was never released in the States, director Sydney Pollack saw the film and loved it. He hired Cuaron, bring him to America, to direct an episode of his Showtime neo-noir series Fallen Angels.

Coming to Hollywood:

Sticking in Hollywood, Cuaron next directed his first American film A Little Princess. The film was universally praised by critics, but went mostly unnoticed by filmgoers. It is a forgotten gem of a family film though, for those looking for some really good to watch with their kids.

Next, Cuaron tackled a modern adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow (both at the height of their popularity within Hollywood circles), and featuring Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro in support. The film does have a few strong moments, but overall it is by far Cuaron’s weakest. It just feels like his creativity and storytelling ability was brutally stymied by outside Hollywood-type creative impulses coming from those with more power and creative control (after all, Cuaron was still new to Hollywood and his name did not command the respect that it does now). Namely, the film feels like the product of Hawke to me.

Alfonso Cuaron – Auteur Filmmaker:

Maybe a little jaded by his Hollywood experience, Cuaron returned to Mexico for his next feature film in 2001. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, and Maribel Verdu, Cuaron made the wonderful coming-of-age road dramedy Y Tu Mama Tambien, this time returning to writing, directing and producing his own work. The film took off internationally, becoming one of 2001’s most critically revered releases. Cuaron even garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the film. It was also a hit in Mexico setting the country’s Box Office record for biggest opening for a Mexican film.

In a way, Cuaron then decided to return to Hollywood filmmaking (feeding of the success of Y Tu Mama Tambien) by agreeing to direct the third film in the Harry Potter series – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – in England. However, Cuaron did not want to make just another watered-down children’s fantasy film. He wanted to make it vital, dark, and steeped in emotional realism (even if it is only a fantasy film). To do this, he wanted to change many aspects, most notably completely revamping the aesthetic look of the series (in a way undoing everything Chris Columbus had done with the first two films). While many fans were initially shocked by the changes, the series’ producer David Heyman (who has gone on to produce Gravity with Cuaron) liked Cuaron’s vision and stuck by him. The film is magnificent, completely obliterating the low standard that such films had achieved previously. This was not just a Hollywood film for kids, but a piece of art that also happened to be highly entertaining. It altered the course of the series from a quality and aesthetic standpoint (for the good) and raised the bar for all Summer/Holiday blockbusters (along with The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Spider-Man 2) leading to great franchise films such as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and David Yates’s Potter films (especially The Deathly Hallows Part I and Part II). The film, like all in the series, was a box office success, but also achieved high critical praise.

Cuaron next took a slight break from features directing the segment Parc Monceau of the ensemble film Paris, je t’aime.

Staying in Britain, Cuaron began developing his next project – his most ambitious (before Gravity) – an adaptation of PD James’s novel Children of Men about a dystopian future with no children, starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine. The film never really found an audience at the box office, but critics showered it was acclaim. Cuaron again was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar as well as one for editing. The film is not only highly compelling dramatically but also aesthetically and technically stunning. Both Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men are among my personal favorite films of the past decade.

Cuaron also started his own production company called Esperanto Filmoj during the time he was making films in England. The company first made the comedy Duck Season and then the critically loved international hit Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by friend Guillermo del Toro. The film won three Oscars. Gravity is the seventh feature film produced by the company.

Future Projects:

Working with executive producer J.J. Abrams and writer Mark Friedman, Cuaron is creating a new fantasy drama for NBC called Believe. He is also writing and directing the pilot. It stars Jake McLaughlin and Johnny Sequoyah and is about a gifted young girl who is being pursued by evil elements that want to harness her power. However, an unlikely man, a convict on the run having just escaped from prison, might be her best chance to stay safe. The series will premiere on NBC after the end of the NFL season. Here is the trailer.

Career Highlights:

1)      Love in the Time of Hysteria (1991)* – writer, director, producer (DVD, Trailer)

2)      Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)* – writer, director, producer (Blu-ray, Video On-Demand, Trailer)

3)      Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)* – director (Blu-ray, Video On-Demand, Trailer)

4)      Children of Men (2006)* – writer, director (Blu-ray, Video On-Demand, Trailer)

5)      Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – producer (Blu-ray, Video On-Demand, Trailer)

*Editor’s picks 

Pacific Rim (2013) – Review

Review: Pacific Rim is big, entertaining fun, which also has enough character moments to elevate it above the typical noisy mess that clutters summer movie season. The film is about the battle for Earth. When monstrous aliens known as Kaijus arise from a portal between dimensions deep within the Pacific Ocean, mankind must create Jaegers (massive fighting robots) to protect its coastal cities from attack (and utter ruin).

With Pacific Rim, writer-director Guillermo del Toro has basically created a film that directly derives from his own obsessions within fandom. He loves to design and collect monsters and creatures, and is heavily influenced by manga. This film brings all that together. It is a Godzilla movie. It is a Voltron movie. It is everything fans could want, as it is very concerned with the specific details of each creature and robotic fighting machine. They all have names, personalities, and attributes. In many ways, this film is a visual extension of a fantasy RPG-like action video game (fantasy being used to express an ideal for fans) – a game that del Toro (as well as many others) would surely be thrilled to play. For fans, the film is just two hours and twelve minutes of awesome.

But what about everyone else? Well, del Toro does not mess about with his narrative. Utilizing voiceover narration to fill the audience in on all that has happened leading up to the events of the film, he jumps right into the action with a great prologue, consisting of a battle between a Kaiju and a Jaeger to wet the audience’s appetite for more (and not waste time in giving them what they came for). The prologue both sets the stage and introduces the audience to our protagonist (Raleigh Becket), while also relaying character information. Thus, right from the beginning, del Toro entertains his audience and more or less engages them on an emotional level (through Raleigh’s pain and narration the audience is pulled in by the narrative and character).

Del Toro keeps the pacing swift, as he jumps ahead from the good times (which are far less interesting dramatically) straight into the last ditch effort to save mankind. He keeps tensions high by continually raising the stakes, but still allows the audience moments to breath with some well-placed brevity (thanks to the very fun characters Dr. Newton Geiszler and Gottlieb, two scientists with competing theories). However, he also remembers why the audience is in the theater for Pacific Rim – they want to see robots fighting monsters, and there is plenty of that. However, unlike with Transformers, which is a loud, visually noisy, mess that ultimately just plays as a blur of inconsequential and incoherent babbling clamor, del Toro infuses the fights with human moments and real pain so that the audience actually has a stake and emotional touchstone in the fights and is not participating purely on a spectacle level.

Yet, Pacific Rim is chiefly interested in being a fun experience for the audience. Del Toro does do dramatic and emotional character work, but it is somewhat restrained and toned down in favor of keeping things fairly light overall tonally. He does not want the audience to be bogged down with weighty moments; rather, he just wants them to be entertained. But, it is a double-edged sword in some ways. Yes, the film is very entertaining, stemming from its quick pacing, bombastic action, and good character moments, and yet the audience never really completely feels connected to these characters because the emotions are held a bit at arm’s length in favor of a lighter tone. Del Toro wants his audience to be in the story with the characters, but he also wants them to enjoy the film as a spectacle of impressive action. For the most part he does find a nice balance, but overall the film tends to error on the side of spectacle, keeping it from really being great.

The writing is also somewhat questionable, and seems to serve more as an outline moving the characters from point to point and the audience from action scene to action scene than a more in depth dramatic piece (which is fine, and honestly suits this type of film better for the most part). The dialogue does not really pop, rather it exists to move the story forward (like everything else). And again, the emotional moments are somewhat restrained, relying more on genre troupes and stereotypes. However, thankfully the film is filled with actors rising to the challenge and bringing life to the characters (that are all pretty much underwritten).

Another aspect of the film that seems on the outside to make little sense is the Jaeger needing two mind-linked pilots to operate it, and not only that but the pilots must physically move and punch within the Jaeger, it mirroring their actions. This seems nonsensical. But del Toro understands that cinema is a visual medium, and that having pilots stationary, sitting in the robots or (even worse) off site, fastened to scene after scene of over the radio dialogue while the robots battle would have been boring. Having the pilots physically engage in combat allows del Toro to keep his visuals kinetic and the characters involved dramatically (instead of static shots of them controlling a joystick). While logically it makes no sense (much like the overall notion that the resources needed to build and operate these Jaegers could not be better utilized on some other weapon – but robots fighting monsters is the whole point), cinematically it is genius. The idea behind two mind-melded pilots also gives del Toro the ability to explore the emotions and backgrounds of the characters to a deeper extent, which only pulls the audience in more and raises the stakes (both things you very much want as a director). The connection also creates a strong relationship between the pilots in a very economical storytelling manner, again allowing del Toro to keep the pacing quick and the action coming. Thus, these choices both make a lot of sense from a visual storytelling standpoint and really the film ultimately benefits greatly from them.

Altogether, Pacific Rim accomplishes exactly what it sets out to be and do. It is a fantastic summer movie, with massive action that is actually engaging, when audiences have come to expect boring blusterous nonsense from these sort of films (thanks to films like Transformers and Battleship – and really all big action films now, while good overall Star Trek Into Darkness and Man of Steel also both have such moments of sheer wanton destruction seeming only for the sake of having it there as visual spectacle). What sets this film apart is that it embraces its genre clichés and presents them in a fun refreshing manner. The spectacle serves the characters and vice versa.

Technical, aesthetic, and acting achievements: Guillermo del Toro lives to create monsters and design great worlds for them to inhabit. It is this love and joy that brings Pacific Rim to life and the audience can feel del Toro’s affection in every aspect of the film. It is his best Hollywood film to date.

The tone of the film is one of entertainment first, and composer Ramin Djawadi’s score brings that mandate to the forefront. His music reinforces the feeling that Pacific Rim is a big action film in which massive robots fight gargantuan monsters with its booming drums and thundering heavy-metal pieces (here is an example). Guillermo Navarro’s cinematography and Andrew Neskoromny and Carol Spier’s production design also sets the tone well visually. The film has a very gloomy look with lots of rainy night scenes, amidst a crumbling world, playing into the main drama of the film – that these few remaining Jaegers are humanity’s last best hope. The Hong Kong sets also play into the strong Asian stylistic influence on del Toro. I love the incorporation of Kaiju skulls (and other bones) into the city designs. The robots, monsters, and special effects all look great and seamless.

As stated in the review, the characters are more or less underwritten place-holders in the narrative. However, the cast does do a great job bringing life to them and making them more than what was on the page. Ron Perlman, who appears in almost all of del Toro’s films, shows up with some good stuff, but is there mostly as a novelty. Max Martini does a good job as the salty veteran, while Robert Kazinsky basically does his impression of The Iceman from Top Gun giving Raleigh Becket a human rival (but he mostly just plays as a genre cliché). Burn Gorman and Charlie Day are both great as Gottlieb and Geiszler, the kooky scientists. They provide much needed moments of humor. Rinko Kikuchi and Idris Elba emerge as really the stars of the film in their principal supporting roles. Kikuchi almost steels the film, as she is a far more interesting character than Raleigh (but sadly is under developed) and gives a much more compelling performance. Elba is great as the Jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost. When he speaks, everyone (audience included) pays attention. Charlie Hunnam is adequate as Raleigh, but does not seem to quite understand how to play his character. He is basically a cocky reckless rebel (a Maverick) who is burnt out after the loss of his brother but agrees to return to the Jaeger program reluctantly, only to become a love-sick, easygoing, and more heroic once he sees Kikuchi’s Mako Mori.

Summary & score: Yes, in many ways Pacific Rim is just another big, loud action film in a continuous stream of big, loud action films to come this summer, but it is also maybe the most fun. 7/10