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subtlety of Cuaron’s latest. I cite last years Academy Award for Best Picture winner Crash as an example. In the opening scene of Crash it made no qualms about telling the audience what the film was going to be about. As the film progressed, it did not waver from that format. Cuaron and his other screenwriters take a differing approach. A scene occurs at Jasper’s (Michael Caine) house, Theo’s best friend. While Theo is trying on shoes, Jasper and Kee are in the other room having an important thematic conversation. Now Cuaron could just as easily place the camera in the center of the room and let the thematic conversation be revealed to us so that we the audience can “get the point” of the film the way that a more conventional film may have done. Instead it follows Theo as he creeps around the corner and listens in on the conversation. Nothing is forced, Cuaron doesn’t manipulate, he trusts the audience.
Unlike many other conventional filmmakers, he stays clear of manipulation. Cuaron uses cinematographer Emmanuel Lubenski (The New World), and while the film may not be as aesthetically pleasing to the eye the way The New World was, it is certainly beautiful when the photography is so purposefully functional. Cuaron and Lubenski allow their camera to be motivated by the story, not the other way around. Clive Owen said in a recent GQ article: “The camera follows me through a scene of war and carnage, for almost 20 minutes. You can’t see how Alfonzo does it. It is absolutely seamless, all these invisible cuts – it goes against the conventional wisdom that to create excitement you have to quick cut and jump all over the place,” (September 2006, pg. 331). He doesn’t manipulate, he lets the story reveal itself, and he trusts his audience. There is something unique to Cuaron’s work, his films seem to have a heart beat, whether that heart beat makes you feel good or not, (see his most recent work Y Tu Mama, Tambien [2001], and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [2004] for examples of this). All of his characters explode off the screen, they are rich, thick, full, and real. Children of Men is certainly no exception, most notably Owen, Ejiofor, and Caine give outstanding performances.
Some may be asking the question, what does Jeremiah have to do with any of this.. Jeremiah writes in the Book of Lamentations: “For he (God) does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men,” (emphasis my own). Theo narrates in the opening of the film: “I can't really remember when I last had any hope, and I certainly can't remember when anyone else did either. Because really, since women stopped being able to have babies, what's left to hope for?” Both men are in search of hope. Jeremiah is being afflicted over and over again, God is continually punishing him. But he still, even while in jail, has a deep and meaningful hope. This ...
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