November, 1st, 2008
last updated September, 2nd, 2010

Viewed 329 Times

Directors:

Alfonso Cuarón

1. Examples of Reconstructivist Art: Alfonso Cuarón's "Y Tu Mama Tambien"

   Cuarón’s movie broke records in Mexico, and was a worldwide hit, despite its racy and subversive material.
   
   Nod to Artifice: The realism of the movie is broken periodically by weighty voice-overs which break into both the plot and the soundtrack.
   
   Classic Structure: The movie at first glance promises a bundle of clichés, in that the premise features three shop-worn genres in one: The buddy-comedy, the road-trip movie and the sex-farce.
   
   Transcontextual and Iconic Elements: The movie borrows some familiar props from the movies it deconstructs: the "Battered Car" that barely runs, the seductive "Older Woman", the "Fantasy Beach" that magically appears in reality. In addition to these, there is also a second, more disturbing and less familiar set of icons that barely impinge on the consciousness of the characters: the "Intersection Where Someone Was Run Over", the "Village Wedding", the "Fisherman Who Will Be Forced Into the Tourist Industry".
   
   Moments of Genuine Emotion or Significance: What gives the movie its depth is how its seeming stereotypes reveal a core of messy reality that cannot be denied or ignored. The seductress’s secrets are revealed as decidedly unsexy --teenage heartbreak, a chronically unfaithful husband and a fatal disease. The two buddies unexpectedly confront the homoeroticism hidden beneath the surface of their friendship. Even the paradise-like beach turns out to have a dark fate of its own, as a sacrifice to economic exploitation. At the end, the fizzy joy of the movie’s early scenes gives way to hard emotional realities: People die, and friendships end.

2. Reviews: Children of Men

   Children of Men is by far the best movie I’ve seen in recent years. I’ve been a fan of director Alfonso Cuarón since his "Y Tu Mama Tambien" but this film shows real advances in vision and artistry even since then. It’s a film I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone who cares at all about humanity.
   
   As with Y Tu Mama, Cuarón takes what seems like a shopworn premise (in that case, a buddy-comedy/road-trip/sex-farce, in this case a post-apocalyptic chase-thriller) and not only adds some unexpected twists at the surface level, but also a wealth of depth at the very edge of consciousness. The film is a feast of visual details and allusions, many of which flicker only briefly across the screen without calling notice to themselves.
   
   What makes the world of Cuarón’s imagination seem so real is not only that there’s very little futuristic about it, but also that all the elements are merely amplifications of things that are already happening. The central trope of Britain maintaining itself as an island of stability at the cost of fascism and brutal anti-immigrationism has echoes of Europe’s real-life declining fertility and ambivalence about sustaining population growth through immigration. In addition, given the director’s nationality, I’m sure the immigration debate in the United States (with reference to Mexico) is also not far from his mind. Later, the disturbing scenes of the refugee camp deliberately reference not only the Holocaust, but also Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
   
   In the end, what I found most striking about this often grim film was how many of the major and minor characters within it were not only willing, but eager to risk or even lose their lives merely to help a stranger and her unborn child survive. In a world with no other hopes for a future, the chance to support even so uncertain a tomorrow was seen as an opportunity rather than an imposition.
   
   To summarize: Not only a good film, a humane film and a compassionate film, but also an important film; a experience not only of visual depth, but also of emotional and intellectual depth as well.