Alfonso Cuarón Talks Embarrassment Of 'Great Expectations,' Approaching 'Harry Potter' With Realism & More [Cannes]

The day after the massive celebrity-filled 70th anniversary party at the Cannes Film Festival, Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón strode into the Buñuel amphitheater at the Palais de Festival to give a Masterclass. “First, let me say that I am very honored to be here and be a part of Cannes’ 70th anniversary,” he began. “I’m proud to say that last night the party ended in the proper Mexican way: with tequila and a mariachi band. Looking at the Competition films, I have to say that I’m not sure Cannes likes Mexican films, but they certainly love how we party!”

In this casual and candid way, Cuarón proceeded to discuss his career as a filmmaker with French film critic and historian Michel Simon for a packed crowd, opening up about his early insecurities as a filmmaker, his own disappointment in “Great Expectations,” his career-long collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and the massive influence and support his best friend Guillermo del Toro has had on him. Del Toro himself was seated in the first row and often joined in the conversation, much to the audience’s amusement.

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Tracing the director’s early steps all the way to “Gravity,” Simon and Cuarón discussed all seven of his feature films. Every time the chat turned to the next film, a clip that Simon selected was shown and used as a springboard to talk about Cuarón’s experience and process with the film in question. If there’s one thing that felt missing from an otherwise absorbing conversation, it was that it felt a little light in terms of his actual filmmaking approach. There was hardly any technical or analytical delving into his process, try as Simon did at times to steer the conversation in that direction. Still, with del Toro’s presence as the cherry on top, it was lovely to watch Cuarón be so frank and down-to-earth about his experiences. During the times he would interact with del Toro, the love and respect the two friends share for each other was felt throughout the entire amphitheater, which was a very special thing to witness.

Unfortunately, the class started late and I had to leave early before the conversation came to “Gravity” (and, presumably, Cuarón’s next film, “Roma”) because I had to make another screening. But, for obvious reasons, the director’s best film to date, “Children Of Men,” feels like a more urgent film now than ever before, so it made for a fitting conclusion. There was one great moment when he mentioned “Gravity” before they got to the end, though, which stood out. When they touched upon his themes in films, at one point he said: “Class conflict is another thing in all my films, except ‘Gravity’ because that’s hard to find in outer space — only rich people go there.”

Below are some of the excerpts from the Class we found to be the most fascinating and telling about the filmmaker’s experiences and films. All the information comes straight from the horse’s mouth, slightly paraphrased in some points, unless otherwise noted.

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On his start in filmmaking:
“My journey is the kind of journey I wouldn’t recommend to anyone because it’s a journey filled with insecurities. I had a kid when I was 20, and cinema became my means for support. It was absolutely difficult. I consider myself as the ‘blue collar of cinema’ in the sense that I started with the workers, always with a goal to be a director.”

Before directing his first feature, Cuarón assimilated himself into film sets as part of the crew, working as an assistant director and boom-mike operator, among other things.

“I feel that a lot of what’s happening now in my career is me exorcising that early part of my life. That’s something of a big ball and chain I carried most of my career.”

On meeting Guillermo del Toro:
“Guillermo is another blue collar, who shares a lot of insecurities and balls and chains with me. I did 12 films as a boom operator, and Guillermo was a make-up artist at the time. And everyone was talking about this genius of Guadalajara, and when I started hearing about this weird guy, who was full of possibilities, I got jealous. I did a short film based on a Stephen King short story, and that’s when we met for the first time. We started talking about how much we love the novel and at one point he asked me, ‘If the short story is so great, why does your short suck so much?’ I was like, ‘Whaaat?’ but when he explained why, he was absolutely right. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

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On his first film,Love In The Time of Hysteria”:
“I guess at that time my hero was Lubitsch and his school. I was very intrigued by that and by his rhythms. I was also intrigued by new forms of cinema. Nouvelle Vague passed, Scorsese had already done ‘After Hours,’ where he created the rhythm inside the frame like Howard Hawks and stuff. Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki‘s nickname] and I were in search of this technical language — that was the goal. At the time in Mexico, there was a lot of stupid stuff about AIDS, homophobic stuff, how it can’t happen to heterosexuals. What we wanted was to do a comedy to challenge this macho attitude.”

On his early Hollywood seduction:
Miramax bought the film before Toronto premiered it. I was very happy because I was broke and in debt. Some people liked the film, Sydney Pollack saw it and he liked it. They flew me to L.A. and at the same time I burned my bridges in Mexico, wasn’t going to get another movie financed there. So I was anxious, I had debts, I had my kid, and I was totally flattered and honored to meet Pollack.”

“In Hollywood, it’s so weird because you can live your life and support yourself without directing a single movie. You can just spend time developing projects. I was in that limbo for a while.”

On his relationship to his own films:
“Once I finish a film, I never see it again. My friends like Guillermo and Alejandro [González Iñárritu] love and nurture their films like they’re their wives. For me, my films are like my ex-wives! I loved them so much, we gave each other all that we could, but then we move on and I don’t want to see them again.”

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On “A Little Princess”:
“In ‘Little Princess,’ it was a search for form. One of the things we experimented in with TV shows was in color, so I continued that here. There was a unity of color. I was probably insecure or ignorant of other possibilities. This film, when I read it, I didn’t have to finish the script to say that I had to do it. It was a spiritual quest, in sync with what I was going on through life.”

” ‘Princess’ was one of the first films where I learned one of the most fantastic gifts of the process: limitations. For example, everything is experienced from the POV of the girl. You never see any other character over the shoulder; every master shot when a character enters is always from her point of view. You never see something before she sees it. With consistency of limitations, you start to create an inner language.”