Gravity, Children of Men, the best Harry Potter movie—and now a seven-part miniseries? With Disclaimer, director Alfonso Cuarón has set out to conquer TV in the name of cinema. The Academy Award-winning director joins WIRED writer Samanth Subramanian to talk about the language of cinema and television—and how they intersect.See more: https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-director-alfonso-cuaron-disclaimer-sci-fi/
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00:00Once that I finish a film, I never see it again.
00:02Television is about killing time.
00:04It's like you're doing a film, but it's just very long.
00:06If I hold a shot, people watching this show
00:09are going to check their messages.
00:12Wyatt sat down with the Oscar-winning director,
00:14Alfonso Cuaron, to talk about the language of cinema and TV
00:18and how they intersect.
00:19This is The Big Interview.
00:27Every time I've seen a movie of yours,
00:29I've associated with this feeling of claustrophobia,
00:33I guess, and whether it's a physical kind of claustrophobia,
00:36like you moving the camera into Sandra Bullock's helmet
00:40in Gravity, or if it's emotional kind of claustrophobia,
00:43the world closing in around you, like in Disclaimer.
00:46And I was wondering if that's a feeling
00:47you try to chase in your projects.
00:50First of all, I apologize for making you feel like that.
00:55It is kind of a dramatic device that's very effective.
00:59Oh, I'm glad, I'm glad, I guess, but you know,
01:03it's the first time I even think,
01:06I mean, I've been confronted with this,
01:08so maybe it's a by-product of what I do or I did,
01:14but it was not like a conscious decision.
01:17Once I finish a film, I never see it again,
01:20so it's out of the audiences to make a meaning of it.
01:24Is there something uniting all these projects that you...
01:27That I don't know, but more than anything,
01:30that's a limitation, I guess.
01:32Oh.
01:33Yeah, I would think so.
01:34Why would you say that?
01:35Maybe a problem I have is that I have
01:37very eclectic taste in cinema.
01:40I grew up loving Poseidon Adventure,
01:43or Planet of the Apes, or Soylent Green.
01:47All great movies.
01:48I know, they're great, but at the same time,
01:50I love Berman, and I love Tarkovsky, and I love Zucorov.
01:55Most of these filmmakers, what they have in common
01:57is that this kind of one same kind of idea
02:01that they keep on developing,
02:03and keep on developing film after film.
02:06You can see everything that unifies Berman or Fellini,
02:10or even Kurosawa with how diverse his oeuvre is,
02:14and I haven't been able to do that.
02:16I feel, you know, once that I finish a film,
02:19I just want to explore different realms.
02:22That's really interesting that you say
02:23you haven't been able to.
02:25Because, have you tried?
02:26I mean, is there something you even seek?
02:29No, I haven't even tried.
02:31Yeah, exactly.
02:33Some films you do because you make conscious choices.
02:37Yeah, yeah.
02:38Some films you do to survive.
02:43Right.
02:44Others, you're like, come out and save your life.
02:47I have to wait for films to come to me.
02:50And any time that I've been trying to seriously plan
02:53to do it in a specific film,
02:55I end up not doing that film,
02:57and end up doing something else.
02:58And it's interesting that you mentioned
03:00Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes on the one hand,
03:03and Tarkovsky and Bergman on the other.
03:05Because I think, this is one of my other theories about you,
03:08is that there's something you do
03:10where you kind of marry the cinematic aesthetic
03:14of Bergman and Tarkovsky.
03:15But you do it with adaptations of material
03:17that might be called mass market, almost.
03:20So like, Disclaimer is an interesting case.
03:23It's like a summer beach read.
03:24It's like a thriller.
03:25Children of Men is a P.D. James book.
03:27Harry Potter is Harry Potter.
03:29The case of P.D. James,
03:30it was just like a one-page outline
03:32of what the book was about.
03:34And I thought, well, wow, this is brilliant,
03:36but I already have a film that I wanted to do in my head.
03:40So in that case, I made the conscious decision
03:43of not reading the book.
03:44Yeah, yeah.
03:45Because I didn't want it to sidetrack
03:47from what I was thinking.
03:49And then I've been tempted later on to read the book
03:53because people around me, they tell me it's great.
03:56They say it's quite different, but it's really great.
03:58When I did Children of Men,
04:00I wanted to understand the things
04:02that were going to form our 21st century.
04:06I mean, everything in Children of Men
04:07seems to be a little relevant these days.
04:10Those things were happening then.
04:13The thing is that we were living
04:14in this kind of bubble before.
04:16Wow, now is what happened in Children of Men
04:20now is happening.
04:21No, it was happening before.
04:23Difference now is that it's coming
04:25closer to our backyard.
04:28So you mentioned these interesting ways
04:30in which these projects come into your life.
04:32So tell me about Disclaimer.
04:34How did Disclaimer enter your life?
04:36Long time ago, I mean,
04:37I think it's when Renee Knight published it.
04:40She sent me, I didn't know her,
04:41she sent me the manuscript.
04:43I saw a possibility,
04:45but I didn't know how to make it happen as a film.
04:48So time passed, and she got in touch saying,
04:51hey, you know that if in case you're interested,
04:54the rights are available.
04:55There was a moment that I've been very intrigued
04:57about exploring the long format.
05:00And Episodic TV gives you that opportunity.
05:04I enjoy series, many, many, many series.
05:08And all the series that I enjoy
05:11have amazing writing and amazing acting,
05:14but only a few have kind of a cinematic approach.
05:18But what do you mean here by the cinematic approach?
05:21I'm curious to explore that.
05:23Well, in the worst case,
05:26series are shows that you can watch with your eyes closed.
05:31Okay.
05:32And by the way, you have a great time.
05:34You can actually be doing things
05:36while you're watching your show.
05:38And that's the value and the amazing strength
05:41that series have taken in terms of the narrative.
05:45And I have to say, narratively,
05:47they start doing way more interesting things
05:50than most of mainstream American films.
05:53And I was very intrigued, I wanted to,
05:55because I have never done anything overtly narrative.
05:58Yeah, because I've noticed that even in Gravity
06:00or Children of Men,
06:01there's no tendency to give what they call exposition,
06:04to explain, for example, why the human race is infertile
06:07or what happens in Zero Gravity.
06:09I mean, you just let the,
06:11I guess the emotion lead first.
06:14Is that what you mean by sort of overtly narrative?
06:16Yes.
06:17The principle of film is time.
06:23How those images flow in time
06:25and what they convey
06:27and all the emotions that they convey in time.
06:29In order to do that, you have to surrender to that.
06:32And certain films, when you expand time,
06:35it's all about the experience itself of time
06:37and the silence of it, and the space between time.
06:40In Hitchcock, it's the perfect example, is the suspense.
06:44You are so aware of time
06:46because of the ticking clock that is going on.
06:49Hitchcock says, I don't care about the content.
06:53I really don't care.
06:54I care about the form and the style.
06:58That's Hitchcock's point of view,
07:01but I'm just saying that to exemplify
07:04how the language in cinema has a greater value
07:07and a greater weight in the end experience of a film.
07:13Yeah, yeah.
07:14Television, on the other hand,
07:17it's about killing time.
07:19And I'm not saying all of them, but many series,
07:22they need to keep on moving
07:23just the narrative forward constantly.
07:28But even doing this show,
07:29I learned there were moments in which I realized,
07:32wow, if this was a film,
07:34I probably could get away with this.
07:37But I just know that if I hold a shot here,
07:42people watching this show are going to check their messages.
07:47You know what I mean?
07:49Right, right.
07:50In many ways, conventional narrative is all about,
07:54it's like the enemy of time.
07:57Keep the flow, don't even be aware of time.
08:01If it's a good story, good narrative,
08:03sometimes one hour pass and you didn't realize
08:06that it was over.
08:09I never done anything that is narrative,
08:12like a strong narrative impulse.
08:14And I was very intrigued about doing it.
08:16I found it a big challenge.
08:18There was this moment in Itu Mama Tambien
08:20where the camera moves out of the car
08:22where the three people are there
08:23and there's some kind of police and crime activity
08:26and you kind of pan to that
08:27and you come back into the car,
08:28just to show that there's a much richer world out there.
08:31The important thing in most of the films that I do
08:34is I'm very concerned about the relationship
08:38between the character and the environment.
08:41You know, it's always the clash between the two.
08:44In Itu Mama Tambien, it was a byproduct of that as well.
08:47It's like, well, these guys are in their little
08:50stupid drama and they're cruising through
08:54a greater reality that is around them
08:56that they are oblivious.
08:58There are other filmmakers that they do that
09:00in an amazing way because the characters
09:03may leave and the camera just stays there
09:06with the environment for you to experience
09:08that environment without any action.
09:11You know, in Itu Mama Tambien, that example,
09:14there's an action going on.
09:15And in many times, there's no action.
09:17You just partake with the environment.
09:21I saw Perfect Days, and that happens a lot.
09:24I mean, the main character drifts out of the scene
09:26a little bit, but the camera stays.
09:27Sometimes in an empty house, room,
09:30and it's just like a couple of beats,
09:33but it's just enough, and it's very quiet,
09:34but it's a great device.
09:35That expanded time of Vendors is not fighting
09:38with narrative, it's just another measurement of time.
09:42In TVs, you know, there are examples that you can see
09:45that they have done it.
09:46Berman did it with Scenes of a Marriage,
09:48The Kingdom, Lars von Trier's,
09:50Fassbinder with Alexander Platz,
09:53David Lynch with his Twin Peaks,
09:57Bruno Dumont with Le Petit Quinquin.
10:00And by the way, don't get me wrong,
10:01so many of the shows, they have amazing cinematic moments,
10:06but they are not consistent throughout the whole.
10:10It's hard to have like a strong directoric point of view
10:15from A to Z.
10:17Part of the nature of most shows
10:19is that you have different directors
10:21doing different episodes.
10:23The great shows, they know how to do very well.
10:25I think that Vera has amazing examples of that as well.
10:29O'Barry, they establish a style,
10:34and then different filmmakers come to honor that style
10:41throughout the whole thing.
10:42And the thing is that when you're directing,
10:45and in the case of the Irresponsible Action
10:49that I took to direct seven episodes,
10:52it's like you're doing a film, but it's just very long.
10:55And what happens is when you're doing a film,
10:58every decision you're doing in the first frame,
11:01you start thinking about the repercussion
11:03that it's going to have in these other moments.
11:06Great showrunners do that
11:08because they are very conscientious
11:10to give a follow-up.
11:12Alfonso, it's been such a pleasure to speak to you.
11:14Thank you so much.
11:15And I can't wait to watch Disclaimer.
11:17My pleasure.
11:18This has been a good conversation.
11:19Thank you so much, man.