The Sons of Man on Arte: 10 things to know about Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece

Alfonso Cuaron and his team returned for Vulture to the adventure The Sons of Man for the 10th anniversary of the film.

One of the greatest films of the 21st century can be seen again this Sunday evening on Arte (and now in streaming on Arte.TV). For the 10 years of Son of manwe return to the masterful dystopia of Alfonso Cuaron which will celebrate its 20th anniversary this year.

Carried by Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine and Clare-Hope Ashitey, the film tells of a very near future (in 2027) where humanity, having become completely infertile, counts its days by tearing itself apart. The action takes place in England, more or less protected from chaos by its insularity and therefore prey to the massive arrival of migrants. A story that has a particular resonance today as waves of populations flee war-torn territories like Syria to find safety in Europe.

On the occasion of this tenth anniversary, Vulture met Cuaron, screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton and producers Eric Newman and Marc Abraham to look back on the making of this unique feature film, which did not really meet its audience or collect major awards but established itself in the film of the time as a true cult film, as relevant in its message as it was dazzling in its cinematographic quality. Here are ten things we learned from this very long paper (which you can read in full and in English here).

The Sons of Man was a failure in theaters

Without being a smash hit, Cuaron’s film was a commercial flop, grossing $70 million on a budget estimated at $76 million. The failure is even more bitter if we look at the US box office (35 million). As Vulture recalls, it was released at Christmas in the United States and was no longer a marketing priority for Universal, which was then banking on United 93 for the Oscars. The Academy effectively ignored the film, absent from the main categories (best film, best direction and actors).

Universal was very skeptical

When the production company Strike, which had a deal with Universal, came to present the film to the studio, the first reaction was not very enthusiastic. Producer Marc Abraham remembers: “‘The guy dies at the end? This woman ends up on a boat?’ We are talking about a very intense film, obviously very artistic, which will be expensive and has a political dimension. Not the easiest kind of project to sell.“And the latter added:”There is not too much room for compromise with Alfonso Cuaron“.

Time passes and Cuaron is recruited to direct Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (considered by some to be the best film in the saga). Abraham then sounds the alarm: “I went to the studio and told them: ‘Look, we’re losing him. He’s going to do a Harry Potter movie. And they didn’t react, so he left to make a Harry Potter film. I remember saying to myself: ‘It’s over. Nobody comes back from a franchise.

Despite Harry Potter, Cuaron didn’t let go of the project

Although embedded in the enormous Harry Potter machine, Cuaron continued to be haunted by The Sons of Man. “I thought about it constantly. And even more. I was in London full time, and not in the cutest part of London. I read like crazy. I was talking to people. I was taking photos. It was like I was making tapestry. Everything revolved around a central point, and that was The Sons of Man.”

Then, one day, producer Eric Newman received a phone call from Cuaron: “I’m in the middle of post-production on Harry Potter, I’m very happy with this film, but I want to do The Sons of Man. It never left my mind“.

Cuaron didn’t want to read the novel

Initially, The Sons of Man is a 1992 novel by English author PD James, who died in 2014. When Cuaron was put on the film project, it had already been adapted into a screenplay and reworked several times. Interested in the story but not in the script presented to him, the director embarked on a new rewrite with screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton, leaving it up to the latter to read the book. Few elements of the novel have been preserved, apart from the names of the characters, the location in England and the concept of the first pregnancy occurring after a period of sterility.

September 11 was a trigger for the script

Cuaron was excited about the book’s pitch, but he worried that his adaptation would result in a B movie.”Then there was September 11“, says the director. The day of the attacks, he was in Canada for the screening of Y Tu Mama Tambien in Toronto. Flights were suspended, and “we found ourselves stuck for three or four days, I was talking with Gael (Garcia Bernal) and I was wondering about what was going to shape this new century.“

Sexton remembers: “Alfonso called me from Toronto and said: ‘that’s it, we have an approach to the story’. Our starting point was that we were at an inflection point. The future is not somewhere ahead of us, we are currently living the future“.

Lubezki created a camera for the car sequence shot

Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubzeki both wanted to give the film a documentary feel, so that the viewer could really put themselves in the shoes of the characters, notably by using the sequence shot technique. Some were real logistical and technical headaches, notably the one filmed in a car where the camera rotates 360 degrees inside the passenger compartment.

To convince his friend Lubezki to do the impossible, Cuaron had an unstoppable argument: “I told him: ‘ok, I know how you can do that on a green screen.'” He knew very well what Chivo’s reaction would be: “If we shoot this on a green screen I’ll resign!“, replied the man who would later win three consecutive Oscars for best cinematography (2014, 2015 and 2016).

Lubzeki called a specialist to the rescue, Gary Thieltges, who designed a special camera for this scene (dubbed Doggicam by the actors) that Cuaron and three technicians controlled from a cabin on the roof of the vehicle. The actors worked on the choreography of the scene: they had to lie down when they left the frame to avoid being knocked out by the camera!

It’s not a “visionary” film (according to Cuaron)

Although The Sons of Man is more topical than ever (notably through the question of refugees), Cuaron, modest, affirms that he was just well informed. “This stuff is not a figment of the imagination. We were already talking about all this, but not the general public“, explains the director, who has been learning about this evolution of the world since the beginning of the 2000s. “What is relevant today is that we must stop being complacent“.

The myth of the battlefield scene

The film’s other memorable sequence shot, in the refugee zone, was undoubtedly the biggest challenge for the Son of man. “We had 14 days to film the scene, except that by the 12th day we hadn’t even taken out the cameras“, remembers Cuaron. Two failures later (each time it took 5 hours to put everything back in place), the team only had one more attempt to put the scene in the box.

This is where a spurt of fake blood stains the camera. “Cut“, shouts Cuaron, but “an explosion happens at that moment and no one hears me“. The director is disappointed, the plan is ruined. He thinks… “Chivo turned to me and said: ‘you’re stupid, it’s a miracle!'”. Indeed, this blood on the screen will turn out to be the small detail which turns the sequence into legend, giving it incredible realism. Especially when we know that it arrived there by chance and was not added in post-production.

Banksy almost collaborated on the film

The famous British street artist Banksy was approached by Cuaron. “Banksy was not yet as famous as he is today“, recalls the director, who managed to contact those around him to convince him to participate in the film in one way or another. Cuaron met his manager in a cafe, but the meeting led to nothing.

However, someone slipped discreetly behind Cuaron during the discussion, and the latter suspects that it was Banksy himself. In the end, the artist still gave permission to use one of his works in the film: a stencil representing two police officers kissing (see screenshot above).

Cuaron “disappeared” after the film

The filmmaker struggled to create the film, and it was even harder to recover from it. “These were the most intense and difficult five years of my life“, he said bluntly. In fact, Cuaron completely disappeared from circulation during this period, before returning to work on the filming of Gravitywhich started in May 2011, released 7 years later The Sons of Man !