Cuaron's motifs; Long; Spoilers

[nicholas at adelanta.co.uk]

I mentioned a week or so ago that I wanted to explore the motifs of
Cuaron's movies, out of general interest, and also to see to what extent
the imagery used in PoA is typical of this director's work. Apologies for
the length of this post; believe it or not, it has been drastically edited!

I'm basing this on four of Cuaron's movies; that's not the full extent of
his body of work, but it does represent the films best known in the
English-speaking world. The movies are:-
'A Little Princess' (1995)...I'll refer to it as ALP
This is actually the Cuaron film with which I am most familiar, and I can
see that that is going to take some explaining. Suffice it to say that our
5-year old is a film buff, but she doesn't like to watch alone. She's quite
smart enough to realise that Dad will watch with her if it's ALP or maybe
'Fly Away Home', as opposed to, say, 'Barbie Swan Lake'. What 5-year olds
watch, they watch again and again. And so Dad watches too.

'Great Expectations' (1998) ; GE
Presumably most of you are familiar with the story. I'm a Dickens fan, but
didn't much like this film. Dickens tells harsh stories, but his work is
lightened by nice touches of humour. This movie is so busy telling the
story that it omits the humour altogether, which makes the whole thing
pretty bleak. I'll refer to the characters in this movie by their Dickens
names, as I can't remember the ones they were given in this version of the
story.

'Y Tu Mama Tambien' (2001); YTMT
Everyone who has seen it remembers the graphic sex scenes, but the point of
the movie is that it is a 'rites of passage' tale about the relationship
between two teenage boys and an 'older' woman. You really need to see this
one twice, as the final revelation of the story explains the conduct and
utterances of one of the main characters and gives a different meaning to
the second viewing.

'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' (2004); PoA
I don't think I need to say anything about this one!

The motifs I want to look at are Colour, Water, Windows, Time  and Reflections

Colour
Colour is extremely important to Cuaron, and in two of the above movies,
ALP and GE, it is an overwhelming motif. The colour used most frequently is
green, and the associations conjured by the use of green are always
negative.

In GE, the Havisham house is surrounded by greenery, and the interiors are
also covered in twining, smothering plants. The colour dominates the house,
which is the setting for great unhappiness for everyone in it and the
protagonist, Pip.  Miss Havisham and Estella, the two main negative
characters, wear green throughout the film. Green is used so overwhelmingly
that the film almost looks as if it were shot in monochrome; green and
white.

In ALP, the boarding school is clad in bright green ivy, and the little
girls wear a green uniform. The effect is to underscore the unhappiness
experienced by the heroine as she is taken away from her familiar
surroundings (India) and from her beloved father. The green motif is
extremely prominent throughout the film, but it is leavened by positive
images, which are shown in orange/yellow; the child's doll (her last link
with her father); the Indian guy who lives next door; the flower from the
people who have shown her some kindness. When the child is abandoned in the
attic, cold and  with nothing to eat, a miracle happens, and that entire
scene is shot in orange. The orange makes all that green bearable, and it
is surprising that ALP was made before GE; the green motif in the latter is
too overwhelmingly monochrome, so that the whole effect of the humourless
storyline is utterly depressing, and the final positive ending comes almost
as a 'deus ex machina'...it seems out of place. In ALP, the orange touches
act as a signpost to the positive ending, and, for me at least, Cuaron's
use of colour in ALP works much better than it does in GE.

The use of green is much less prominent in YTMT, but it is still there. The
'heroine' carries a large green bag, which symbolises something else which
she is carrying and which makes her into an ultimately tragic figure. The
green imagery, such as it is, seems concentrated around her, and this sets
her apart from the carefree teenagers. Nicely done.

Let me say that I think that Cuaron had far less scope for his use of
colour in PoA. In the other movies, he could use it as an interior backdrop
to illustrate negative emotion pretty much wherever he wanted to; but at
Hogwarts, green means Slytherin, so you can't have lots of green rooms to
indicate Harry's interior turmoil etc. However, we all noticed that there
was a lot more action outdoors in PoA, and what is the predominant colour
of the Scottish countryside? I have to say that it took me a while to latch
on to this. As a Brit, bright green landscape is so normal that, to me,  it
doesn't stand out in any way.

I noticed too that in the COMC lesson where the kids were introduced to
Buckbeak, although it was set in the forest, the sun was shining, which
gave the overall effect as being golden, not green....Cuaron's  favourite
positive colour for the optimistic mood of the sequence.

But there are several noticeable 'green' scenes in the movie; the first one
is just a tiny touch; when Harry is in his bedroom, when the camera zooms
in on the photo of his parents dancing, look at their background. Very
poignant. The two outdoor scenes with Harry and Lupin, where they discuss,
firstly, Harry's parents, and then Harry's fear of the Dementors, are also
predominantly green, as befits their themes, and perhaps explains why they
were shot as exteriors.  In my opinion, at least one of them should have
been shot indoors, preferably with Lupin sipping his potion :-)....As the
executioner sits in the courtyard sharpening his axe, he is surrounded by
green ivy and grass. The final example is extremely noticeable; it's when
Lupin turns into a werewolf. The scene is shot in a bluey-silver light on
the green background, to illustrate the poignancy of the reunion with
Sirius; then the moon rises and suddenly, everything turns to bright
viridian...including Lupin's eyes. Do watch for it next time you see the
movie; the effect is startling.

Water
It's an important motif in all of the movies; but water isn't just
landscape. Cuaron has a thing about the tactile or sensual nature of
water...his characters touch it, interact with it, immerse themselves in
it. Examples; in GE, the early action is set in and around the ocean ; the
convict Magwitch appears first under the water, almost as a 'drowned man'
image. In the Havisham house, a fountain plays in a courtyard and Pip and
Estella drink from it (in the most sensual scene I have seen in a Cuaron
movie, bar none). In YTMT, the boys race each other underwater (competing
against each other in an alien environment), and a (green) slightly
stagnant swimming pool covered in dead leaves  marks the estrangement of
the two friends.
In PoA, you have that fountain bubbling away in the courtyard; Hagrid
paddling in the loch and skimming stones across its surface; and of course
Buckbeak dipping his claw in the lake as he flies.
Related to water is the concept of fluid motion (for want of a better
term); things flying across the sky, flapping in the wind, or floating in
the air, which crops up again and again and which also reflects emotion. In
ALP you see petals and snow floating in the air; a shawl being caught by
the wind and blowing along the ground; and, in one of the most memorable
images of the film, two little girls using their hands to make patterns in
the air, weaving them in and out of each other; quite charming. GE has many
birds in its ocean scenes, and uses swirling dead leaves to illustrate
emotional turmoil, most clearly when Pip finally achieves professional
success and comes to lay it at the feet of Estella. The leaves blow around
him as Pip hammers at Estella's door; she, of course, is no longer there.
PoA has fluid motion too; owls swooping around throughout the story, and
those flapping crows around Hagrid's hut; omens of tragedy and death. Bats
fly through the Forbidden Forest. Umbrellas blow about in the storm.
Dumbledore and Lupin light candles and open trunks with a wave of their
hands; Harry plays with the flame in the Patronus lesson.  Towards the end
of the time-turner sequence, it is the dead leaves blowing around their
feet which alert  Harry and Hermione to the presence of the Dementors.  But
the best example of fluid motion is of course the Dementors themselves. I
understand that the CGI effects for the Dementors were based on the motion
of fabric in swirling water. Oh, and one other tiny 'windblown leaves'
scene; when James and Lily dance in the picture,  the green background also
features swirling Autumn leaves around a fountain.

Windows
Someone astutely pointed out a week or so ago (sorry, I have lost the post)
that Cuaron's camera in PoA  is often on the outside looking in, separating
the audience from the characters; through the train window, the dormitory
window, Harry behind the clockface, etc. This is clearly one of Cuaron's
favourite techniques, as it can be seen in each of the three preceding
films; we see the child in ALP through her attic window;  in GE, Miss
Havisham is first shown through the bars of a gilded birdcage; and in YTMT,
we have several scenes where the leading woman is seen inside a telephone
booth, having a conversation with her husband, which appears to be about
one thing, but in fact is about something different. In PoA, Cuaron also
turns the technique around, with the camera on the inside, looking out;
under the bed in the Leaky Cauldron and in the Gryffindor dorm; inside the
Fat Lady's ruined portrait looking out at Dumbledore and the students.

Time and Reflections
The two most important and obvious motifs in PoA. I expounded on these in
my post of a couple of weeks ago, and don't intend to do so again. The
interesting thing is that, despite some small precedents (a couple of
reflections in GE, a large clock/window in ALP), these are *not* major
images in Cuaron's previous work. I am pleased by this, as I would have
been sorry to find that PoA was composed of an unoriginal litany of
standard Cuaron motifs.  In PoA, the imagery of Time and the prevalence of
reflections  are inspired by and enhance the story.

One final note; having watched all four films again in order to prepare
this post, I felt that the movie with which Cuaron had the most fun was
PoA. His sense of humour is clearly in evidence here.  I particularly like
the way in which he presents a standard scene and then turns it on its
head. Examples; to mark the passing of time, we see the Whomping Willow's
pretty-pretty twirling Autumn leaf, followed by the tree bad-temperedly
getting rid of all of its other leaves. Again, standard melting
snow/snowdrops/butterflies to show the emergence of Spring; and the tree
suddenly shrugs off its mantle of snow (with the melting snow then running
down the lens of the camera...cool!); tweeting birds flutter through the
scenery...and are then  wiped out by the tree; bats flap through the forest
and are eaten by Buckbeak. It's either Cuaron saying 'Think this is the
real world? Think again!' or  'Here is a cute Chris Columbus scene...and
I'm going to wreck it!'
I remember a magazine article pre-PoA which said something like 'The
micromanagement of the HP movies proved paradoxically to be a liberating
experience for Cuaron'. That's certainly the impression I got.

Cheers,
Nicholas