'Children' sees barren world

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"Children of Men" may seem like dystopian science fiction. The movie, which opens in theaters Christmas Day, is set in a future London in which no children have been born for 18 years.

However, that's not how director Alfonso Cuaron sees his film, which stars Clive Owen.

"They sent me the material, but I didn't really connect with it in terms of how to make a movie out of it," he says during a recent visit to the District. "It was not until I realized that infertility, the premise, could be used as a metaphor for the failing sense of hope and the lack of historical perspective that humanity has. It could be a good point of departure, not to make a science-fiction film, but to make an exploration of the state of things today."

"Children of Men" envisions a future in which war and global warming have ravaged the planet, creating refugees from all over the world.

The action takes place in 2027, but Mr. Cuaron says its concerns are very much those of today. "You don't go very far without recognizing that two of the biggest issues are environment and immigration," he argues. "We don't talk about an immigration phenomenon, we talk about an immigration problem. We talk about all these people coming in to invade."

Of course, Mr. Cuaron is himself an immigrant; the 45-year-old director was born in Mexico City but splits his time between London and Italy.

He made just one movie in Mexico before being tapped to direct films in Hollywood. After helming "A Little Princess" and "Great Expectations," he returned to his native land to make "Y Tu Mama Tambien." The 2001 film picked up a Golden Globe for best foreign-language film and an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Mr. Cuaron then adapted another British novel, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." J.K. Rowling herself has said it's her favorite of the franchise.

Mr. Cuaron says he was asked recently if he has one foot in Hollywood and another in Mexican and independent films. He says he has both feet firmly in one place: examining the human condition.

Evoking his internationalist, humanist spirit, he cites pictures of the planet taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. "It doesn't have colors or lines like all these maps they give us," he remarks. Still, he acknowledges, "I'm very rooted in who I am and where I come from."

A project he is developing about a notorious 1968 massacre of students in Mexico City had been scheduled to be the next film he shot, but he has put it on hold for now. He explains: "Before 'Children of Men,' I had never killed one single person in cinema. After doing this film, I have to clean myself from massacres. What you do during the day, you sleep at night with."