Children of Men: Analysis

Children of Men: Analysis

April 3, 2007

In Children of Men, rich thematic elements of hope play out against despair in a dystopian vision of the future. Many have commented that while they found the film highly entertaining, they felt cheated at the end. They often go on to complain that the movie was half-finished. I disagree. I would say it was 3/4 finished…

While I will point out a fault I find with the story of Children of Men, I have to first say that I absolutely loved the film. Stories don’t always have to work to completion in order for someone to appreciate them. Personally, I felt the film was thick with visual thematic elements that I know will grow and develop in my own mind with future viewings. As depressing as the film is on the surface, I still feel there is more the filmmaker was saying that perhaps I didn’t get the first time (Which I discovered was indeed true while writing this article). As such, there is a good chance that in six months time I might rescind the following analysis.

Dramatica identifies precisely that which is missing from a story

But as it stands now I still found one major flaw with it - something that I’ve heard several others mention - the unfortunate abrupt ending. I even heard one radio personality jokingly suggest that the recent DVD release was not burned properly - as if the torrent had a chapter or two missing!

In Dramatica there are 4 structural acts each throughline must progress through. Those with a McKee/Field/Aristotle background might wonder why 4 acts instead of 3.

Simply put the 4 structural acts can be thought of as signposts along the journey a story takes. The 3 acts that most refer to are really the progressions between these signposts.

Both 3 and 4 acts exist in a story in the way that light exists in both particle and wave form. It’s all a matter of how you’re looking at it.

In Children of Men, the overall story deals with a dystopian United Kingdom in the year 2027. The human race has become infertile and the world at large has fallen into a state of war and oppression. The Objective Story Throughline, therefore, centers around a problematic Situation.

In a Situational Throughline, you pass through four signposts - The Past, The Present, Progress, and the Future. These four items represent all the ways one can look at a situation. Don’t believe it? Try to describe a problematic situation without using one of those four terms. Close to impossible.

The order in which these four signposts appear are different for every story. They don’t have to be in the order listed above. In fact, there are a whole host of other factors that determine the order: if the story is a Tragedy, if the Main Character changes, what kind of plot device drives the story forward, etc.

In Children of Men the signposts have a very definite progression.

At the start we are dealing with The Present -The world mourns the murder of 18-year old “Baby Diego” - the last baby to have been born on earth. Terrorist bombings have become commonplace in the fight for immigrant rights. While the rest of the world has descended into chaos - Britain “Marches On.”

In the second act we find ourselves amongst the ruins of an abandoned and delapidated preschool as Miriam tells Theo of how the plague of infertility began (The Past). There they meet Syd who agrees to take him to the Bexhill refugee camp as faux prisoners.

Once in the refugee camp, matters change for the worse (Progress). An uprising amongst the immigrant refugees threatens the tentative stability imposed by British forces. Theo and Khee scarcely make their way to the docks as tension escalates into an all-out war.

They board the boat prepared for them and row out to the buoy. And here is where the story stops.

Theo bleeds out just as the boat captained by the Human Project arrives - a boat aptly named The Tomorrow. (Future)

Now, if you’re like me you were shaking your head, “No! This can’t be it!” when the credits started to roll. You wanted more story! Somehow you just felt like there was more to tell - as if there were still 20 to 30 minutes left to go.

My contention is that the filmmaker wanted to leave the story open-ended (and later, I’ll have a quote from the director himself that this is in fact, what he had intended). In this way, the filmmaker leaves it up to the audience to fill in that last blank. Will the world collapse in despair? Or will the hope of children win out?

In short, the filmmaker is leaving it up to us what the future will really be like.

But in leaving this last part out, he left most general audience members feeling frustrated and cheated. Most listeners of a story want to know “how it all turned out.” I believe that sense of frustration comes from the fact that there was still one more act to play out. If we had followed Kee onto The Tomorrow and learned what the Human Project was and what hope Kee’s baby held for the future, the story would’ve felt more complete. In fact, it would’ve been complete as all four acts would’ve been explored thoroughly.

Whereas most story analysts would be able to point out the uneasiness an audience feels at the end of the film, they would be hard pressed to describe why that feeling existed. Seeing the story through the filter of Dramatica helps to identify precisely the bit that is missing.

It’s up to to the author whether to put it in or not.

Discovering the Storyform

There are some other interesting things I discovered when I plugged this plot sequence into Dramatica.

First off, when I selected The Present for Act I, my only choices for Act II were either The Past or Progress. I guess it’s impossible to move from the Present to the Future at the beginning of a story…it would be an interesting challenge to try and write something like that.

Secondly, I went to the Story Engine Settings window and selected a Main Character Resolve of Change. It was my feeling that while Theo did not have a huge leap-of-faith Luke Skywalker-type change at the end, he was certainly changed by the events around him. In the beginning he was apathetic and could care less about the death of Baby Diego. Towards the end he cared enough about Kee and her child to risk and ultimately pay with his very life.

But this gave me a Story Driver of Decision. And that felt very wrong.

I thought for sure this film was driven by Actions. The murder of Baby Diego. The murder of Jillian forces the Fishes to decide to kill Theo. Syd coming back to the refugee camp to collect a bounty forces them to leave the camps. The boat arriving at the end.

But in selecting Actions for the Story Driver, it ends up forcing the Main Character into a Resolve of Steadfast. Is Theo fundamentally the same person at the end of the film as he was in the beginning? Has he not undergone a huge transformation?

He certainly was apathetic at the beginning and did not want to contribute - the whole reluctant hero bit - but I wonder if he’s still dealing with his own personal issue. I wasn’t sure.

To add further to the argument, when you select Change for the Main Character Resolve, the story defaults to an Outcome of Failure. Again, I think the author did not intend for this film to have an outcome - he wanted it unfinished. But the jets flying overhead and bombing Bexhill does make it seem like the situation has not resolved itself - that desperate times continue (which would result in an outcome of Failure).

Another clue to this storyform could lie in the Main Character’s Approach. Theo prefers to solve his problems externally - no Hamlet here! When confronted with Luke’s assertion that Theo will be murdered in the morning, Theo instantly wakes Kee up and sneaks her downstairs to escape in a car. Later, when Kee is taken upstairs in the bombed-out building, Theo has no problem making his way across the street, even with a tank and a whole army of soldiers just meters away!

Now because of this, and because the Objective Story is a situation, Theo’s Growth comes up as Stop. That means if he is a Change character, we as an audience will be waiting for the Main Character to “stop” doing something. If he is a Steadfast character, Theo himself will be holding out for some external problem around him to “stop.” Sounds more like the second doesn’t it?

However, he does seem to have a “chip on his shoulder” regarding the death of his son. This would also point to a Main Character Growth of “Stop” in a Change character.

Leaning more towards the Change character and my failure to accurately identify the Story Drivers, another final interesting point occurs. Whatever the Main Character Judgment is, the Story Outcome is opposite. In other words, if the Main Character Judgment is Bad, then the Story Outcome is Success. If the Main Character Judgment is Good, the Story Outcome is Failure.

Fascinating. Especially since the director himself purposefully left out the Outcome:

We wanted the end to be a glimpse of a possibility of hope, for the audience to invest their own sense of hope into that ending. So if you’re a hopeful person you’ll see a lot of hope, and if you’re a bleak person you’ll see a complete hopelessness at the end.

via Filmmaker Magazine

Here, Alfonso Cuaron agrees with the notion that the audience is to some degree the author of it’s own reception.

Which is fascinating when you consider that with the above storyform, in order for the world at large to have a successful outcome (Story Outcome: Success), one must personally sacrifice their own personal well-being (Main Character Judgment: Bad). If instead one concentrates on one’s own fulfillment (Good), the world will ultimately perish (Story Outcome: Failure).

Even more reason to leave it open-ended.

As you can see there is still quite a lot left open to interpretation here. My main point I wanted to get across was where that “Hey, this film isn’t finished” feeling was coming from. Children of Men worked its way through 3 of the 4 acts and only “hinted” at that final concluding act. Thus, the story’s argument was never completely made - something an audience inherently expects from a story. The filmmaker purposefully left it open for the audience to decide on it’s own.

Which, now that I think about it, probably means the Driver is in fact, a Decision.

A Decision that, once we as an audience make, whether it be for Success or for Failure, will ultimately complete mankind’s final act.

UPDATE: Since writing this article, I have in fact come to the conclusion that I was not entirely accurate in my original analysis. Read why in Reconsidering Children of Men.

• articles
• concepts
• notes
• reviews
• information

Jim Hull's Story Fanatic

This is Story Fanatic, a collection of articles covering story structure and analysis for
creative writers. Published weekly.

Reconsidering Children of Men

May 25, 2009

By far, the most popular page on this site (besides the 404 error page because seemingly, people can’t get enough pictures of Pocahontas!) is Children of Men: Analysis. Some people have problems with the ending of this film, some don’t. I used to.

In fact, that was my motivation for writing the original article. But since then, my feelings have changed on the subject. Why?

Because of reader feedback.

Originally I felt like the entire third act was missing from the film. Theo and Key finally escaped the madness of their world to arrive at the meeting spot for their savior ship, The Tomorrow. Theo dies just as the ship emerges from the fog…and then the film ends. It was frustrating to me on my first viewing because I really wanted to know what was on that ship and whether or not Key was able to foster some sort of change in the global epidemic of infertility.

I wanted to know what happened next.

But then several comments were added to my article (particularly from reader Mia) that caused me to reconsider my original interpretation. Perhaps the film was complete, and it was – from a certain perspective, but I still had difficulty in resolving my original disconnect. It seems that after the initial viewing many audience members feel like something is missing, that the last third of the film has yet to be explored. This changes with repeated viewings and with a better understanding of what the story is, and what it isn’t.

To explain, I’ve added back in the reader discussion that was generated the first time around.

The Original Comments

The first was from Chris Huntley, co-creator of the Dramatica theory of story:

Great analysis, Jim. What you describe is your basic form of propoganda. Leave something out and the audience must fill it in from it’s own life experience. Alfonso Cuaron only seems to offer a bittersweet pill: Sacrifice yourself for the benefit of all others, or sacrifice all others for your own benefit. This is a particularly sticky set of options for our “happy ending” culture. By leaving the ending open (and much of the story dynamics ambiguous), Cuaron chose not to give his audience the comfort of a tidy, problem-solved grand argument story. Instead, he presented his audience with a challenge: “Put up or shut up–you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.” Again, Jim, you’ve provided an excellent example of using Dramatica to identify abstract, but nonetheless real, story “problems.” (And identified that the “problems” were intentionally introduced by the writer/director.) WELL DONE.

Personally, I would have loved it if the comments had stopped there! But they didn’t. C.O. had an interesting take on the ambiguous ending:

I agree it’s a good analysis. But I don’t think the story being “unfinished” is a flaw at all. The story is ambiguously balanced in such a way that the story can be “finished” in the viewer’s mind in either of two equally valid ways. In other words, there is a plausible storyform regardless of whether the viewer chooses Success or Failure based on their own experience. Since there is ambiguity between Steadfast and Change, Good and Bad, and Start and Stop, as you have identified above, whether the story is Success or Failure is left totally open. I think it’s a great example of well-constructed propaganda.

Cian O’Brien joined the conversation by pointing out how difficult it can be to interpret the “intentioned messages” of those who actually create the art we love:

I must confess that I am not a movie critic and find the art of trying to interpret the intentioned messages of the creator of the work an impossible endeavor. If messages are not explicitly stated or demonstrated it is a near impossible task to discern the true message or intent of the author. Nevertheless I am the first person to go to the internet after viewing such an outstandingly ambiguous film to see what those who venture in this territory have to say. That said the analysis here provides a quote from the director that his intention was for the viewer to impose his or her own world view on the success or failure of the protagonists journey. The implication is that if the women and child were rescued the protagonist was successful, if they were not or there was no “human project” the protagonists choices and actions were in vain. My wife is by nature an optimist, she interpreted the ending as a positive one in the sense that she believed the mother and child were rescued. I am more pessimistic or more fairly realistic, and saw the ending as a happenstance that the fishing trawler just happened to show up at the same time the protagonists were expecting their rescue. However, there is a third position here that would constitute my imposition on the work. As I do not know the intention of the author, nor do I know the true outcome of the intended end, I can merely go on the facts provided in the movie that are apparent. To me it matters little whether there was a “good” or “bad” ending as I can not decipher the intent. Further, there is the notion in this thread that the Clive Owen character can be assessed on the basis of his success of failure at the end of the film. My empathy does weigh heavily with the protagonist and the notion that he was successful, not necessarily in delivering the mother and child to the intended saviors, but in the fact that he did the right things based on what little knowledge and capabilities he possessed. Despite the protagonists obvious weaknesses, he proved stronger then all others in the movie and worked with what little he had, with little reliance on others or an unjustified fanatical belief support structure. The question really is, is someone a success because they “succeed”, or because they do the right things which may or may not lead to “success”. My gut feeling is that the protagonist, if he survived, could look at himself in the mirror the next morning and feel confident that he did the best he cold regardless of the results, even though he may feel miserable about those results. I guess it is a question of what is termed consequentialism ( ) . Can acts be right in themselves, or do they require some positive result?