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…
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
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.
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.
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16 responses so far ↓
1 Chris Huntley // Apr 4, 2007 at 5:31 pm
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.
2 C.O. // Apr 11, 2007 at 11:01 am
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.
3 Cian O'Brien // Apr 12, 2007 at 10:33 pm
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 “succeedâ€, or because they do the right things… which may or may not lead to “successâ€. 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 ( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ ) . Can acts be right in themselves, or do they require some positive result?
4 J. Hull // Apr 12, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Cian, thank you for your thoughtful comment.
I think it would help to clarify the Dramatica terms Main Character Judgment and Objective Story Outcome (since it seems there is some confusion between Good/Bad and Success/Failure).
First off, Dramatica does not attempt to quantify any moral judgment on a story’s ending. While the term is Main Character Judgment - it merely pertains to whether or not the Main Character resolved the angst that was present in them from the beginning of the story. If they have resolved their angst then the Judgment can be said to be “Good.” If they still retain that angst the Judgment can be said to be “Bad.”
This is separate from the Objective Story Outcome which can either be Success or Failure. This has little to do with the Main Character’s personal goals and issues. Instead it has more to do with the story as a whole - objectively, was the Story Goal met or not?
As I wrote above - I don’t believe there is enough information within the film to answer that question confidently.
What is most fascinating about your comment is that, whether or not you knew it, you picked the Failure/Good storyform.
Your pessimistic view of the fishing trawler appearing lines up with an Objective Story outcome of Failure - the goal of the story being some conclusion to the present situation. While their meeting with the fishing boat could still result in some form of success, your use of the word pessimistic and realistic makes me think that you would believe the decline of civilization would continue (at least for the purposes of a single story).
Further, your feeling that if he survived he could still look himself in the mirror signifies some resolution of angst (Good). I didn’t really delve too much into his personal issues in my original analysis - preferring instead to concentrate on the plot sequence of the overall story. But my interpretation of your comments coincides with my original analysis - that a possible ending for the film would be Failure/Good (typically called a Personal Triumph story).
What would be most interesting would be to ask your wife whether or not she felt Theo had overcome his own personal issues (having to do with the loss of his own son). My guess would be that she interpreted his gesturing towards Kee on how to properly hold the baby as a heartbreaking sign that the loss of his son still tore at his soul.
Even if she doesn’t, I still don’t think there is any one proper answer to how the story ends. I think it’s different for every audience member.
As far as Mr. Cuaron’s work is concerned - he succeeded as an artist. Just look at how much discussion his film has generated (not only on this blog, but also on the Internet as a whole). I’m sure many a writer can attest to hoping for such a reaction in their own readers.
5 Jason L // May 3, 2007 at 8:02 am
Just a brief comment, my roommate nearly steered me away from watching this movie because it had a “letdown” ending, but I am glad I did not let it disuade me.
This may sound strange, but I think a better ending would have been to end the movie with Kee in the boat with her child- fade out. The appearance of the “Tomorrow” is almost too optimistic.
6 The Cult of Dramatica // May 10, 2007 at 8:10 am
[…] a statistics program called Mint a couple of weeks ago. Alongside the countless searches for “children of men analysis” (people seem to really like that film!), this quote - “the cult of Dramatica” […]
7 Analysis of Deadwood: The Relationship Between Swearengen and Bullock // May 20, 2007 at 6:05 pm
[…] to hear some sort of confirmation of your ideas from the authors themselves. This occurred during my analysis of Children of Men, where the director confirmed the notion that the ending was to be finished individually by each […]
8 Mia // Aug 21, 2007 at 4:15 am
Children of Men is set in a world ravaged by a global epidemic. But the protagonist, Theo, isn’t motivated to resolve that problem. His goal is to save the life of a woman and her baby. He says to the Fishes, “She needs a doctor. She needs proper care,†not “She needs to get to the Human Project so they can use her to cure global infertility.†Not once does any character wonder what is biologically special about Kee, whether a vaccine could be created in time to save all women, or whether Kee will become the Eve to the next generation of humans. Luke, the antagonist, sees Kee’s baby as a means to change the government’s attitudes towards refugees, not as a means to solve the underlying problem of infertility. Nobody is motivated to cure infertility. The defining feature of the situation all characters share isn’t infertility, but violence.
This is part of the reason why the ending to Children of Men feels unsatisfactory. The film uses a world devastated by infertility as a backdrop, but then ignores the story of the people actively fighting infertility. It’s incongruous. It’s like setting up the Death Star but then ignoring the rebellion’s efforts to destroy it. The overall story keeps telling you that the story will be over when Kee reaches the safety of the hospital boat Tomorrow, but the setting keeps telling you that the story will only be over when infertility is no longer an issue. The setting clashes with the overall story, setting up a stack of false promises.
Consider if The Lord of the Rings film ended with Frodo successfully getting the ring to Rivendell. That was his only goal when he set out from Hobbiton, after all. The movie features a scene in Rivendell where Frodo stands with Sam, reflecting that he’s had his adventure and can go home now: the Black Riders were defeated, the ring is protected by magical elves, what more can you want? Except that the filmmakers had already introduced the idea that the real threat was the evil overlord Sauron, who lives as long as the ring survives. It would have been an unsatisfying ending not because the journey to Rivendell is an incomplete story, but because the setting of Middle-Earth demands so much more.
If the world demands that Sauron’s ring is destroyed, don’t create a protagonist who’s only trying to conceal it. If the world demands that infertility is addressed, don’t create a protagonist who’s only trying to save one woman and her baby. It’s the wrong story for that setting. It can be complete and satisfying and enjoyable, but it will always feel insufficient.
This a phenomenon I observe quite frequently in serialised fiction. The confrontation with the main antagonist is frequently reserved for the final instalment, so the protagonist spends the interim battling lesser foes who have very little to do with the real problem. The only thing that keeps you from throwing the book/DVD across the room is blind faith that eventually the real problem will be addressed. In the case of Children of Men, there is no next episode, and there was never intended to be.
Alfonso Cuaron’s documentary, “The Possibility of Hope,†makes it clear that he is much more interested in refugees than infertility. Infertility acts more or less a means to push the world into a dystopic state, where themes surrounding refugees can be explored. Also, because everyman Theo isn’t trying save the world, just one woman, the story doesn‘t descend into melodrama. This makes the story much more realistic and human, which is a positive aspect of it. Theo’s vulnerability was a satisfying motif touched upon multiple times, usually related to his footwear/lack of footwear. It’s not essential that the infertility issue be strengthened. It could just as easily be diminished.
A better way to satisfy the false promises would have been to make the Human Project less ambiguous. Say, for instance, that Miriam knew that the Human Project was a sort of ark, set up so that if any women showed natural immunities to the epidemic she could be cared for, and a new race of humans born. Suddenly, Theo’s goal to get Kee to the Tomorrow is no longer just a quest to save a woman and her baby from a violent world, it’s also a quest that specifically addresses the problem of infertility. Theo would not just be motivated to keep Kee away from murderous Luke, but to help the Human Project rebuild the human race. The movie can still have its open-ended, fade to black conclusion, but nobody would be asking for “30 minutes more,†maybe just a “50 years later†title card.
I didn’t find the ending to Children of Men disappointing because I recognised the story limit as, “Get Kee to the Tomorrow,†which is exactly where the story ends. As Speed, the ubiquitous example, proves, stories that persist past their limit become boring, even when the post-limit events are intrinsically thrilling. For whatever reason, I wasn’t lead astray by the setting. I certainly recognised that the protagonist’s goal wasn’t congruent with the setting, but I found the end title card sufficient to prove the world’s ultimate outcome.
Children of Men had two title cards. The one at the beginning occurred just after the bomb went off in the coffee shop and was accompanied by the sound of the ringing in Theo’s ears. The one at the end occurred just after the fade to black and was accompanied by the sounds of children’s laughter. It’s possible to read that any way you want, but for me, it was a clear indication that infertility ended.
Children of Men proves that stories must be informed by their setting. If there is a dominant issue raised by the setting, it must be addressed in the overall story. However good and complete a story is, it can still be the wrong story for a setting. Choose a setting that promises only what the overall story supplies. Children of Men fails in this regard. Infertility certainly played a crucial role, but the overall story was less concerned with curing infertility than it was with living in a world overwhelmed by refugees and terrorism. This dissonance between overall story and setting is what makes the story feel incomplete.
9 Jim // Aug 21, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Mia,
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis and the idea that the setting clashes with the overall story. It’s an interesting idea that I had never really considered.
However, I don’t think that this dissonance can account for the feeling of that “missing piece” that most audiences complain about when they talk of Children of Men. Some people were satisfied by the ending, many more (like me) were not.
I still feel that the disconnect some audience members felt came as the result of a missing act.
The Overall Story, the one through which all the characters in the story are dealing with centers around the problematic situation the world finds itself in. This much I think we agree on - that the objective characters aren’t so much concerned with infertility as they are with the violence and the oppression they find themselves locked in. Resolving this situation then, is the Goal of the story.
So whether or not Theo was intentionally working towards it, his successful shuttling of Kee to safety satisfied the role of the Protagonist. Somehow getting her to The Tomorrow was going to help bring about a positive resolution. It may be true that no one was motivated to cure infertility (Theo in particular), but this is inconsequential as it was not the Goal of the story. Resolving the state of war and oppression was and Kee was key to that.
Unfortunately, the final act (The Future) is only touched upon and therefore leaves open to interpretation the resolution. Although he did manage to bring Kee to the ship we still don’t know how the situation at large was resolved. Her arriving could’ve been a Success or it could’ve been a Failure. We don’t know.
Again, it’s my belief that this ambiguity had a purpose; the quote above says it all, Alfonso Cuaron’s original intent was to leave the film open for the audience to fill in on their own.
Hopefully they’ll make the right choice.
10 Mia // Aug 21, 2007 at 6:04 pm
In actual fact, I believe that the overall story class is better described as an activity. Your story form pushes Theo’s main character throughline into the activity class, but that makes no sense at all. The only activity that Theo undertakes- taking a road trip across Britain - is an activity that every single other character is also involved with. The most important character who isn’t involved with getting Kee across Britain is Janice, Jasper’s silent wife. Next after that is Alex, Nigel’s silent son. Even “Have you seen this dog†woman pushes the story along. There is nothing unique to Theo about that activity. Julian is the protagonist initially, but hands off to Theo. Jasper and Marichka are guardians. Miriam is a sort of sidekick. Luke, along with Patric and the rest of the Fishes, is the antagonist. Syd, other police, immigration officers and soldiers become the contagonists. Every character is concerned with taking possession of Kee and her baby, or keeping them out of other people’s possession.
Another reason why I believe that the overall story isn’t situation is because the story makes an effort to show people who aren’t trapped by the violent situation- Theo’s cousin Nigel lives safely away from the uprising, and Jasper has found an alternative way of life that protects him from it. Theo pulls these characters into the story only when he goes to each of them for help to move Kee to the coast.
It’s also much, much better to assign impact character Kee the situation class. She is defined by her unalterable physicality- she’s pregnant and a black refugee. Her concern is for her future situation- becoming a mother.
Assigning the overall story the class of situation also forces the subjective through line to be fixed attitude. I don’t think that’s a good fit at all. Theo and Kee’s relationship is not defined by their conflicting attitudes. Rather, I think their relationship is about turning Kee into a mother. When we first meet Kee Theo is dismissive of her (“What did you do, rob a bank?†Kee immaturely rolls her eyes). When Kee reveals her pregnancy to Theo she confesses that she is scared. Theo offers her parenting advice, at first joking disapproval of Kee’s choice in baby names (“It’s the first baby born in 18 years, you can’t call it Froley†“Bazooka? I was just getting used to Froley.â€), then he has to coach her to give birth despite how much it hurts, he also coaches her to wind a baby. Kee eventually names her baby Dylan, after Theo’s son, and Theo smiles. That is the resolution point for their relationship. Theo has turned an immature, scared girl into a mature, responsible mother. This throughline is best described by the class of manipulation.
As for the main character throughline, Theo starts the story with a fixed belief that there is no hope left in the world (“The world was ruined before the infertility thing even happenedâ€). His problem is disbelief. He changes partway through the story, and becomes defined by his fixed belief that Kee must, must, must be saved. He holds onto this belief even when he is shot.
The reason why the story feels unfinished is because the filmmakers created a world dominated by a situation, but then wrote a story about an activity. The activity was completed as promised, but so many audience members still want more. They were presented with a world defined by its situation, they wanted a story concerned with that situation. In fact, your insistence that the overall story really is concerned with resolving an external situation only proves to me just how frustrating this sort of narrative betrayal can be. None of the characters are motivated to resolve the external situation, but you instinctively know that they darn well ought to be.
11 Jim // Aug 21, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Interesting - perhaps there is even more of a disconnect then just the missing act. We’re both seeing two different storyforms from the same material.
Your interpretations of the throughlines seems to work - but I still maintain that the intent of the author was to illustrate a problematic situation in the overall story.
12 Mia // Aug 21, 2007 at 7:58 pm
The best way to resolve our different understandings of this film is to think about Children of Men in the same way A.I. Artifical Intelligence is analysed on the main Dramatica site.
Children of Men is adapted from a book written by P.D. James. The plot of the book differs greatly from that of the movie. The character of Kee does not exist. The road trip to the Human Project does not exist. The book is acutely focused on surviving the political and social effects infertility has wreaked on the world. BookTheo’s cousin, Xan, is the despot of England who abolishes democracy and rules the country tyrannically. The rebel group, the Five Fishes, do not need Theo to save the life of a pregnant girl, rather, they need him to influence his cousin into changing the oppressive situation the world finds itself in. BookJulian is pregnant, and gives birth to a healthy boy. The book ends with a face off between Xan and Theo. Xan is shot dead, and Theo becomes the leader of Britain.
The overall story of the book is undeniably a situation. The book story ends when the oppressive political situation is changed, and when the infertility situation is over (In the book, women are perfectly healthy. It is men who are infertile. The birth of a single fertile male is enough to ensure that the human race will flourish).
The movie, however, invents the character of Kee and focuses the story on her journey to the Human Project. The film makes women infertile, which means infertility can’t be solved so easily- the birth of a single female isn’t quite enough to ensure that humanity will thrive. The movie’s overall story is an activity: get Kee to the Bexhill weather buoy on time. It uses the world of the book as a backdrop, but then tells a story of a different class.
This is the problem. Alfonso Cuaron is trying to tell a story about an activity. But P.D. James’s story is about a situation. Cuaron’s activity story is complete. But he has inadvertently retained many of the signposts of P.D. James’ story that promised a situation story. While P.D. James’ story is complete in her book, it is only partially present in the film. There are more than missing acts, there are missing throughlines. The only piece of P.D. James’s story that is properly preserved is the world’s situation.
My analysis of Children of Men adequately describes Cuaron’s complete story. I see the retained fragments of P.D. James’ story as untapped potentials contained in the setting. From my point of view, the film properly explored its central activity story, and had a few pieces of an undeveloped situation story floating around in the background. From another point of view, the film failed to complete its central situation story; the secondary activity story should have acted as a stepping stone to the real situation problem.
There is one and a half stories in Children of Men. Appreciation for the film depends, in part, on which story you understood to be the focal point of the film. If you see the world as the focus, then the story will feel unfinished. If you see the activity as the focus, then the story is satisfying.
Why do so many people perceive the situation story to be the real focus of the story? Probably because it was introduced first. From memory, we don’t discover that Kee is pregnant until about half and hour into the story (the film itself is unusually short for a drama. It is only 95 minutes excluding the credits). I went into the movie theatre having already read a few reviews of the film. I knew that the story was about getting Kee to safety. This must have influenced my perception of the story.
Children of Men is a conflicted film caught between two masters. Does it want to follow P.D. James and her situation, or Alfonso Cuaron and his activity? Because P.D. James’ situation is so dominant, even after Cuaron radically altered the plot, he wasn’t able to remove all the signposts that falsely promised that his film was about a situation.
For me, Children of Men boils down to a complete activity story being ignorant of the dramatic promises its setting contains.
13 TMack // Oct 26, 2007 at 12:15 am
About the Main Character Change–Theo is much like the Bogart character in Casablanca. Both Theo and Bogart change from the movie’s start to the end, but in actuality, they both return to their original state=men of action and commitment to ideals. They revert. Doesn’t this kind of character differ from, for example, Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man or Meryl Streep’s Karen Silkwood, characters whose backstory characters were the same as the characters portrayed at the start of movie? Or Tom Cruise in War of the World? In Theo or Bogart, we are watching main characters restore their true nature, while Hoffman/Cruise find a new perspective of life.
14 Jim // Oct 26, 2007 at 10:20 am
As far as I understand, the Main Character’s backstory explains how they came to the point of being fully justified (how they came about having their blind spot). The forestory, or story, describes how they unravel themselves to the point of being able to see that blind spot and decide for themselves whether or not to change.
So I guess the answer to your question would be yes - they do describe different kinds of characters - but structurally they are same in that they both change.
Unfortunately I haven’t seen Marathon Man or Silkwood to comment on those specific examples.
The question to ask if you’re confused about a Main Character’s resolve is where the does the Main Character stand when the actual story starts, regardless of backstory. Then compare that to the end to determine whether or not they really changed.
15 TMack // Oct 26, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Jim,
I appreciate your comments to my questions about main characters, specifically main characters who would be defined as “activists”–social activists motivated by idealistic principles. You are right in that I was wondering whether backstory was ever a factor in analyzing a character’s change and therefore the story’s outcome. If we have a story about a disillusioned, jaded activist (like Theo) or Rick Blaine (Casablanca), the backstory (past) is going to play a more significant part of the film than in a film about a person who (in the process) becomes an activist (Spiderman). Theo’s “buttons” are in the past; Spiderman’s are in the present. But you are right in that structurally they are the same.
I have a special interest in stories about activists and it would be fascinating to apply the dramatica theory to them.
16 Matthew C. // Dec 6, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Children of Men did not seem at all incomplete to me. In fact, this movie had me bawling toward the end.
The world of this dystopian future has gone to shit. Everyone knows it: The powerful are living a dead, emotional-less existence. The disenfranchised are leading a somewhat more meaningful, yet bitterly painful and bleak life. Everyone knows there is no future in the current course of affairs, yet no one know how they can change things.
Then, along comes the child. Everyone can see this is what is wanted and what is needed, but they are so caught up in current affairs that they cannot embrace it. It takes a visionary to bring the child, a symbol of human-kind’s hope, to the people of tomorrow who can hopefully deal with it.
Will the people of tomorrow succeed? The film asks the viewer this question. That answer depends on you the viewer. Did you sit through that movie and not identify with the problems around you, in real life? Did you fail to see the symbolic parallels that the film tried so hard to match with the popular images of our society? If the viewers are unable to see the problems around them, then who will make the heroic and selfless sacrifices to bring hope to the future?
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