Reconsidering Children of Men

May 25, 2009

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 ( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ ) . Can acts be right in themselves, or do they require some positive result?

I responded:

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.

Jason L. thought the ending was too optimistic:

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.

The Promise of the Setting

And now we get to the good stuff. A couple of months after I first published the original article, reader Mia stepped in and set me straight about not only the storyform (which I now feel I incorrectly identified) but also this idea of the “promise of the setting.” Read on to see how this developed:

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.

I responded:

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.

Mia responded:

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.”), 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 happened”). 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.

I responded:

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.

Mia responded:

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.

So there you can see the source of my motivation for writing the first article and why some find it lacking significant resolution. Children of Men, the movie, fails to fulfill the promise of its setting.

Additional Feedback

The last comments moved on beyond this idea. The first from TMack:

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.

To which I responded:

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.

TMack answered back:

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.

And then MatthewC wrapped things up:

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?

The Promise of Discussion

As stated in the opening, my mind was changed concerning the open-endedness of this film. While I still think my analysis was correct in terms of the setting that was presented, I don’t believe it accurately reflects what is really going on in the story as presented to us. I actually don’t mind the ending as much now, and can see (thanks to Mia’s input) the reasons why I had problems with it. I encourage anyone who has comments about articles I’ve written to send them in. I do read everything, and more importantly, if it’s enough to change my mind, I’ll more likely than not have to include them in a new article!