Children of Men: Analysis

April 3, 2007

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.