A protagonist can initiate an action and then lose the ability to determine its terms. Johnny, Barry, and Bill have different plans, but their stories require us to distinguish between will, resources, and control over other people’s responses.
Johnny Clay: Organizing Operations Doesn’t Eliminate Others’ Initiative
In The Killing, Johnny devises a plan that depends on coordinated actions. The division of tasks turns different people into parts of a shared operation. That organization makes it possible to anticipate steps and needs, but it doesn’t turn the participants into lifeless mechanisms. Each person still has relationships, concerns, and conversations that can introduce information from outside the planned circuit.
The study of Johnny and the limits of control develops the heist. From the protagonist’s perspective, what matters is that his initial centrality comes from his organizational ability. He’s the one who brings people together, makes decisions, and proposes a future. The film can acknowledge that competence without granting him control over all the conditions that will make the outcome possible or impossible.
The threat doesn’t have to come solely from a technical error. Someone might reveal something, reinterpret a promise, or act out of a relationship the plan hadn’t accounted for. The audience gets access to some of these initiatives through scenes where Johnny isn’t present. The narrative thus retains a broader scope than its organizer’s perspective.
When conditions change, the protagonist has to respond to problems he didn’t choose. Initiative turns into reaction. That doesn’t mean he immediately stops making decisions, but his options are limited by consequences and other people’s actions. The analysis distinguishes between continuing to act and retaining the ability to define which situation needs to be resolved.
Barry: Moving Forward Can Increase Dependence
Barry Lyndon follows a trajectory in which changing one’s position requires ties to people and institutions. The protagonist learns, improvises, and seizes opportunities, but the resources he gains aren’t always his to use freely. A uniform, protection, or marriage places him within systems with rules of their own. His rise can expand his ability to act while also multiplying the conditions he has to maintain.
The education and dependence of Redmond Barry make it possible to study this paradox without summarizing his entire biography. Gaining the appearance of belonging doesn’t guarantee lasting acceptance. The character can influence his immediate behavior, but he can’t decide on his own how those who control titles, relationships, or property will classify him. Ambition encounters limits that can’t be reduced to a lack of willpower.
The internal divisions of the film give the audience a perspective on the trajectory. Barry experiences particular opportunities, while the narrative’s structure makes it possible to see a broader direction. The difference between these two scales doesn’t make every decision a futile gesture. It shows that an action can have local consequences and still fail to secure the life project it was meant to serve.
Family relationships add goals that don’t exactly align with social ambition. Caring, impressing, protecting, or holding on to a position can require incompatible behaviors. The protagonist loses control not only because an outside force opposes him, but also because his aims are no longer organized without conflict. The story can shift its focus when something that seemed like a means takes on emotional consequences of its own.
Bill: Seeking Answers Can Hand the Journey Over to Others
In Eyes Wide Shut, Bill goes out into the city after a conversation that changes how he sees his relationship with Alice. His journey isn’t organized around a plan as clearly defined as Johnny’s. Finding, exploring, checking, or regaining a sense of security are impulses that shift with each encounter. The film preserves that fluidity without requiring a single goal to explain all his actions.
The character of Bill and his privileges make it possible to recognize the resources he actually has: money, credentials, and familiarity with certain services. These means facilitate some responses, but they don’t make the rules of every space clear. Gaining access can lead to another door, another condition, or a situation where someone else decides what he should do.
The search becomes reactive when encounters raise new questions. Bill returns to places, asks for explanations, and tries to verify accounts. Each step may depend on information that others choose to provide or withhold. The fact that the camera follows him doesn’t mean he directs the chain of events. His centrality to the viewer and his authority within the world depicted are two different things.
The power of institutions helps compare these cases without claiming that the same organization is behind them all. Johnny depends on collaborators; Barry, on networks and social rules; Bill, on access and partial testimony. The specific conflict lies where someone else’s response changes the room to maneuver. There’s no need to classify all three stories under a single form of tragedy to observe that shift.
The beginnings can establish different relationships between intention and outcome. An explained plan creates expectations of execution; a biography opens up a trajectory; an intimate conversation sets a journey in motion. To follow the loss of initiative, we need to recognize what each beginning promised. This helps distinguish a frustrated goal from a transformed one, and a personal decision from a response imposed by new circumstances.
Films analyzed: Stanley Kubrick, The Killing (1956); Barry Lyndon (1975); Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
View all articles in Narrative, Screenplay, and Adaptation in Kubrick