Photo title: Labyrinth (creative commons) by Hans Splinter https://www.flickr.com/photos/archeon/1471545358
Synopsis:
Prisoners (2013) is the film about a Pennsylvania detective trying to find two missing girls. As the case becomes confusing and the force of law finds its limits, the desperate father of one of the girls decides to take Justice into his own hands as far as possible to protect his family.
WHY TO WATCH IT?
Prisoners is a film to enjoy. It has lots of surprises and an intriguing plot. It is very thrilling and dramatic. It is unexpected, confusing. It is intense and it doesn’t let you go. It’s a trap. It’s scary too. No, there are no monsters. Some would say “the only monsters are ourselves”. That’s merciless. The human nature is often unable to answer some questions in extreme situations. Prisoners is a paradox of imprisonment. It makes you wonder how far would you go to protect your beloved ones.
Prisoners is a well written American movie by Aaron Guzikowski directed by an incredible French Canadian artist, Denis Villeneuve. It’s both art and entertainment. If you enjoy having your eyes glued to the screen, this is your movie. Don’t forget it’s performed by Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman. It’s their relation between these two that pushes us into this macabre story.
Besides, guys like Jake Gyllenhaal are not only actors but researchers. They’re fully interested in their characters. They get to know them so well that when they play them, it feels different. It feels authentic. Prisoners is an atmospheric movie, and mostly because of great cinematographer, Roger Deakins, whose frames are paintings in movement. There’s got to be a reason of why he’s been working with the Coen Brothers for a while. There’s a reason for Villeneuve to keep him in Sicario and for the upcoming sequel of the legendary Blade Runner.
The most important thing! Denis Villeneuve will take you to a place of a paradoxical freedom. As your moral values’ safety might vanish throughout this story, that freedom will feel slightly imprisoned. There’s no doubt this situation in which we are put into is a fictional nightmare that feels real. Millions of people have lived this situations. Kidnapping, losing a beloved one, avenging, mistakes, etcetera. The film is a map that simplifies the complexities of the real. It’s a map for the viewer, but a maze for the characters of this story. Victims in multiple ways. But hey, before reading the rest, just watch it and make up your own mind.
NOW, AFTER YOU’VE WATCHED IT…
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT…
Now, it makes A LOT of sense to talk about mazes, right? About mazes and prisoners. Aren’t mazes funny? The New Oxford American Dictionary defines the word maze as: a network of paths and hedges designed as a puzzle through which one has to find a way. What it isn’t clear about this definition is that the main reason for a maze to exist, before the guest finds his way out, is to imprison him inside. Mazes can be either funny or horrible, depending on the circumstances. If the maze we find is printed on a book, we’ll find it amusing. There are huge mazes too, where you rather use your feet to walk than just a simple pencil. But no matter what, those are made for the traveller to find his way. Despite their complications, most of them come with the promise that the guest will find his way out at some point.
Ironically, Prisoners not about those two little girls becoming prisoners and being trapped in a maze of some such. That hole where Keller ends up in, is not a maze. The crawl room where the Priest kept Alex Jones’ corpse, is not part of a maze neither. In fact, the only real maze in the movie, besides the ones that Bob Taylor draws, is the circumstance itself in which all these characters are imprisoned. Each prisoner has different ways. Some of them are the exact opposite from each other; some are mirroring others too. There might be one single way.
So, which are the storylines that caught your attention the most?
The next paragraphs are explanations of why these characters are prisoners and how they react to their situations. Sometimes, their past is a big part of their paths. Why? Because I believe this concept of prisoners trapped into a maze is the reason this movie goes beyond most conventional American thrillers (of course, there are plenty amazing thrillers in the U.S. it’s not even necessary to get into a topic like that). So, here we go…
DETECTIVE LOKI (Jake Gyllenhaal):
Detective Loki has a hidden past. His tattoos are the evidence that he was probably a delinquent; but now that he works in the police department, he is ashamed of his tattoos whenever he needs to talk to the victims of the case but his strength when he has to face criminals; he seems to be committed to the institution in which he works, probably way more than with the Huntington Boys, perhaps a correctional that traumatized him in the past. But he’s the hero and he barely has an arc. According to Denis Villeneuve, Loki represents the institution and that’s exactly what Jake Gyllenhaal’s character does. Luckily, he has solved the maze of his past and now is able to solve this one. Talking about mazes, sometimes the right path takes us far from the way out. Isn’t it tempting to change your way? He is tempted and understands those who change it, but he knows what he believes and is fully committed to who he is now. That’s why he respects the institution as much as he can, even though this case touches him in a very emotional and unique way.
KELLER DOVER (Hugh Jackman):
Keller Dover suffers a strong paradox. He is a hunter, a natural born killer and he is proud of it. It’s what his father has taught him. Be ready. This is used as a way of teaching his own son the sense of “protect your family”. On the other hand, he is grateful to God and, surely, he monotonously repeats “The Lord’s Prayer”. Interesting enough is, when he is more aware of what’s the meaning of what he’s been used to pray for his entire life, he finds himself troubled to repeat it again. “…And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”. What’s the path he chose in these maze? Definitely, the one which starts with the inscription: eye for an eye. As a matter of fact, the only visible thing in the Keller’s victim (Alex Jones played by Paul Dano) at some point is an eye.
This path is definitely the wrong one. He becomes a prisoner of this maze, of this specific system. But he is fully committed to it and, oppositely to Loki’s path, his takes him very close to find a way out. At the end, the only thing he can do, is to pray and to finally forgive those who trespassed against his family. Why doesn’t Denis Villeneuve show how detective Loki takes Keller Dover out of the hole? Because the director respects the concept behind the film and still gives us the hope of knowing what can happen after the film.
HOLLY JONES (Melissa Leo):
They say parents should never live to see their children die. Holly Jones (Melissa Leo), the antagonist of the film, seems to believe in god. In the past, she got married, started a family and lost her child. This religious, spiritual system in which she believed might have been based in faith. Depending on people, that faith can crumble easily and create a mess. Her solution to her problem is to kidnap other children in order to start a war against God. Revenge is often half-fulfilling but, as they keep seeking for revenge against a God that couldn’t answer the loss of her kid, her actions keep showing that she’s still lost in a maze where there’s no way out and therefore she becomes the first prisoner.
FATHER PATRICK DUNN (Len Cariou):
Father Patrick has a dark past. He has been found guilty for cases of molestation. How could something like that happen to a man who believes in god? Its a fact that sexual impulses are strong and, before we get wrong ideas and feelings about sexuality, it is important to understand it first. A priest is committed to a certain system too. Unfortunately, created by man, not by god (whether you believe in god or not). This system has forbidden him to explore an important side of him and therefore expressed how far he was from understanding what’s sexuality. And still, he kept on believing in god and being a priest. He’s lost in his own maze. As dazed and confused as a drunkard, because he doesn’t know how to get out of it. Years later, he finds Alex Jones (Holly’s husband, not Paul Dano but the corpse detective Loki finds in the crawling room) who decides to confess that war against god that the Jones had started. Ironically, he tries to redeem himself by abducting this man, action that answers an apparent good cause. Unfortunately, Holly is still out there and this way of revenging is another contradiction he proposes to solve his maze. Just as Keller Dover, he becomes the kidnapper and evidences that his way of thinking is eye for an eye, a never ending cycle.
BARRY MILLAND “ALEX JONES” (Paul Dano):
The character played by Paul Dano is one of the prisoner we’d like to see him in a better situation. He is trapped and has been trapped right from the beginning. Though his circumstance matches with Holly’s. As he needed parents to take care of him, the Jones family decide to kidnap him to replace their lost child. So, he adapts to this new system where he is forced to be a son under odd, unique circumstances which he has nothing but to accept them. This creates a state of comfortability in his mind. Once he is being tortured by Keller, he finds (quite late but still he does it) an amazing answer inside his own maze. He is not Alex Jones. Even though we don’t know anything else about what happens to him afterward, we know that at least he’s found a starting point to solve his maze.
BOB TAYLOR:
The maze drawer! The first time I watched the film, I thought the idea of mazes was a nice superficial element, just one more device used in detective stories. After thinking what was his purpose in the movie, I realized he wasn’t even working for Holly. I was slightly disappointed, very confused. But I knew Denis Villeneuve wouldn’t direct a movie like that, so I watched it again and again, to find what was the purpose for this character to exist. Isn’t it obvious now? Yes. Luckily Bob Taylor is way more than just a way to fool the audience and the idea of a maze is more than that superficial device and characteristic of the antagonist. Bob is the one who cannot escape from the maze. Bob takes Loki and us as far as he can from the ending of the maze. Following Bob meant the All is lost. Making us believe that there is no way out. He himself had no way out to his trauma. He’s been abducted by the Jones and, once he escaped, he could never let his trauma go. The only answer he finds is to repeat what happened to him and to recreate what, somehow, he has been taught now. His trauma becomes his routine and he finds peace and feels safe inside of his maze with no way out. He is a Sisyphus pushing the rock up the mountain, knowing that it will fall down again, and again, and again…
FRANKLIN BIRCH:
Franklin finds himself trapped in this overwhelming circumstance. His path is one of the most interesting, mostly due to his passivity. He is a conscious observer of the circumstances and he is harmless. Being a vegetarian shows his ethics, somehow. Unfortunately, he is always a victim of circumstances and that’s his comfort zone. He doesn’t make any active decisions and he accepts the circumstances as long as it doesn’t go against something or someone bigger. In example: after the thanksgiving dinner, he is asking for some musical suggestions to play on the trumpet. When they ask for Springsteen, Franklin evidences that he wouldn’t feel good by playing it when drunk. Springsteen is his boss. Of course, before music, his family goes first, but there’s another boss who is not called Franklin. It’s Nancy, his wife. His lack of decisions leads him to become a witness of violence and becomes a prisoner of a difficult maze within Keller’s and Nancy decisions, the circumstances and his morals. Which way to go? Letting the possible kidnapper of my daughter go away or becoming a witness of an abduction and insane, violent torture? He is aware of the paradoxical implications of a victim becoming the kidnapper.
RALPH DOVER:
Finally, Ralph has a smaller path but an interesting one, related to Keller. It’s all about tradition. It is his own father who, due to the circumstances, imprisons him in the transition of becoming “the man of the house”. His school? A father who teaches him how to hunt, how to kill; a mother who believes in a system where men are in charge; a grandfather who used to say “be ready” and later commits suicide. Neither Keller or Ralph understand what they repeat, until they leave it. The truth is: you cannot be ready for everything. So, be ready, for not feeling ready. Ralph is obviously nothing but repeating what his father says, from prayers to why to kill animals and “keeping the population down” (so many ironies). At the end he learns that the only thing he can do is to confront his own father, but it never leads him to anything. His path is one full of anxiety and passivity too. In a way, it’s a mirror to Bob Taylor’s path, who does the same. He just repeats what he learns, even though he doesn’t understand it.
Prisoners is, in conclusion, a film which explores the morals of human behaviour and structural violence. The film uses mazes as the way our subconscious craves for a solution to our traumas and other unresolved problems. The ending of the film could’ve gone longer, having detective Loki finding Keller Dover. But that’s not the movie about. A majority bets on Loki finding Keller, but that’s really ‘out of the maze’.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Enemy and Prisoners where shot almost during the same time. As Villeneuve said, Enemy was important for him and Jake Gyllenhaal to understand the development of character and story. I’d include to that, the creation of a thrilling atmosphere, which is sometimes forgotten. Hopefully this analysis is fruitful and as well an invitation to watch Enemy, another gem from this brilliant director, a majestic adaptation of one of the greatest writers in the world: Jose Saramago.
NoMasRemakes 