Over the
weekend I saw the film “Prisoners” twice.
This is NOT a happy, uplifting film.
This is a film about two children who are kidnapped on Thanksgiving Day
in broad daylight. So why did I see it
twice? Why did I put myself through that
intense, brutal emotion? The answer is
because I couldn’t NOT see the film again.
“Prisoners” has a simple premise:
kidnapping. The premise is simple, yes,
but the film is far from it; a major reason being the main characters and what
they represent:
Keller
Dover:
Played
flawlessly by Hugh Jackman, is a father trying to find his daughter; simple? No.
Keller IS a father BUT he is also incredibly flawed and in my eyes
disturbed. Something haunts this man. Something haunted this man way before his
daughter was taken. It could have been
his father’s suicide but I feel it is more than just that. Keller’s past haunts him. He is an alcoholic although it is only spoke
of in two lines in the film. He is also
a violent man. The film begs the question,
was the violence brought out due to a horrible situation OR was it coming
inevitably? That I do not know, but it
is a question and I do wonder. Was this
man always haunted by violence OR was it this due to this terrible ordeal? My inclination is his anger and violence came
out do this terrible, violent ordeal.
That being said, there is/was darkness in Keller Dover and no one had to
point it out to us (the audience). All
of this came out organically through story, something not often seen nowadays.
So, Keller
Dover was disturbed, was violent and was prepared for anything. One of his first lines in the film is to his
son, saying something to the effect of: the best thing your grandfather taught
me was always be prepared. Oil goes dry,
no food in the grocery stores. People
turn on each other. Keller was
prepared. He was prepared for everything
as his basement shows. He is stocked for
the apocalypse with guns, ammunition, food, water, a gas mask and many other
things. This man was prepared for
anything and everything, accept what happened to his family, what happened to
his daughter. He wasn’t prepared for her
to be taken. He couldn’t be. No one could.
This is a horror no parent expects or can imagine and Keller wasn’t
prepared but he did turn on people. As
he stated in that line, HE turned on people.
I think in
many ways Keller turned into whatever he despised or was running from. Keller went from victim father, to
perpetrator kidnapper. When the police
let a suspect go due to lack of evidence Keller Dover becomes a man
obsessed. He becomes so obsessed he
tortures, starves and beats a man with the IQ of a 10 year old. So, did the victim remain the victim or
become the perpetrator or both? I say,
both.
Detective
Loki:
The best performance
I’ve ever seen from Jake Gyllenhaal. It
is stated very early in the film that Loki has a 100% success rate. He saves people. A lot of people had issues with Loki’s eye
twitch. I found it very, very
interesting because ever time Loki twitches, it is an intense or important
scene. There is brief mention that Loki
was in a boys home… is that why he has the twitch? Every time Detective Loki was in a scene I
couldn’t help but focus on the pain behind his eyes. Was Loki hurt as a child, kidnapped,
molested? I tend to think so. He is SO focused, he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t have a family. After all, the first time we meet him is
Thanksgiving night and he is eating dinner at a Chinese food restaurant ALONE.
When Loki
works this case, when he interrogates suspects, you see it in his eyes. He is NOT okay. This is a damaged man. This is a hurting man and this is another man
who is obsessed. He is obsessed with
helping find people who were hurt. Does
this represent his past the way the violence represents Keller’s? I think so.
Loki goes to the home of a suspect to talk to their aunt. The suspect is the man with the IQ of a 10
year old who Keller kidnaps. In the
man’s possessions, Loki finds a toy car.
This seems like nothing in that scene, but later it is not. When the case for the girls goes cold after a
suspect who may have the girls dies, Loki goes to his desk, smashes everything
on it and we once again see that toy. He
takes that toy and like a child pushes it back and forth, once again the pain
behind his eyes. This man is as damaged
as Keller but for very different reasons.
In the end
of the film, the man Keller tortured turns out to be a drugged kidnapped man
himself. So lost, so drugged, he now has
the IQ of a 10 year old boy. That man
did lead Keller to his daughter’s kidnapper but instead of trusting the police,
Keller took matters into his own hands and winds up in a hole, with a bullet in
his leg, still without his daughter. Loki
finds the kidnapper and saves Keller’s daughter. The last scene of the film is Loki and the
police at the kidnapper’s home casing the ground because numerous children had
been kidnapped over time. As it begins
to snow and the ground goes cold, the police leave. We, the audience know Keller is in a hole - not
fifty feet from Loki with a whistle but Loki, does not. The lights go out and the wind picks up. There is a faint whistle blow. Loki looks around and decides it’s the
wind. This happens twice more and then
the whistle blows loud. Loki looks to
the direction of the hole and the screen blacks out and the word PRISONERS
appears.
In my eyes,
the word PRISONERS appearing shows that every character in the film is a
prisoner. The girls were prisoners to
their captors. Keller was a prisoner to
his violence and his past and Loki was a prisoner to his past and his obsession
to his work. They are all prisoners to
something….
The film
asks us, what are we prisoners to?
- George
McCann
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