CW: discussions of torture, suicide, and child endangerment
Denis Villeneuve’s latest film, Dune: Part 2 releases this weekend in theaters. I hope audiences have an amazing experience with the film. I hope the film finds great success so that the studio gives Villeneuve the go-ahead to make the final part in his planned trilogy.
Regrettably, I won’t be watching Dune: Part 2 this weekend, and I have only myself to blame. For some films that are adaptations of novels, I don’t mind watching the film before reading the book. For other films that adapt books, I need to read the source first. My preferences are purely subjective. It just so happens that Dune falls into the latter category. I want to read at least the first few novels Frank Herbert wrote in his sci-fi saga before watching any adaptations. I could’ve planned for this better, but sadly, I didn’t and therefore will miss out.
Because I won’t be writing about Dune: Part 2 this weekend, I will take this opportunity to reflect on the films of Villeneuve that I have seen. Villeneuve has become one of my favorite directors working today, and the first film of his that I watched—which began my admiration for him—was the 2013 film Prisoners.
Prisoners, directed by Villeneuve, written by Aaron Guzikowski, is the focus of today’s discussion. Before I continue, shout-out to my brother. He and I love watching movies and discussing them at length. We’re both film nerds, and one of our shared joys is geeking out together. Many of my thoughts on film find their shapes after bouncing off his mind.
Also, I want to give a nod to Richard Roeper, whose video review of the film that I watched years ago (but sadly cannot recover right now) pointed out that the movie had religious themes. Thanks to him, I was attentive to the religious ideas in the film during my first viewing.
Prisoners is a bleak, brutal crime/mystery film that is also about faith. This subject is revealed through the fact that the first lines of dialogue are a father reciting the Lord’s Prayer as he watches his son hunt a deer. When father and son drive home together, the cross hanging from the rear view mirror inside the car is in the center of the frame. Throughout the film, characters are depicted praying. And there are a few overt references to faith, some of which I found a little too on-the-nose, but I will touch on that later.
The father who took his son hunting in the opening scene is Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), who brings his wife Grace (Maria Bello), teenage son Ralph (Dylan
Minnette), and five- or six-year-old daughter Anna (Erin Gerasimovich) to the home of his friends and neighbors, the Birches, for Thanksgiving. He delivers venison from the hunted deer. The parents of the Birch family, Franklin (Terrence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis) are similar in age to Keller and Grace, and their daughters Eliza (Zoë Soul) and Joy (Kyla-Drew) are similar in age to Ralph and Anna, respectively. The parents hang out, the teens pair off, and the children go on their adventures. This sequence is idyllic and happy, but the overcast weather creates a somber atmosphere. It is a foreshadowing of the nightmare that follows.
Anna and Joy ask to run up the street to the Kellers’ home to pick up one of Anna’s toys. They don’t come back.
The rest of the film follows the two families as they desperately try to search for the missing girls as well as Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), the lead on the investigation.
The camera doesn’t shy away from the anguished parents as they grapple with unimaginable emotions: grief and fear battling against desperation and hope. I am particularly haunted by Viola Davis’s performance in a scene during which Nancy is interviewed by Loki. She sits at the dining table covered with pictures of Joy, her eyes are almost glazed, and her face is heavy with disbelief and pain. Another scene that destroys me is when Grace can neither leave her bed nor sleep. She lies in bed in a near-catatonic state. Maria Bello’s voice is weak, almost devoid of life, as she wonders aloud why her daughter hasn’t come home yet.
The characters are on an emotional scale weighing faith and despair. With each day passing without a sign of the girls, the scale tips further into hopelessness.
Keller fixates on the first suspect held by the police for questioning, a young man named Alex (Paul Dano). Alex was found by police in an RV that had been sighted in the Dovers’ neighborhood on Thanksgiving, an RV that also disappeared when the young girls did. The police release him because they don’t find physical evidence in the RV and because Alex has a mental handicap. However, Keller is convinced Alex is responsible.
In the most chilling and brutal plot thread in the film, Keller kidnaps Alex, imprisons him in Keller’s father’s old house, and tortures Alex in order to get a confession.
Is Keller’s conviction an illustration of what happens when a belief is so immovable that it leads to abhorrent actions? I don’t think belief is enough to compel behavior. Certain beliefs become appealing or acceptable when mixed with particular circumstances. There is always an interplay of ideology and material conditions. In Keller’s circumstances, the dead end of the investigation coupled with Alex being the only person suspected so far causes Keller to grasp with an iron grip the belief that Alex is responsible.
In an intense scene, Keller brings Franklin to the captive Alex in order to convince Franklin to help in the torture. “We hurt him until he talks, or they’re gonna die,” Keller cries. In this way, Keller is not unlike violent extremists. Yet, I think extremism is a form of despair.
Despair is a lack of belief or hope. In his horrid plan, Keller lacks the belief that another option is possible. The fact that he is falling into despair is further pointed out in the film through the detail that his father’s house is the site of his father’s suicide.
The descent into despair continues for the characters and us audience members watching the movie. Another harrowing sequence involves Loki arresting a new suspect, Bob Taylor (David Dastmalchian) and investigating Bob’s home. When he bursts into a room filled with locked storage containers, Gyllenhaal’s face is warped by horror. Loki, and us viewers, expect the worst. Loki rips open each container, crying out for Anna and Joy, finding bloodied children’s clothes and snakes in the boxes.
This harrowing film only gets more gut-wrenching. Loki has the Birches and Keller visit the police station to identify photos of the clothes. If any of the bloodied clothes belong to the girls, then the children are in all likelihood dead. I can’t shake Jackman’s and Davis’s shattering performances as they positively identify their daughters’ belongings.
All hope is lost. All the evidence points to a horrible reality.
What is faith? Knowledge and wisdom are grounded in information, facts, observations, evidence. Faith exists in the absence of evidence, sometimes in spite of the evidence.
Keller still thinks his daughters are alive. Loki won’t rest until he finds the bodies. As they continue, they make more revelations. A deeper search of Bob’s house reveal that the suspect, who commits suicide while in custody, was merely miming a monster. The blood on the clothes was pig’s blood, and most of the clothes were taken straight from the clothing store. His one crime was sneaking into the homes of the Dovers and the Birches to steal clothing from their missing daughters’ rooms.
Soon, Joy is found alive. She has escaped from her captor but is drugged. Her escape gives Keller and Loki hope that they might find Anna.
Loki eventually finds the imprisoned and brutalized Alex in the rundown house Keller had imprisoned him in.
By the film’s end, the true culprit is found and killed in a gunfight against Loki. Loki then finds Anna, who is alive but has been drugged heavily. And this is when the scene that I appreciate the most in this movie happens.
Shoutout to cinematographer Roger Deakins and editors Joel Cox and Gary Roach.
Loki drives in a mad dash through the rain with blood dripping into his eyes, trying to find help for Anna. The editing and cinematography are masterful. The windshield is a blurry mess of distorted orange headlights from the other cars on the highway. Loki’s car skids and slides, constantly an inch away from a horrible crash. Loki pleads aloud for Anna to stay with him. “Don’t die. Don’t die,” he begs, tears flowing down his face. He is praying for her to be saved. And we, the viewers, are in the car with Loki and Anna, thanks to the masterful execution of this scene. We are praying, too.
Our faith is rewarded. Loki pulls over into a hospital. He makes it. Anna lives.
After the unshakable grasp of this film as it has taken us through the deepest darkness, the release into the light at the end is like an answered prayer. Without the darkness, the ending would not have as much of an impact as it does.
I sometimes wonder if faith is truly faith unless it is tested. I consider myself a reluctant person of faith. I believe in many things that clearly defy all observable evidence. I don’t have a choice but to believe. For instance, despite what history has taught us about the depths and pervasiveness of human evil, I have faith that love and goodness are noble ends, and that they will prevail. This faith keeps the darkness in my heart from overwhelming me. It allows me to not give up.
The film’s ending isn’t completely happy, however. Because of his crimes, Keller will go to jail. Due to the fact that he gave into despair, he won’t be able to fully reunite with his daughter, not until he serves his prison sentence.
Keller’s actions and their consequences ask the audience members how each of us would handle his crisis. Would our faith hold? Would we do what he did, or something just as abhorrent, if our loved one went missing?
In my personal navigation of faith and individual responsibility, I think about a hadith a Muslim chaplain called my attention to years ago. I was meeting with him during what I would consider a public crisis. He was advising me about faith and action.
According to the hadith, a follower asked Prophet Muhammad about a camel. The man asked if he should tie the camel to the tree to make sure the camel stays safe, or if he should pray to God for the camel’s safety. Prophet Muhammad said to pray and to also tie the camel to the tree.
There is a point where no more actions can be taken, when we’ve done all we could. This is the point where I lean on faith. Yet, what is that line at which action stops?
What I admire about the unflinching nature of this movie is that Keller also has to decide the point at which he has done everything he can to save his daughter. The point at which he draws the line, however, does not preclude him from kidnapping and torturing a young man who also happens to have a mental handicap.
There’s only one major moment in the film in which I felt that the movie’s unflinching nature wavered. The one thing I would change about the film is when the culprit explains the motivations behind kidnapping and killing children. The culprit says, “Making children disappear is the war we wage with God. Makes people lose their faith, turns them into demons…” To me, this was when the subtext became text. The culprit didn’t need to spell this out. The events of the film, including Keller’s downfall, convey this point. This moment felt like an instance of the film doubting itself and its ability to send its ideas to the audience without making them obvious.
Overall, though, I admire how a film can meditate on faith in a way that feels thoughtful, and not hokey. I tend to feel personal friction when I experience a story about faith because too often, everything in the story feels easy. This is just my personal bias, but a hardened faith, a bloodied and bruised faith, is the kind of faith that I understand. I think Prisoners conveys what this type of faith feels like, not through its brutal violence per se, but through its dark subject matter and exploration of people who both fall apart and who make it through.
This film made me want to watch more of Denis Villeneuve’s work, and I’ve loved every film of his I’ve seen. I hope to discuss more of his films soon.
Excellent essay! I think this is your best yet :)