There are two forces driving Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) in the film Prisoners, directed by Denis Villeneuve. First off, he’s a religious man, exemplified by him uttering the Lord’s Prayer in the opening moments of the film. The second force is his mantra ‘pray for the best, prepare for the worst.’ His basement is filled with bottled water and canned food and everything else he might need to protect his family if society took a bad turn. What happens then, when you take this man and put him in the most terrible situation; one he didn’t prepare for? What happens when his only solution forces him to turn away from God?
Prisoners is not a light film. Villeneuve paints a bleak world, marred by kidnappings, torture, and suicide. It often gets compared to Se7en for its dark and gritty style, but at least Se7en manages to pull off moments of humour here and there, and ultimately is about a hardened detective’s journey from pessimism to optimism. Prisoners, on the other hand, is all downhill, spiritually-speaking.
‘You made me feel so safe,’ sobs Keller’s wife several days after their daughter has been kidnapped. It’s this moment, this external pressure exerting on him, that pushes Keller to do the unthinkable; kidnapping and torturing the mentally deficient man he believes took his daughter, whom the police have dismissed as a suspect. It’s an action that goes against everything Keller’s religion stands for. After several days of torturing his victim, he can’t even bring himself to finish the Lord’s Prayer, stumbling repeatedly over the line ‘as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ Keller has changed, and it’s not for the better.
Negative change arcs like this get a bit of a bad rap for simply trying to be ‘edgy,’ and you’ll see a lot of new writers try to pull them off in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. What makes Keller’s negative change arc work though, is how his change is a direct result of the clash of ideologies at the heart of the film. The kidnapper has a philosophy: “Making children disappear is the war we wage with God. Makes people lose their faith.” By succumbing to the temptation to exact revenge on the man Keller believed took his daughter, the kidnapper won.
Like I said, all of this is very bleak, but what’s interesting is that Keller isn’t the only main character in this movie. We also follow along with Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his investigation into Keller’s daughter’s disappearance. Loki doesn’t have much of a character arc to speak of—like most detectives in fiction, the catharsis we experience through his character comes from his ability to discover and link clues. However, this forward progression is full of mysteries and questions to keep the audience leaning in and has the ability to temper the overwhelming negativity of Keller’s arc so that by the time the movie’s over, you don’t feel quite as haunted.
I think this is a really smart choice. If the writer gave Loki some kind of positive change arc—some deep meaning he discovered in himself as he searched for Keller’s daughter—I think it would dilute the film’s theme and pull attention away from the more interesting change happening in the story. His flat arc works to provide plot progression, conflict with Keller, and a way out of Keller’s increasingly depressing point of view, which needs to let up every now and then or risk souring the whole movie.
In the end, Prisoners is a movie about how when the chips are down—when the stakes are life and death—humanity becomes a shadow of itself, and the emotional toll this can take on someone who previously thought they were a good person. You don’t expect to walk away from a movie like that saying you had a good time, and yet I did. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?
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