Prisoners (2013)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Prisoners is an intricately structured whodunit-thriller and simultaneously an intriguing moral tale.  Actual and metaphorical imprisonment are interwoven in a lengthy (146 mins) but compelling movie.

The film opens with a shot of a deer in snowy woods.  Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) softly recites the Our Father as his son Ralph aims and brings down the deer.  on the way home, Dover lectures Ralph on the importance of self-reliance and the possible collapse of society –  he is a deeply religious survivalist with a rigid sense of his own rightness, and as we later learn, an equally rigid core of rage.

Keller and his wife Grace (Maria Bello) take their two children to Thanksgiving at the home of their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis).  After a venison Thanksgiving dinner the youngest girls, Anna Dover and Joy Birch, set out to retrieve a whistle from the Dover home.  They fail to return, and after a brief, wild search the police are called in.

Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is assigned to lead the search for the children, concentrating on an RV seen near the house at the time of the disappearance.  The RV is located and its driver, Alex Jones (Paul Dano) is arrested, but there is no sign of the children.  Under interrogation, the simple-minded Alex is unable to provide any useful information, and Loki is forced to release him.  Hearing of this, an enraged Dover rushes to the police station and attacks Alex as he is escorted out.

Keller is arrested, but released, and that night he kidnaps Alex and takes him to an abandoned  house in which Dover’s father had shot himself.  Keller enlists a queasy Franklin in his project – “This ain’t right!” – and forces him to take part in the torture of Alex.

The set-up is complete.  An increasingly desperate and monstrous Dover runs his own private Abu Ghraib, while Loki continues the investigation.

Loki becomes the main focus.  We know he is a very successful detective, so much so that his boss tolerates his occasional insubordination.  We learn that he spent several years in juvenile detention, which no doubt explains his several crude tatts.  He is methodical, observant, and his calm demeanour is only occasionally broken by violent outbursts.  He begins by visiting local sex offenders, and when he visits a paedophile priest he discovers  decayed corpse, bound and gagged, in the man’s basement.  Under questioning, the priest claims to have killed the man because he confessed to several child murders, adding obscurely that “he warred against God”.

Loki’s investigation takes him to some startling and gruesome places, leads that turn to red herrings yet finally prove to be relevant as events unfold.  He tracks down another man first noticed at a candle-light vigil, and again finds much more than he had expected.

He is puzzled by the disappearance of Alex, but his attempts to question Dover meet a furious, contemptuous response.   Keller’s survivalist self-reliance and distrust of authority boil over whenever he meets Loki,  and he quickly reacts against anything that throws doubt on his own actions.  The prayerful, vengeful, unreflective religiosity that sustains Keller in his cruelty proves not to be his province alone; a hideously perverted religious obsession is at the heart of the central mystery.

There are many literal prisoners in the film, but almost all of the characters are also in some way prisoners of circumstance, or of their past.  There is enough space in the film to recognise this, even as the complex plot proceeds.  A contemplative mood is established by the score ( Jóhann Jóhansson), with its long, slow bass lines in the strings, by the production design, all muted greys and unsaturated browns and greens, and by Roger Deakins’ sharp, carefully framed images.

Villeneuve has a sure hand with his narrative, never spending time on exposition when the audience can fill the gaps for themselves.  He is strongly supported by his two leads.  Jackman plays a tightly-wound man who tries to prepare for all disasters, but  comes spectacularly unstuck in the face of a terrible event.  Gyllenhaal is the man who has learned from painful experience to take hold of the plough and hold on.  Jackson’s Denver is the more florid, a man with beliefs but no faith, and he sometimes succumbs to scenery-chewing, but Gyllenhaal’s Loki is more inward, a loner with a hard-earned faith in himself.