I have the strange habit of treating movies like an academic experience. I almost always, assuming there is sufficient light, take some notes. In this movie, I took copious notes, but something strange happened in the latter 90 minutes of it–I stopped taking notes.
The last time something like this happened was when I watched the feast scene in “Babette’s Feast.” The food and experiences around the table captivated me and I simply put the pen away and savored the moment. Something similar, but on a whole different level of emotion took place as I watched “Prisoners.” I have a high tolerance for long movies, especially since my sense of character-development is always ambitious. But I confess up-front that 150 minutes for a movie brings out my Simon Cowell critical spirit to the forefront. As I wrote a few days ago, editing is an art best served all the time. Therefore, if the time excess is merely fill-in with empty rhetoric, may the director and his screenwriters suffer artistic purgatory.
Entering into modern movies is a challenge to me. I have little by little grown distasteful of them. It may be that I am aging crank-fully, but perhaps it’s the speedy tendency in modern movies to throw in the unnecessary rubbish as a display of edginess and post-modern brownie points. These days, most works after 1980, in my estimation, age as well as cheap Publix Port.
Enough meandering. A parishioner and fairly astute fellow challenged me to watch “Prisoners.” This 2013 kidnapping-thriller pushed me to the edge of my sofa, not in the tenth minute, but the first few seconds. I thrive in symbolism and in the first minute, Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” shocked my initial complacency and vaccinated me with a James Jordan injection that I gladly accepted.
The scene opens on a snowy forest with a glorious deer silently roaming his domain. The father (Hugh Jackman) begins reciting the Lord’s prayer as the camera pulls back to show his son’s shotgun ready to make his first kill. As the words exit the dad’s mouth (“forever and ever, amen!), the son, played by Dylan Minnette, releases a perfect shot bringing his dinner down to the crimson-filled snow. The scene leaves you speechless, and there are still 147 minutes left.
The movie traces the journey of Keller Dover ( Hugh Jackman) and Franklin Birch (Terrence Howard) and their families. The two neighboring families enjoy a simple suburban life with deer meat and wine and music. Children enjoy the peaceful life of play and pleasantries fitting for their age. But all that changes when both men lose their daughters. The two girls ask to go on an innocent walk and do not return. The movie reveals the human despair of two families who quickly transitioned from a peaceful environment to an immediate apocalyptic context as they wrestle with questions of emotional survival and the existential perils of seeing life through the lens of loss. Hugh Jackman’s character shows his humanity throughout in sermon-life fashion refreshing his soul in biblical recitations, even when he enters into the inferno-scene of confronting the supposed abductor.
The movie portrays the ethical turmoil of men who will do whatever it takes to recover their daughter, and in the process, they must contemplate whether losing their identity and humanity, as a result, is worth the effort. Keller’s relationship with Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal, who is assigned to the case) is perhaps a movie itself. Their relationship plays out like a battle between two men seeking redemption from their separate hells. Like the Greek god Loki, Loki’s character is playful, but not in an un-serious way, but in how he communicates life. Thus far, life is filled with uncertainty and there is no cause to pursue until he meets Keller. Then, his life is a quest for certainty. He searches for redemption, and his pursuit is furious. Keller and Loki interweave the themes of doubt and the sheer force of certainty as they find themselves constantly pushing their limits to find the truth.
By the 100th minute, I marveled at how far depravity, grace, and mercy can come and how easy these virtues and vices can change in a twinkling of an eye. The ending, in my estimation, proves Director Villeneuve’s brilliance as he neatly connects symbols and ties the whole project with a brilliant hermeneutical bow. We must be prepared for whatever comes our way. To see a child restored to the safety of her home will drive even the most common man to do the unthinkable. If you can bear the gruesome scenes and the creepiness spread throughout various characters (there is no nudity) and enter into the pain of these fathers and mothers, you will not lose 150 minutes of your life, but you will gain it by delving deeply into the ethical and theological implications of this emotional magnum opus.
