PRISONERS
Prisoners is a thriller/detective feature film directed by Dennis Villeneuve and written by Aaron
Guzikowski, which came to theaters in 2013. Similar to Incendies, also directed by Dennis Villeneuve,
which we saw in theaters in 2011, it uses much less flashbacks when dealing with quest and
extremism themes compared to Incendies. When we compare another film directed by Dennis
Villeneuve, Sicario, which was released in theaters in 2015, it creates a dark image, while the films
are very close to each other, while Prisoners focuses less on the element of violence. What makes
Prisoners special is the intense symbolization fed by Christianity and mythologies used in the
narration, and the director's keeping the small and big details that will lead to the solution of the
event on the plan throughout the film.
The film is about the abduction of Anna Dover and Joy Birch, the little girls of the Dover and Birch
families, who celebrate Thanksgiving together. While her parents, Keller Dover, Grace Dover, Franklin
Birch, and Nancy Birch, are playing outside, little Anna and Joy never return, and the only suspect is
Alex Jones, who was on the street with his trailer at the time. Detective Loki, the detective in charge
of the girls' abduction case, releases Alex Jones for lack of evidence of his guilt, but when Alex tells
Keller Dover as he leaves the police station that "they didn't cry when they kidnapped them," Keller
Dover kidnaps Alex Jones and begins torturing him to reveal the girls' whereabouts. Detective Loki is
also trying to find the girls by examining the evidence and suspects. These two events form the script
of the movie. On the part of Keller Dover, while psychological conflicts, the effort to keep the family
together, and seeing how far a person can go, in the story of Detective Loki, we witness a detective
who becomes obsessed with the mystery of the case and solving the case.
The script of the movie is based on the child abduction of Holly Jones and her husband, who were
very religious in their youth, when their child died of cancer, causing them to separate their children
from people and turn them away from God, in order to fight God. Even though her husband died,
Holly Jones continued these kidnappings, and her latest victims are Anna Dover and Joy Birch. The
first suspect of the movie, Alex Jones, whose real name is Barry (we will refer to the character as Alex
Jones throughout the article), was kidnapped by the Jones couple years ago and exposed to LSD and
ketamine extensively, and although he is an adult, he has the intelligence of a 10-year-old boy, while
the other suspect is Bob Taylor. Years ago, she was abducted by the Jones couple and exposed to the
same drugs for 3 weeks, and another adult emerged who, with her trauma, faked the abduction as if
she had done it herself during the abduction of Anna and Joy.
the movie Prisoners; we will examine the film universe, the time and speed of the narration, the
cognitive relationship between the events and the audience, the narrative forms and especially the
intense symbolization used in the narrative.
PRISONERS: MUSIC IN THE FILM UNIVERSE
Prisoners features only a small amount of music outside of the movie universe during the text period.
The use of music composed by Johann Johannson is used to increase the tension in the scenes where
the events unfold, or to add a darker atmosphere to the ambiance while focusing on an object in a
still scene in the movie.
PRISONERS: TIME
The Prisoners movie has a fairly linear narrative from a narrative point of view. The movie contains
only one flashback. This flashback is the scene where Joy Birch sees Keller Dover at the hospital after
she is found and says "I saw you there". The flashback that Joy Birch sees falls under the type of
internal flashback, it is from within the film universe, and it is a subjective flashback because it is
from Joy Birch's memories, but Keller saying that he saw Dover there from a part of the flashback is
Keller's in terms of the time the flashback occupies. While it shows in the interval during which he
visited Holly Jones' home, the other episodes within the flashback are ambiguous in terms of time
and we do not know how long it has taken since the girls were abducted, as it is an intermittent
flashback in continuity.
PRISONERS:SPEED
In the movie, text time is slow compared to story time in terms of speed. The story of the movie,
which lasts 2 hours and 27 minutes, takes between 8 and 9 days in the movie universe. While
providing this, the film did not use acceleration, but shifted to elliptical elements and iterative
narrative. It moves from the girls first disappearance episode in an elliptical fashion to the eating
scene where we first see Detective Loki, then Alex Jones' interrogation, Detective Loki's visit to the
Dover's home, with time-lapses not shown, ellipses.
We see a wider ellipse after Loki promised Keller that they would not release Alex Jones in 48 hours.
Keller Dover receives news that Alex Jones has been released while searching the area for girls after
seeing 2 former abuse convicts search his home by Loki and find a body with a labyrinth necklace at
the Father's house. We see this section in a summary style narration. When Loki leaves the police
station, he says that he will visit all those registered for sex crimes living within 15 km of the area,
and then we only see 2 calls for a short time.
From the first appearance of Bob Taylor to his capture, we see a summary-style narration again. All
the scenes involving Bob Taylor (the chase with Loki, breaking into the Birch and Dover parents'
house, getting a tip from the children's clothing store and being caught by Loki, Bob Taylor
committing suicide during interrogation) took place in 4 days.
The episode about Keller Dover's torture of Alex Jones is closer to the iterative narrative. We see
Keler Dover torture him once without a shower cabin after catching Alex, and twice after he tortures
him after a shower cabin. The time that Alex Jones was subjected to torture was between 6-7 days.
Between the events of Dover and Loki, we see parallel fiction. During the days when Keller tortures
Alex Jones, Loki visits the Father's house and captures Bob Taylor.
Another sequence where we see elliptical elements again is the episode in which Keller Dover and
Loki go to Holly Jones' house after Joy Birch is found. Loki arrives home after Holly Jones shuts Keller
in the pit, and when Loki arrives, Anna is injecting Dover with poison.
PRISONERS:TRANSFER
Prisoners film contains all 3 cognitive levels with different characters in terms of transfer. The
majority of the movie takes place in cognitive equality on the basis of events. This cognitive level,
which is seen intensely in thrillers, is progressing with the findings of Keller Dover and detective Loki,
who use their own methods to find the girls who were kidnapped in Prisoners, and the scenario
progresses and the audience has the same level of information as these two characters have about
the abduction of the girls.
Due to the fact that Keller Dover and Loki find different findings in their own sequences and at
different times, the audience can sometimes gain a cognitive advantage over these two characters.
Detective Loki didn't know until the end of the movie that Keller Dover tortured Alex Jones into
revealing his daughter's whereabouts, likewise at the end of the movie, when Joy Birch tells Keller
Dover, “I saw you there”, Keller Dover has recently seen Holly Jones go home. She suspects him and
sets out for his house. Meanwhile, Detective Loki, who is unaware of the situation, cannot
understand where Keller Dover is going.
After Anna Dover was rescued, her mother said that Grace Dover found her daughter's missing
whistle (during the Thanksgiving celebration, Anna Dover said she lost it 133 days ago) and
interpreted it as confusion due to the kidnapping, but when Holly Jones' children threw Keller Dover
into the pit she threw, Keller We saw that there was Anna's whistle, and only the audience knows
that Keller Dover was thrown into the pit at the end of the movie, along with the whistle.
In cases where the audience gains the cognitive advantage against Keller Dover, we can say that the
body of the man with the labyrinth necklace is found. Unlike Keller Dover, he noticed the necklace,
which came from the corpse Loki found at the Father's house and matched a labyrinth shape drawn
by former victim Bob Taylor, when he went to Holly Jones's house towards the end of the movie.
The two characters who kept the audience cognitively inferior throughout the movie were Holly
Jones and Alex Jones. Holly Jones was in charge of the events from the very beginning, and Alex
Jones, a former victim living with Holly, had a better knowledge of the abduction than anyone else
throughout the movie.
The film contains some plots and dialogues that can affect the audience's transition from cognitive
inferiority or equality, or that hit the audience's face by making them reconcile what has been
learned with the previous parts of the movie as the audience learns about the development of
events.
He started by looking at his ex-wife's car during Loki's first visit to Holly Jones' house, and in another
shot from outside Holly's house, the old car is at the very front of the composition. The girls who
were kidnapped while the audience watched these plans were in a ditch under this car.
When the father, whose body was found in his house, was not taken seriously by Loki when he said
that "he had declared war on god" about that person, Holly talked to her husband about how
religious the children were until their death, during Keller's first visit to Holly Jones. they declared
war on god.
While Loki was investigating past events, he had visited Barry's family, who had similarly disappeared
and couldn't be found, while Alex Jones showed up at the end of the movie as Barry, who
disappeared years ago.
In Bob Taylor's house, there were snakes in the trunks, and Loki said that Bob Taylor was an ex-victim
and was trying to imitate the events, and in keeping with this, on Keller's first visit to Holly Jones, he
said that Alex's accident was related to her husband's snakes.
PRISONERS: NARRATOR OF EVENTS
One side of the narrative of the movie Prisoners is the psychological side of the movie rather than
the detective side and the character of Keller Dover, with the personal and moral conflicts Keller
Dover has while torturing Alex Jones to find his daughter, and his wife's psychological breakdown
while her daughter is still missing and she begins to use intense painkillers. while the other side of
the narrative focuses on detective Loki's search to find the girls, the detective side of the movie.
The movie makes a singular start in terms of events as of the beginning. During the Dover and Birch
families' Thanksgiving celebration, their little girl goes missing and the only suspect is a person in a
trailer they've never seen in the neighborhood. At this point, we encounter the character that will
provide the transition to the narrative. Detective Loki, who is spending Thanksgiving alone and dining
at a Chinese restaurant, receives news of the girls' disappearance and is called in to search for a
suspicious trailer that has crashed into trees. Coming out of the trailer, Alex Jones (an adult but a
mental age of 10) is questioned by Loki and released, but when he told Keller, who grabbed his collar
on the way out of the police station, "they didn't cry until I let them go" (timecode 32:20), Keller
kidnapped Alex Jones to find the girls. While he tortures Franklin Birch to speak, unaware Detective
Loki investigates other cases of kidnapping and abuse in the town, trying to find out who has
abducted the girls.
We see an episodic narrative that develops from different approaches to the same situation as Keller
and Loki's approaches, but it also passes into a unifying narrative at the points where Loki and Keller
come together (Loki watches Kelleri and Keller arrives in the car).
Another situation in the movie where things get closer to unifying is when Franklin Birch and Keller
Dover return after torturing Alex Jones, while Detective Loki is in the area. While the public is lighting
candles for the girls, a chase ensues between Loki and Bob Taylor, who are suspicious for dealing
with a plush toy on the floor. Detective Loki and Keller Dover were involved in the same event at
different timings, at this point, we can say that the narrative approached unifying, but did not
completely lose its episodicness. (timecode 53:59-56:42)
Another of the sequences in which the unifying narrative is in full view is Bob Taylor calling the Dover
and Birch families to confirm whether the children's items found in his home belonged to his
daughters. After Loki and Keller Dover's talk, the movie returns to the episodic narrative (timecode
1:33:30-1:35:30)
Towards the end of the movie, both Keller and Loki meet again at the hospital when Joy Birch is
found. When Joy Birch tells Keller "I saw you there", Keller starts to go home quickly, suspicious of
Holly Jones. Loki, after Keller, could not catch him and went to Keller's old house and found Alex
Jones. Keller is trapped by Holly in a ditch under dead Jones's car, using LSD. Loki, who came to the
same house to report about Alex Jones after Keller was locked in the pit, sees the necklace of the
corpse that he found in the father's house and confessed to killing the children, in an old photograph
of Jones, and realizes that it was Holly Jones who kidnapped the children. manages to kill without
poisoning. The full associative narrative, which started in the hospital, then turns back to the episodic
narrative and then approaches the associative narrative again without breaking the episodicness.
(timecode 1:53:45-2:09:59)
While the continuity of the events of Keller and Loki brings the narrative closer to unifying, the fact
that the events are generally out of contact with each other for Loki and Keller makes the narrative
not fully unifying at the end of the film. Again, in the last scene of the movie, while detective Loki is
inspecting Holly Jones' house once again with the cops, the sound of his daughter's whistle, which
Keller found from the pit he was thrown into, comes out (while Keller's whereabouts are unknown).
Assuming that Keller blew the whistle, we can talk about unifying in the narration, but since we do
not have a definite indication that the whistle came from Keller, the narration could not reach full
unifying again. (timecode 2:17:54-2:18:27)
PRISONERS: SYMBOLIZATION IN EXPRESSION
One of the strengths of Prisoners' narrative is the intense religious and mythological symbolism it
contains. The symbolic elements in the film can also be perceived as simple patterns, but they
become highly related to the characters of the film and the development of the scenario with the
information of Christianity and mythology.
It's about the main character, Doover, that the repetitive passage from the Bible at the beginning of
the movie and the wooden crucifix hanging from the car mirror in focus after the deer was shot at
the beginning of the movie.
Snakes coming out of the chests at Bob Taylor's house are also considered a clear symbol of the devil
in Christianity. While Taylor was suspected of kidnapping children, it was revealed that he was not
the kidnapper, but rather a victim of the child abductions that formed the background of the film,
imitating what he experienced when he was kidnapped with children's clothes and snakes. These
details that Taylor hides can be associated with the snakes coming out of the chests. Again, we can
interpret it as a physical symbolism as evil emerges from its hiding place after we learn that male
Jones has snakes.
The snakes Taylor hides can also be mythologically compared to Pandora's box. Taylor started to
imitate the abduction events with the trauma she experienced and refused to tell what she
experienced while hiding the parts she used, we can bring Taylor's own interpretation of the Pandora
box to the chests where the snakes are hidden. (Even though both evil and hope come out of the
Pandora's box, I focus my review on the evil side because of the movie's theme and the snake-Jones
connection)
While Detective Loki embodies many religious and mythological symbols, he also develops openly to
symbolic interpretations in the script. First of all, the name Loki is the helper of the god Odin in Norse
mythology, and although he is the child of the giant Farbauti, he was accepted into the tribe of gods
Aesir. Detective Loki is Keller Dover's ultimate assistant in finding kidnapped children, and is a
character we learn from growing up in an orphanage in detective Loki, in keeping with the detail that
the god Loki is the child of a giant.
At the point of the symbols it carries, the 8-pointed star (octagram) on Detective Loki's neck
symbolizes resurrection and salvation in Christianity. The ring we see in his hand contains the symbol
of Freemasonry representing rationality and enlightenment. Detective Loki is struck in the eye when
he finds Anna Dover in Holly Jones' home, where the detective approaches Odin, the chief god of
Norse mythology, from the god Loki, for whom he is named. God Odin sacrificed his right eye in
Mimir's cave in the name of wisdom, he lost his eye when detective Loki learned the truth and was
able to save Anna Dover, just as he did to the god Odin.
Access has come at a cost.
At the point of the symbolism of the film, basements, closed areas and labyrinths accompany the
themes of uncertainty and quest of the film, both physically and in harmony with the mental
predicaments of the characters. Keller Dover is a teenager whose father committed suicide and
refuses to renovate his old family home due to trauma. With her daughter abducted, she is again at a
stalemate with finding her daughter, protecting her family, anger and old alcohol problems, and
Keller's wife tries to sleep with her daughter's abduction using heavy tranquilizers. This time he faces
a moral dilemma as Keller tortures Alex Jones into revealing his daughter's whereabouts.
Detective Loki, on the other hand, is a detective who has not solved a case before. He is trying to get
out of his own mental labyrinth while trying to find the girls, in the complexity of this case and with
the complicated evidence he comes across.
Former victims of the abduction case, Alex Jones and Bob Taylor, are in their own mental maze from
which they can never get out. We see the intense LSD they were exposed to when they were
kidnapped, the mental capacity of one of these two victims, Alex Jones, a 10-year-old person, the
basis of Bob Taylor's obsessive attitudes and as a background that matches the mental predicament
of these two characters.
On the other hand, the Jones couple, who kidnapped the girls, started with the loss of their children.
While they were a religious couple, there is anger towards a god who lost their children, and other
people have an obsession that aims to take their children away from the god as well. The Jones
couple are at an impasse with the angry and perverted psychological state caused by the loss of their
child.
Despite the psychological predicament of the characters in the movie, the physical dead ends
throughout the movie's duration, and the movie lacks any physical mazes (the closest things to the
physical maze in the movie are the maze drawings coming out of Bob's house, a labyrinth-themed
former FBI agent's book, and Joy Birch next to her during flashbacks). The book with the note “you'll
be free if you solve all the labyrinths” is accompanied by numerous labyrinth motifs. Like other
symbolizations in the movie, labyrinths have many meanings in pagan and celestial beliefs, as well as
in psychology. We can start to approach the representation of the labyrinth in the movie with the
playwright Eugene Ionesco's interpretation of the movie Prisoners.
“If order is good, disorder is bad, straight road or labyrinth”
Labyrinths here represent confusion and evil and are an important element in the motives of the
search. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung determined that mandalas are a universal and common archetype in
defining reality in cultures and representing its individual integrity. Christian faith and pagan beliefs
have linear, centrally labyrinth symbols leading to individual realization.
While Stanley Kubrick used the representation of the labyrinth in The Shining with its chaotic side
that connects to Jack Torrence's increasing madness, Dennis Villeneuve's labyrinths are reflected in
Prisoners both with its dead end, chaotic aspect as well as with seeking and self-realization from
historical and religious symbolizations. While the labyrinths are a very important element in the
narrative of the movie, we first appear in the movie with the labyrinth necklace hanging on Jones'
corpse. While Detective Loki is questioning the labyrinths that Bob Taylor draws all the time, we learn
that Jones, who kidnapped Taylor, puts the kidnapped children in a labyrinth by giving substance to
them, and Taylor draws labyrinths all the time because of this relationship. With the metaphorical
labyrinths that span the entire film, the background of Bob Taylor's obsession with drawing
labyrinths, and the labyrinth drawings we see, director Dennis Villeneuve presents labyrinths to the
audience in two dimensions, on a stand-alone metaphorical and half-physical-half-metaphorical
level.
While supporting the themes of self-realization and pursuit of the labyrinth motif in the film,
basements, closed areas and houses, which occupy an important place in the film, are also open to
similar symbolic interpretations.
Keller Dover's former family home and basement as a shelter provide reflections on the character's
personality. Keller Dover attaches importance to order and preparation, but she has not fully
recovered from her traumas due to her father's suicide, has a history of alcohol problems, is highly
sensitive about her family, and we see how far she can go with her daughter's abduction and her
moral conflicts. While he stores enough materials in the basement of his house to survive a nuclear
disaster, he stubbornly does not renovate the house inherited from his family. While Keller seems
prepared and strong from the outside, we witness the sensitive and problematic side of the
character, with the internal conflicts he entered after his daughter's abduction, the torture he
inflicted on Alex Jones, and the resumption of his alcohol problems. We can say that the basement of
his house, which is in a state of order and officially prepared for war, and the ruined state of his
family house, is a physical form of Keller Dover's psychological state. The two-dimensional, fully
metaphorical and half-metaphorical-half-physical relationship we see in the labyrinths is again
encountered when we compare Keller's old house and basement. The spiritual states of the
characters are also reflected in the objects in the film universe. We can add to our symbolic
approach, with some exaggeration, that the word "Keller" means basement in German.
For Alex Jones, a similar situation emerges with the area where he was closed while being tortured.
We have already talked about the mental impasse of Alex Jones, who had the mental capacity of a
10-year-old after his abduction due to LSD, which he could not overcome. Stuck in his inner world
with the traumas of his abduction, Alex Jones, who cannot get over them, is locked in a small wooden
room to be tortured by Keller, which can be called a physical reflection of his mental state. Alex
Jones' symbolic predicament thus acquires a physical interpretation.
Keller's basement, the priest's basement where Jones' body is found, the pit under the car where
Keller is thrown by Holly Jones at the end of the movie, hiding from the basic functions of such
underground enclosed spaces make such locations compatible with the film's characters. For this
Jones couple, the abductions they made in anger after the death of their children (which Jones was
killed and locked in the basement after confessing to the father of child murders), the traumas that
came with his father's death for Keller Dover, the traumas they experienced with their abduction for
Alex Jones and Bob Taylor. The fact that the basement is an important element of Keller's character,
the first finding about Jones coming out of the father's basement, Keller's finding his daughter's
whistle in the pit where he was blown, and the things we see in the underground and basements, we
also learn what the characters hide in their inner worlds.
CONCLUSION:
Prisoners manages to show the lines of Dennis Villeneuve's previous films. Combining a dark
narrative with quest and mental predicaments, the screenplay does not do a highly detailed job in
terms of mystery and detective, but the film is able to reconcile the detective side with the narrative
it wants to make. While the film proceeds with a chronological narrative in terms of narration style, it
divides the events and themes that the main characters will focus on within the scenario with
episodic and sometimes unifying narrative styles. In the narration of the events, the audience, on the
other hand, is mostly in cognitive equality, as is usual in thrillers, but can also achieve cognitive
superiority thanks to the episodic narration from character to character.
What makes Prisoners unique for me and for many critics is the symbolic material it uses. The roles
and personalities of the characters in the movie and the characteristics of the events in the movie are
symbolically reflected with objects from the movie universe. When the sequences, plans and the
meanings of the elements of the film are examined separately, many details open to interpretation
come to the fore, and these details include obvious references and symbolizations from Christianity
and mythology from time to time.
References:
https://mindhacks.com/2010/09/05/the-labyrinth-of-inception/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fekd6LcnSyw&t=532s
https://culturedecanted.com/2014/07/31/the-psychology-of-the-maze-as-a-modern-symbol/
https://splashfromabove.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/the-prisoners-symbolism-with-a-purpose/
https://filmcolossus.com/prisoners-ending-themes-explained/
https://www.learnreligions.com/octagrams-eight-pointed-stars-96015