(USA, 153 min.)
Dir. Denis Villeneuve, Writ. Aaron Guzikowski
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, Viola
Davis, Maria Bello, Paul Dano, and Melissa Leo.
Prisoners might be
among the best mainstream studio films to hit theatres so far this year and,
wouldn’t you know it, it’s the Hollywood debut of Canadian director Denis
Villeneuve. Villeneuve follows the success of 2010’s Oscar-nominated Incendies, which posed a significant
milestone in terms of drawing international attention to Canadian cinema, by
showing what a great director can do with a potentially formulaic premise. Prisoners is as powerful and as visceral
an experience as Villeneuve’s previous works, but it’s told on a grander scale.
It only seems fitting for Villeneuve to follow the Greek tragedy of Incendies with the epic of Prisoners.
Prisoners might be Villeneuve’s most conventional film to date, yet it is classical Hollywood cinema in its top form. It helps, too, that Prisoners has a smart, densely plotted screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski and one of the finest casts of the year. It’s an above-average thriller with a mean final-act punch.
The film takes place in a familiar Pennsylvania suburb. The
little residential community where the Dovers live is as depressing and dreary
as all suburbs are. It looks like the typically soulless place that people
describe as “a nice place to raise a family.” The town is anything but.
The Dovers, the all-American family of Everytown, USA, have
their life thrown for a loop following a nice, friendly Thanksgiving dinner
with their neighbours, the Birch family. The runts of each litter—Anna from the
Dovers and Joy from the Birches—go AWOL following the pumpkin pie. Anna’s
father, Keller (Hugh Jackman), scours the streets with Joy’s dad, Franklin
(Terrence Howard), while the moms, Grace (Maria Bello) and Nancy (Viola Davis),
look nearby in case the kids wander back home. All joy from the evening is
gutted completely when Keller’s son (Dylan Minnette) recalls a suspicious RV
that was parked down the road.
This missing-child procedural wastes no time in moving along
as Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes the case, finds the RV, and arrests a
suspect, Alex, fleeing escape (Paul Dano). The case takes an unexpected turn
when Alex says nothing about the missing girls and provides no evidence for the
police to hold him.
The panic of losing what seems to be the closest clue to
finding his daughter leads Keller down a road of aberrant vigilante justice. Prisoners then takes a dark turn down
what already seems to be a gruelling breathless trek. The film presents a moral
labyrinth as each of the parents—save for Grace, who remains in a sleeping pill
induced coma for much of the film—assumes a degree of complicity in tracking
their daughters through violent and unorthodox methods. Each day of silence
makes the chance of finding the girls grow slimmer and the escalating, almost
unbearable violence that Keller uses to seek the truth are a reflection of the
pain crippling both the families. Prisoners
asks much of the viewer, though, before it lets one feel complicit with
Keller’s methods, if at all.
It’s a difficult task to ask a viewer what he or she might
do in Keller’s place. The premise is so relatable and the setting so familiar,
however, that Prisoners slips the
audience into the mindset of a parent’s worst nightmare almost imperceptibly.
However, Prisoners lets the presumed
hero of the film devolve into a man just as bad as the presumed kidnapper
himself. Jackman’s excellent performance as a man who is both torn to pieces
and willing to do anything that’s necessary to protect his family is fully
believable as Prisoners takes the
viewer on an unsettlingly realistic odyssey into an ethical underworld.
Loki’s investigation proceeds concurrently with Keller’s
approach. Gyllenhaal is equally compelling in the comparatively less showy role
of the detective, but he holds his own with and against Jackman. Guzikowski’s
script smartly plays the revelations of one thread to alter one’s perceptions
of the other. Prisoners alternatively
weighs one’s sympathy and sense of justice between Loki and Keller’s quests for
answers. Loki’s investigation uncovers the necessary clues that allow one to
piece together the dense tangle of Prisoners,
while each turn darkens Keller’s drastic tactics. The film always keeps one
guessing as it presents new evidence and alternative angles. Even after Prisoners’ genuinely surprising twist,
the film leaves viewers in a kind of vortex as it spins every character, not
just the kidnapper, in a different light.
Relying greatly on the strength of the cast, Prisoners showcases a pair of
performances from its two male leads that rank among their best, while the
supporting cast is uniformly strong, especially a nearly unrecognizable Melissa
Leo in a chilling and detached turn as Alex’s dowdy aunt. The complexity of Prisoners’ moral morass is handled
delicately by Villeneuve as he balances the emotional realism of the story with
the suspenseful intrigue of the mystery. The director once again shows
sensitivity in his handling of traumatic events. The motive of the kidnapping
arises almost inconsequentially: nothing could ever justify the abduction of
the two children, so Prisoners concerns
itself less with the why and more with the how. The film looks at the grieving
families intimately, yet objectively. Prisoners
is unsettling because the story feels as if it could take place in one’s own
neighbourhood, yet there’s a subtly allegorical feel to the fable of the
missing children and the parent who takes a victim in turn.
As lensed by the great cinematographer Roger Deakins (Skyfall), the nicely wooded area of the
Dovers’ neighborhood is a beautiful landscape of dank grey bleakness. A glimmer
of hope for the families, however, glistens into each composition with the
lifelines of natural light that Deakins captures in the frame. The threads of
light that find their way in to Prisoners
underscore the film’s thorny, if ambiguous, play with faith and redemption. Prisoners opens with a quick preamble
that sees Keller recite the Lord’s Prayer as he readies his son for his first
hunting kill. Keller’s rogue investigation thus walks him down a road of murky
redemption. His soul might be the cost for the return of his daughter, as his
approach becomes increasingly more like Old Testament wrath than that of a
forgiving, faithful Christian.
The ultimate resolution of Prisoners doesn’t entirely satisfy, nor does it seem to reconcile
the threads of religiosity that weave throughout the narrative. It’s appropriately
messy and imperfect for a film with such a strong sense of realism. The finale
is, indeed, a wallop, even for a film of such an exhausting length. Credit is
due to the cathartic chords of composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, as Prisoners culminates with a
heart-pounding finale. It’s a great, classically composed film bound with moral
tangles and intriguing turns. Even from Hollywood, Villeneuve hits close to home.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Prisoners is now playing in wide release.
Update: Prisoners screens in Ottawa at The Mayfair Nov. 8- 12.
Update: Prisoners screens in Ottawa at The Mayfair Nov. 8- 12.