Mazes have fascinated us for tens of thousands of years.
From ancient wall drawings to Greek and Roman mythology to modern film, mazes and labyrinths
have on some level always strongly resonated with the human experience, hinting at a symbolical
layer deeper than the merely physical experience you get from exploring its corridors.
Which is the reason why I got intrigued by Denis Villeneuve’s 2013 film Prisoners and
how it uses mazes as a symbol.
In Prisoners we never get to see a maze in its physical form, in fact the maze is not
even really explicitly mentioned at all until later in the story, remaining in the background
for the better first half of the film.
Yet its significance should not be understated as Denis Villeneuve himself seems to have
somewhat of a mild obsession with these puzzles, with characters having to venture through
both physical and mental corridors, trying not to lose themselves in search of answers,
answers about family, about what’s right and what’s wrong, about life, death, what
connects us through language and about faith in the face of evil.
Villeneuve’s puzzle is one that focuses on the metaphorical and psychological symbolism
of the maze, rather than having it directly manifest itself in its physical form.
Now most Western maze symbolism seems to be derived from the Greek myth of Theseus and
the Minotaur, which tells the story of Theseus who needs to find and kill a monstrous beast
at the center of a labyrinth, using a thread of hair from his lover Ariadne to make sure
he doesn’t get lost along the way.
Now compare that to the story of Prisoners, which is about the kidnapping of two daughters
and how the characters involved choose to react in order to get them back.
The main focus here is placed on two characters.
Keller Dover, a religious and protective dad who will do anything to keep his family safe
and who ultimately finds the monster of his world with the help of a young girl.
And Loki, an ace detective with a troubled background tasked with the mission to solve
the mystery and find the missing kids.
So on a metaphorical level the maze in Prisoners then seems to loosely echo this age old Greek
myth.
Both these men set out on a search, using their own respective belief systems to lead
them through the metaphorical maze of mystery and morality, hoping to find the truth at
the center and to confront those responsible for the kidnapping.
A perhaps more strikingly similar connection can be found in Nordic mythology, involving
a maiden or princess stuck in the center of a maze, again guarded by a monstrous creature
of sorts.
The late poet Robert Graves argued that what these various stories have in common is that
they share a journey of the main character into both a physical as well as a mental (or
subconscious) underworld.
Keller’s search for his daughter might be a physical one, but as his faith is challenged
and he’s forced to confront the darker, more violent parts of his nature, his journey
into the maze of the underworld increasingly becomes a mental one.
So much so that his goal to protect his family ends up almost destroying it as he neglects
his traumatized wife and increasingly regresses back into old destructive habits and places,
until he literally descends into his own darkest place imaginable.
Helpless and unable to save his daughter.
Loki on the other hand has to unravel the truth by descending into a more physical hell,
trying to find order in disorder, and literally facing off against the forces of the devil…
The maze here seems to be a symbol for the chaos the Joneses set upon their victims until
they kill them with the venom of a snake, the archetypal symbol for the Devil.
Indeed the archetype of the maze in Prisoners seems to stand for the opposite of paradise,
or in the words of playwright Eugene Ionesco: If goodness is order, evil must be disorder.
The straight path or the maze.
And it’s with this insight that Villeneuve utilizes the symbol to explore the morality
and psychological nature of his characters.
Keller starts off as an openly devout Christian, which is made quite obvious through his usage
of prayers, the abundance of Christian symbolism surrounding him, his metaphorically appropriate
job as a carpenter, and through the names of his wife and mother.
Moreover Keller is shown to have a proclivity for orderliness and preparedness, both traits
that consciously define his character…
However, as I’ve shown, Keller’s journey is one of increasing amounts of disorder,
a quest that shakes his faith to its core as he sees himself forced to perform ever
escalating brutalities on the person he suspects holds the key to his daughter.
It’s only at the end of his journey, when he’s in his darkest place that he finally
surrenders and returns to his faith in God.
Detective Loki goes down a decidedly different path of the maze.
His faith is based both in the Christian as well as the Pagan.
The eight pointed star tattoo referring to such things as redemption, humility, strength
and compassion.
His mason ring representing the search for enlightenment and rationality, aligning perfectly
with his character and opposing the more emotionally based Keller.
His odd name in turn comes from the Nordic God Loki, a cunning trickster and occasional
helper of other Gods.
And even though the ace detective is shown to not be immune to frustration, he never
truly breaks away from his beliefs, which ultimately help him in finding the missing
children and solving the mystery.
So besides acting as a symbol for the physical and metaphorical journey into the underworld,
the maze also comes to represent a psychological struggle and the human brain.
Stanley Kubrick showed this in connection the growing insanity of Jack Torrance in The
Shining, but it’s also symbolism that has ample historical grounding.
Both Christian and pagan faiths around the world have used the symbol of a linear one-way
labyrinth as a meditative pathway towards the center, towards God, self-individualization
and the Tree of Life.
Psychoanalyst Carl Jung recognized labyrinths and similar figures with centers, called Mandalas,
as a universally recurring archetype, always standing for transformation, wholeness and
the totality of an individual’s reality.
These symbols can appear on the most common of household objects and things, like pillows,
sweaters and picture frames.
But they’re also expressed through religion such as the Christian cross and the Tree of
Life.
The wooden cross as I’ve shown is already abundantly represented in Prisoners, but so
is the Tree of Life.
In fact, Villeneuve spares no expense focusing his lens on trees, making them part of the
plot and having his main character interact with its substance.
Trees undeniably take on an important role in the film.
And it’s no coincidence that they too are connected to the Mandala symbol and by extension
the labyrinth.
Their physical form is also a direct metaphor for the human nervous system and the psychological
state of our characters.
Their bare and leaf less branches aligning with their mood and mental state.
Which brings us back to the maze used by the Joneses.
Now it’s important to note that this particular maze is not a simple, linear one, far from
it…
Their LSD influenced maze process is specifically designed to mentally block their victims in
their journey towards self-individualization.
It’s a form of mind control that helps explain why Alex seems to be stuck in the mind of
a 10 year old and why Bobby Taylor, although physically free, is still obsessively trying
to find a way out of his own mental hell.
But the maze is not just a tool for the Joneses to imprison children and lure in their parents,
it also goes to show how some of the characters had been stuck in there all along (Keller
in door or Keller sitting).
It’s revealed that Keller’s dad committed suicide in his house when Keller himself was
still a teen.
His devout faith in God and his obsession with preparedness as an adult can then perhaps
be explained as a subconscious defensive reaction to that traumatic event.
The contrast between his tidy house and his dilapidated parental home, and Keller’s
unwillingness to renovate the place… reveal that the death of his father has still not
been resolved in his mind.
Keller’s self-growth as a teen has been stunted by this trauma, and in a way he is
as much a Prisoner as Alex Jones and Bobby Taylor, his repressed feelings of rage and
despair awakened by the kidnapping of his daughter.
Even Keller’s name, meaning ‘basement’ in German, speaks to his character, his hidden
away mental trauma and foreshadows his destiny perfectly.
Holly Jones on her turn has been a prisoner of her own respective maze for quite some
time.
After their son died of cancer, the once devout Christians lost their faith and decided it
best to drag as many people into their mental hell as possible.
Even detective Loki seems to have struggled with his own maze during his troubled childhood…
The difference here is that Loki is the only one of these characters who, like in story
of Andrea Ghisis Laberinto, has elevated himself from the mental trap raising his consciousness
in the process.
It’s only fitting that he grows up to be an ace detective, tasked with helping and
guiding others out of the maze.
If the Joneses are the servants of the Devil and trauma, Loki is the servant of God and
enlightenment…
The maze is an incredibly relevant archetypal symbol of the human experience, it has been
for thousands of years and it continues to do so in our world and in films like Prisoners.
Denis Villeneuve and writer Aaron Guzikowski have shown that through adequate, perhaps
at times instinctive knowledge of a symbol, a film can take on a quality that has the
ability to make us wonder about a it long after the credits roll.
Not just because the symbol fits with its story, but more importantly because it expresses
a truth about the human experience that universally resonates with us as human beings and our
endless struggle and journey towards a higher self.
In the words of the late Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont: “One of the oldest images
of the mystery of life, death, transformation and return is the labyrinth…; it depicts
the way to the unknown center, the mystery of death and rebirth, the risk of the search,
the danger of losing the way, the quest, the finding and the ability to return…