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…