MovieChat Forums > Prisoners (2013) Discussion > How could someone not talk while withsta...

How could someone not talk while withstanding all that torture?

posted 8 years ago by nkavy71488
7 replies | jump to latest

I got very frustrated with Alex's character throughout the film.

I get he is not the brightest crayon in the box and he is probably traumatized and confused, or whatever, but still. I mean at a certain point I thought to myself, well, you're doing this to yourself at this point. You can only withstand so much pain and not say anything.

I'm just really confused about how he could withstand so much torture without saying one damn thing.

[–] puschit-1 8 years ago

His "aunt" gave us an explanation for this. She said that he doesn't talk much and that he "learned to stay quite when unpleasant things happen" or something along the line. Which, knowing the backstory, probably means he was abused and learned to take it without complaining because that would mean more punishment.

[–] joneskeller07 8 years ago

Yes, and Alex was complicit with his aunt, as we understand when he said that the children cried when he left them. He may very likely have derived sado-masochistic pleasure from the abuse and attention. The trivia reveals that there were some sexual omissionS made for the sake of a rating.

[–] autoinfanticide 8 years ago

I thought the same thing OP. even spies are trained to kill themselves with cyanide capsules or other means if they are ever caught. Quiet or not, Dano's character would've talked. Even an innocent person would confess to taking the girls in that situation.

[–] svalinanikola 8 years ago

Actually, torture is not an efficent way of making someone talk. In fact, it just makes it harder for the person to say anything, because of all the pain etc.

This is something GTA V parodies in the infamous torture sequence.

[–] autoinfanticide 8 years ago

it isnt efficient because you get people to confess to things they never did or give false information, not because they can't physically talk.

[–] svalinanikola 8 years ago

Well, that to, but my point about pain etc. still stands.

[–] Kawada_Kira 7 years ago

Alex had been broken long, long before Keller ever got to him. He had probably been punished almost as severely by the Joneses more than once. Even at the best of times he barely seemed to know up from down. Having the sh!t beat out of him probably just made him all the more confused. We can't judge him by the standards of normal people who hadn't been through the trauma he had.