The Hunt review

Director: Thomas Vinterberg
(2012)

Features like Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt aren’t the films that one would ever expect to be produced by any studio in Hollywood. And that’s because it’s not. Films with themes of potential child abuse and ignorant small town mentality are simply too bold and mature to be aimed at western audiences, so it’s up to the bold and adventurous European filmmakers to tackle such a thorny subject with grace and surgical precision. The Hunt is a somewhat unpleasant, unsettling watch, yet through some excellent directing and acting, it shines as one of the finest foreign films of 2012.

The victim of the alleged child molestation claims is a nursery school teacher by the name of Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen). He lives a solitary existence due to his wife limiting his access to his teenage son. He goes deer hunting frequently with his best friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen), a man who is also having relationship issues with his wife. Due to their excessive arguing, they neglect their daughter Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) who wanders off and gets lost, thankfully found by her nursery school teacher and family friend Lucas. Soon she develops a childish infatuation and kisses him, his response is to tell her “kisses on the lips are for mummies and daddies only”. This little girls search for a strong paternal figure turns bitter as she makes up an innocent lie, influenced by the porn that her brother showed her as a sick joke. This soon lie spirals out of control and acts as the catalyst to ruining Lucas’ life.

The most terrifying aspect of The Hunt is how devastating these accusations can really be to a man of such an upstanding reputation. He is well respected in his job and amongst his peers, begins to develop a relationship with a co-worker and finally gains more access to his son. Klara is even the daughter of his lifelong friend who instantly turns on him due to baseless accusation. Soon incompetent teachers and psychiatrists proliferate the hysteria, putting words and ideas into this impressionable girls head. At one point she even admits that Lucas is innocent and that she’s lying, but her parents insist she’s done the right thing by telling them and asserts she isn’t in trouble. Vinterberg treads delicate ground here by making sure the blame for this entire incident isn’t pinned solely on one person, and the results illustrate how such events can quickly snowball out of control.

Where Vinterberg isn’t so restrained is in his attitudes towards pinning the blame for the state of Lucas’ life almost completely on women. His ex-wife, boss, fair-weather girlfriend and Klara herself are rather bluntly behind the mess of a life he lives, this borderline misogyny is superfluous and underdeveloped when compared to the films other, refined themes. Elsewhere the director’s lack of subtlety is more of a benefit in the films more physical scenes of violence as the towns abuse of Lucas’ turns from verbal to physical in a brutal scene of violence. The scene is placed perfectly to act as a payoff for the mounting tension, the perfect release for the abundance of dialogue that makes up almost the entirety of the film.

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Mikkelsen takes this character broken by a lie and does wonders with it, carrying the audience through some of the films slower ebbs with apparent ease. It’s one of the underrated performances of 2012 as well as one that is bound to go unnoticed outside of a very small crowd of art-house cinemagoers. What’s even more revelatory is the films epilogue, a scene that is tonally perfect in every regard. Vinterberg does what many independent filmmakers seem to be incapable of recently by having his film end satisfactorily while being ambiguous enough to linger in the memory. Looking beyond the films more unpleasant stretches-of which there are many- The Hunt is a film that warrants watching; the second finest foreign film of the year, inches behind Amour.

8