"I want a word with Theo. Look into my eyes. Look me in the eyes. What do you see? Do you see anything? Nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. You leave me alone now. You leave me alone now, Theo. Then I'll go. Thank you."
Thomas Vinterberg bursted onto the European film scene back in 1998 with his directorial debut "The Celebration", a Dogma 95 movie about child abuse and family corruption that has gone down in history as one of Danish film's greatest achievements ever. Vinterberg helped put the small Scandinavian country of Denmark on the map as one of the countries to look out for in terms of cinema, but he never really managed to duplicate that initial success he achieved with The Celebration. Not until 2012 anyway. His newest movie "The Hunt" takes place in a small Danish town with a tight local community, where Lucas, a former school teacher played by Mads Mikkelsen, is forced to work in the local kindergarden after his wife leaves him. Lucas is a friendly and likable guy, and he has a lot of family, colleagues and friends who enjoy his company very much. Seeing as he recently lost custody of his only son though, Lucas feels very lonely and assimilated from the rest of the people around him, and it's clear from the very beginning that he's a very broken man at the moment. However, as if the world wasn't tough enough on this poor individual already, one innocent little lie is about to start a chain reaction of tragic events that threatens to push him completely off of the edge of society.
Every movie enthusiast has their own personal favourite genre, whether it be horror, rom-com, action, comedy, thriller etc. I personally love dark dramas with damaged and interesting characters such as A Single Man, Drive and Take Shelter, and Thomas Vinterberg's latest directorial success fits that mold incredibly well, which automatically scores it a few extra points in my book. That being said though, these kinds of movies tend to have a very niche target audience because of their serious and often terribly depressing subject matter, and The Hunt doesn't do a very good job of changing that statistic. It actually strengthens it. I personally haven't seen a movies as joyless or as heartbreaking as this one for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people end up hating The Hunt because of the melancholic way it leaves most of it's audience feeling. No matter how you twist and turn it though, this movie is a phenomenal piece of film making on every single taxonomic level, and it had me engaged from the very first shot of Mads Mikkelsen walking around in the woods all by himself.
The main plot device in The Celebration was sexual child abuse, and that goes for The Hunt as well. The difference is that it actually didn't happen this time around, but unfortunately for Lucas, everyone thinks it did, and that's the main essence of the entire movie. The concept of one little lie that transform into a false rumour that then proceeds to spread across an entire town like wildfire is both fascinating and horrifying to behold, and the way in which Thomas Vinterberg puts these suburban group dynamics on display is incredibly impressive. No matter how great Mads Mikkelsen's performance is and no matter how effectively this film manages to make it's audience physically shake in despair, the real star of The Hunt is its superbly written script and the way in which it emphasizes the tremendous powers of rumours and hedge talk in rural environments. Vinterberg and his co. writer Tobias Lindholm deserve to be given something very expensive and flashy for the incredible job they did with this screenplay in my opinion, and if The Hunt doesn't get nominated for best movie in the foreign language category come Oscar season, I'll be fully convinced that this world has lost it's sense of justice completely.
Even though its way more unlikely, I'd also love to see Mads Mikkelsen get an Oscar nod for best actor in a leading role. I don't know if a movie in a foreign language has ever been nominated in this category before, but Mikkelsen's performance is every bit as worthy of that golden statue as any other male performance I've seen all year, if not even more deserving. The way in which he manages to look as if his entire life has been taken away from him is just unheard of, and even though I've seen the guy in countless amounts of other Danish movies, his character is one of the single most relatable ones I've come across all year. You truly believe that this man you're looking at is broken all the way to his core, which is very impressive considering how little actual dialogue the character actually has. Mikkelsen doesn't need those epic monologues about how much he's suffering on the inside to convince people that he's hurting though, and there's one scene in particular where this really goes to show, and it's stunningly to witness. His character progression reminded a lot of the arch that Michael Shannon's character experienced in Take Shelter, a movie that has become one of my all time favourites since I reviewed it about six months ago, so if you liked that movie, consider giving The Hunt a go as well.
Every single globally famous actor/actress comes to a place in his/her career, at which it becomes impossible for people to recognize them as anyone but their real world persona. As an example, it's been a very long time since I've seen a Bruce Willis movie where I didn't look at his character and just saw Bruce Willis. Apart from in Twelve Monkeys, that's actually never happened. The point I'm trying to make is that Mads Mikkelsen is Denmark's answer to stars like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, who are two of the guys that suffer from this celebrity-phenomenon the most, and to have him convince me that he actually was the character that he was portraying and not the famous actor that I see on the front of magazines every day as effectively as he did, is a testimony to how enchantingly magnificent his performance in The Hunt is. I've never seen an actor break the "real life spell" as effectively as Mads Mikkelsen does in this movie, and that's very impressive to say the least.
Another character that I'd like to talk about in this review is Klara, the little girl who starts the rumor about Lucas being a child molester. She's a very important part of the movie and its story in a lot different ways, and the methods that her parents and other adults use to to try and find out what happened between her and Lucas are a big part of the moral lesson that Vinterberg wants to get across. The adults actively force this poor little girl to describe scenarios that never even took place, and even though it's a very effective and thought provoking way of propelling the moral dilemma along, it did feel kind of unrealistic and forced at times. I've heard other people speculate about the suspiciously high amount of very poor parents and nannies that seem to be inhabiting the town that The Hunt takes place in, but because I'm not a parent who's had to deal with a situation like this myself, I'm not quite capable of judging whether such behaviour is truthful or if it isn't. All I'm saying is that it seems a bit fishy, and the child that played Klara didn't do a very good at portraying the feelings a child in that situation must have felt either.
All in all though, I have to say that The Hunt is one of the best cinematic experiences I've had in a long time. It's easily the best Danish movie I've seen since 2008 at least, and Mads Mikkelsen has never been better in his entire career. The story about Lucas being accused of a crime he didn't commit was very thought provoking and eye opening to me, and seeing his life collapse as a result of the talk and the rumours that went all over town was equally powerful and engrossing. Another important thing I almost always forgot to talk about is the movie's musical score, because even though there's only about 20 seconds of it in the entire film, it's still one of the most important elements in it. I was very much aware that there was no background music or sound effect at all in any of the most important and climatic scenes, and it almost allowed me to reach out and physically touch the emotion much more than I would have been if some cheesy violin had been weeping for attention in the background. Less definitely was more in this situation, and I applaud Thomas Vinterberg for realizing this and for sticking with that one mood throughout the entire two hours of the movie.
What it comes down to it, The Hunt really is writer/director Thomas Vinterberg's, his cowriter's and Mads Mikkelsen's shared masterpiece, and had those scenes with the parents and the child actor that I talked about earlier been more convincing, it probably would have ended up surpassing the rating of worth buying on BluRay. As it stands though, The Hunt gets a very solid 5/6 from me.
What it comes down to it, The Hunt really is writer/director Thomas Vinterberg's, his cowriter's and Mads Mikkelsen's shared masterpiece, and had those scenes with the parents and the child actor that I talked about earlier been more convincing, it probably would have ended up surpassing the rating of worth buying on BluRay. As it stands though, The Hunt gets a very solid 5/6 from me.
The Hunt IMDb page here
The Hunt trailer here
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