Prologue:
A teacher- Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody as he got divorced. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.
IMDB: 8.3
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Review & Plot:
‘The Hunt’ really shows what a false accusation and biased thinking of a group of people without any serious investigation can do to a person. This has to be one of the best heart-breaking movies I have watched. I am not a fan of watching movies where I have to read a lot of subtitles. But movies from ‘Thomas Vinterberg‘ and movies of such caliber and potential make the time spent on such a movie worth it.
The movie shows us a teacher of a kindergarten school, Lucas is going through a divorce and has been struggling over his son’s custody. Even after such troubles, Lucas manages to keep his head straight, never gets disappointed, and is good to his society. Lucas is good towards the kids in his kindergarten and loves every kid as his own.
On other hand, there is Klara- a 5-year-old girl who lives with her parents and has a teenage sibling. One day, her brother and his friend are watching and discussing about some pornographic videos, and around them, there is his little sister who passes by them. Klara somehow manages to hear the video and gets a glimpse of it. She also hears them talking about it and that moment makes a bad impression on Klara’s mind.
Later when Klara is in kindergarten, she is so haunted by the video that she is depressed the whole day. When the Principal/head teacher of the kindergarten asks her what’s wrong, she blames her teacher, Lucas for sexual acts which he never did. The entire school staff starts believing the little girl Klara and what she shared, and suddenly everyone gets against Lucas. Later, Lucas is first asked to take a leave while school teachers do some investigation themselves, and later they fire Lucas from his job. Till now, only the school staff, Klara’s parents and Lucas knows about this. Lucas pleads in front of them that he never committed such heinous crimes but it was his word against the 5-year-old girl.
As the word starts passing about the incident that occurred at the kindergarten, everyone took the side of the little girl Klara and started feeling unsafe from Lucas. Lucas’ survival starts getting difficult as no one wants him around. Shopkeepers and store owners don’t allow Lucas in their shops and is not allowed to even buy his daily essentials. As the movie progresses, the only one to support Lucas is his son Lucas (Lasse Fogelstorm), and his best friend, Brunn (Lars Ranthe). But soon we see even them losing their trust and faith in Lucas. Soon the Police get involved arrest Lucas and take him for investigation.
Soon Christmas arrives and everyone is celebrating the festival with their families and then there is Lucas who is all alone in his home, hungry as he has no food to eat. Later at the church, on Christmas eve, Lucas confronts Theo, pleads and begs for mercy for him, he makes his confession that he has not done any such crime with his daughter. Late at night, Theo visits Lucas at his home and offers his food, and as they talk for a bit, Theo forgives Lucas.
As some time passes by, it is Marcus’ 18th birthday. And as he legally becomes an adult now, Brunn and many other friends of Lucas gift him a hunting rifle. They all go to the woods outside for Marcus to try his new gun. After a few shots when everyone goes inside, Lucas stays behind and is still out in the woods contemplating his life. Suddenly there is a gunshot taken right above his head of Lucas. As Lucas looks around him in the woods, he gets a glimpse of a man standing in the sunset holding a gun. They both look at each other and the mysterious man with the gun runs away.
“The world is full of evil but if we hold on to each other, it goes away.”
-Theo
5 things I liked about The Hunt:
The Hunt is surely one of the best foreign movies I have watched till now.
- I have watched many different movies in various languages but handling such a sensitive issue of ‘pedophilic’ could have only been possible by such great artists. Whether it was the director- ‘Thomas Vinterberg’ or the lead actor- ‘Mads Mikkelsen’, any amount of praises are not enough to describe how well the movie is written, directed, and acted. It might not be possible to make such a movie in many countries and even if it were made, people might not accept this movie. But handling the thin line between a crime and an accusation and its repercussions are handled brilliantly by everyone involved in the movie.
- The pacing of the movie is brilliantly executed. It slows down and paces up according to the requirement of the scene and atmosphere the script builds.
- The director and actors make you feel the tension and whatever builds up in the movie. As the movie progress, it really hurts to feel the helplessness and the things that happen with Lucas. Just a little carelessness of a little girl, Klara has led to the disaster of a good man’s life.
- The acting of Theo’s (Thomas Bo Larsen) daughter Klara (Anika Wedderkopp), who is shown as a victim of a pedophile in the movie did an amazing job of acting in such a serious movie. Usually, we don’t expect much from a child actor. But the way the little actress presents her role so intensely and precisely as per the requirements of the movie makes the viewer sad and somewhere even frustrated by the false accusations she makes against her teacher, Lucas.
- As the movie ends, every member involved in the movie manages to keep the intensity on a really high level and never allows the movie to drop its focus. The movie manages to make their viewer struggle as a minute passes by. The movie does well enough to make their viewer feel every emotion that Lucas is going through in his life currently. Losing the respect of society, the hatred society gives him, Lucas having his own son doubting his intentions at a point, the fear Lucas is currently living in, the way he feels alone in this world, and the anger Lucas has towards everyone as no one wants to know the truth and has straight up blamed him for an accusation made by a kid.
“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.”
-Lucas
5 things I disliked about The Hunt:
The movie is so well constructed that there are hardly any negative aspects to it. But stills, here are some of my picks that could have been better in the movie.
- The cinematographer could have used better color grading. No doubt movie has some beautiful stills but the colors lacks in them. Yes, the movie has a dark tone and the movie has a really intense script, but the weather in Denmark does not completely support the color grading the director and cinematographer take. Many scenes in the movie feel dull and lack color.
- The movie is so engaging that by the time the movie ends, the viewer might feel emotionally exhausted. It can be taken as praise for the director, actors, and everyone involved in the movie that it leaves their viewers thinking about the movie for some time, but it also exhausts its viewer.
- The movie uses such a good idea of false accusations of pedophilic actions that are shown so brilliantly, but it is not used well enough. Such accusations can go to an extreme extent in the real life but the movie does not involve law enforcement well enough. There are no lawyers involved, there are activists coming for it, and there are no news articles or videos shown in the movie related to it. The movie could have been better if it gave the entire aspect a more realistic look.
- Actors do not have the best look one could have had in real life. Costume designing lacks a lot when it takes over a period of some days. The movie shows us a span of somewhere around 30-60 days but it looks like the director did not think about it much.
- As the movie progresses, the acts and moves of many characters become a bit predictable. Viewers start predicting what Lucas, Theo, Klara, and many more characters involved in the movie are going to do next. And as per the 3rd point I mentioned, the lack of extreme end makes the thinking of the characters after such an accusation looks like a soft decision.