Jagten (The Hunt)
There's not many films that really awaken a number of negative sensations and emotions in me and that I at the end still find it a superb, even fantastically well-made film.
The film I'm talking about is Swedish film: Jagten (The Hunt), it made me disappointed, shocked sad and utterly pissed of all over the course of one film, It's really just one of those films that make me want to go live in some cave, away from people from the rest of the week until I'm ready for it all again.
Now the living in some cave is obviously a little exaggerated, I don't even particularly enjoy sleeping in a tent, let alone a cave. But it is one those films that make you for a while really feel the need to be alone, away from people to recover emotionally and really think about what you just saw.
The Hunt shows that there are decent, kind, good natured people in this world and that it is precisely these sort of people, the people that wouldn't hurt a fly unless they were driven into a corner or threatened with their lives.
It's this kind of people, that really deserve all that is good that often become the victims of the paranoia, the hysteria, the intolerance, of the lack of compassion of the stupidity and the incompetence of other people.
In this case, the stupidity comes from blindly believing an uncertain fact, accepting something that is not proven as true, and when a fact that's uncertain gets accepted by more and more people as true.
It eventually ceases to be one fact, It's multiplied, rumors are created and before you know it you have an entire circus that's been blown out of proportion and the in the film, a witch hunt for a man who's innocent.
The marvelous thing about the film is that there's not a clearly defined bad guy, It's not easy to find a particular character to blame it all on, because even if there's a bad guy. Here you can understand their actions to a certain degree, there are no killing machines here, everybody is human, flawed, terribly flawed, despicable yet nonetheless human.
In the film, a little girl tells a lie, an entire story that she fabricated, which everyone believes without question after a while, because children, as is often widely said, tell the truth, they don't lie.
However what is overlooked here, is that small child has vivid imaginations, they easily create a story or add little, untrue details to a true story, of course, children lie, but they're just children they don't yet fully realize the actions of their consequences.
So can you be angry at a little girl for lying, can you see her as the one to blame, as the enemy? Of course, you can't... You can only educate her about what is wrong with it and tell her to not do it again because that's how children learn, they make mistakes, you teach them what’s wrong with it and they learn.
It's often said in Psychology, that when questioning a child about something that happened, you shouldn't ever make suggestions or imply things because children are extremely susceptible to suggestion.
So when you imply something, when you present them with a scenario, very often they'll say that happened, because they're tired or confused, annoyed. It's just a way to get out of the situation, the child says yes to everything because that's what he or she thinks the adult wants to be hearing.
Here that also happens, people suspect something terrible happened to the little girl in question, they don't even know for sure. They imply things, which the girl doesn't understand fully yet.
She confused just says that they're true, and this convinces the adults about the suspicions they had. The little girl's words are never questioned, and the man in question is not allowed to explain himself because in their minds he already has committed the crime he did not commit, and deserves to be punished, suffers for it.
And that's we get to see, an unfair, unjust trial, a witch hunt on a good, innocent person, there's very few things that are more upsetting, painful than that. And to think that it all started fairly innocently in this case...
A little girl is at home alone with her older brother, he has friends over, they're looking at porn, one of them jokingly shows her one of the images on the iPad, which she clearly can't make sense of yet, 5-year-old girls aren't thinking about anything sexual yet.
But the suggestion is there in her mind, she has seen it, it can’t be unseen. She doesn't understand it, but It's there buried in her subconscious, in one of the rooms of her mind, and it can be pulled out at any given moment, and have terrible consequences. And that is what happens here.
The little girl Klara, gets along well with one of the instructors at the school, it is just a normal teacher/ child relationship, the girl like so many children just happens to have a favorite one, in this case, a man, Lucas. One day she's lost and somehow ends up at the school, she only wants to get home and Lucas along with his dog that she loves walks her home.
The next day, she fabricates a heart, that she gift wraps and puts in Lucas's coat pocket, just as a way to think him, she doesn't realize that such behavior is inappropriate. And one day she gives him a hug and a kiss right on the mouth, which the man doesn't reciprocate, maybe she has what could be seen as a childlike crush on him, but she can't be blamed because she doesn't yet realize how wrong that is.
Lucas finds the heart in his pocket coat, and confronts her with it, she says it wasn't her that made it, Lucas tells her that he knows she’s lying and why he can't accept it and why It's wrong, and that she should give it to one of the boys her age or that she should give it to her mom.
Klara feels hurt and is angry with him, she doesn't fully grasp why what she did was so wrong, so she just seems him as mean, and from her anger, she tells a lie in child like retaliation that she shouldn't have told. Of which she'll later realize the consequences, she'll even take it back, but then no one believes her anymore and the harm is done, the hunt has begun!
Klara tells a teacher that she saw Lucas's private parts, the teachers at first since they have no proof decide to leave it aside for the moment and find out more before jumping to any conclusions. Though the seed of doubt is planted, people begin to suspect the man, because now of course everything that he does is wrong in their eyes...
Doubt has now been planted into the minds of the adults, and they will not be moved from it. They pull the girl back for questioning along with a child psychologist, they relentlessly ask her horrible, insensitive, questions at least when you consider that (she’s only 5 years old): “ Did you touch it?”, “Did he make you?”, “Did something white come out of it?”
She’s overwhelmed, uncomfortable, confused and says that she doesn’t know, that she doesn’t remember, from that moment on they become convinced that the girl is suppressing memories, and that she did indeed suffer sexual abuse at Lucas’s hands.
He becomes a dirty pedophile, a sick man, a social pariah. His friends turn their backs to him, even his best friend, and when he goes to explain what happened and swears that he didn’t touch his daughter, he is attacked verbally by the wife, and ultimately physically by his friend, who threatens to kill him if he ever comes near her again.
Only one friend, as well as his girlfriend, believe him, but even she gets doubts, she’s brought in for questioning too, as she’s now the woman who knowingly dates “a sick man.” She runs the danger of becoming just as isolated as him…
He’s denied entry from all the towns in stores, and the parents at the school are informed even when there’s no proof and he ultimately is fired from his job. When he dares to venture into the supermarket for food, he’s beaten up terribly, his ex-wife forbids their son from seeing his father.
Eventually, there’s a lawsuit, he ends up in jail, he’s released eventually as there’s really no proof against him. He returns from jail, his son is allowed to visit him again.
But the town still bullies him and they kill his dog, which is a film cliche, but an effective one: people love their dogs, It’s like directly attacking them, taking something they love away from them.
Lucas seeks no revenge, he knows he is innocent and so does a few others and that seems to be enough for him. But finally at the church on Christmas eve he snaps, as the whole town is sending accusatory, hateful glances his way.
In Belgium where I'm from, we have a saying that goes like this: “Een geslagen hond bijt” which can be translated along the lines of a beaten dog eventually bites back, meaning that if you keep on hurting someone, pushing them past a certain point.
There will come a time when they will no longer tolerate it when they will retaliate because everyone has a certain dignity and some kind of pride and there is a limit to the humiliation and the pain a person can realistically endure.
This is applicable to the film, our protagonist, Lucas is a decent, good man. He has so much dignity, that he won't step down to the level of his aggressors and hurt them.
He is convinced of his own innocence, he knows he has done nothing and firmly believes the truth will out, he would never hurt anyone and-and he seems to believe that the people that have known him all his life will eventually come to realize this.
But the moment they kill something he loves, when he finds his dog dead, something switches in a way, his son comes out and sees his beloved dog, at first he's hysterical with anger, then disbelief:"Dad, bring her inside, she's cold" only she is of course already dead...
Up until that point, it was really only him that they were trying hurt, but now they did something that affects his son as well, and that really is the breaking point, he won't tolerate it any further. And of course, in this, we can side with him if someone attacks your children aren't you going to do all that you can to protect them? That is simply a parent’s instinct.
Lucas confronts his best friend at the church, and the other man seems to see something in his face, in his eyes, and he suddenly believes he’s innocent and didn’t harm his daughter, they later on talk and drink together and all is forgiven and forgotten.
Lucas’s friends begin to accept him again and Klara has apologized to him. But we are left with a horrible ending, that implies he’ll still be hunted by some or someone, as we see someone’s silhouette (it appears to be a woman) lift up and aim a hunting rifle in Lucas’s direction, seconds later you hear what I found one of the most chill inducing gunshots in any film ever, Lucas falls to the ground but appears to be alive….
But the shooter more than anything represents that he is still hunted, persecuted because there is still doubt; that’s the danger of a lie or a distorted reality even if disproven.
It has been ingrained and ingrained into the townspeople, over and over and again, saturated with an idea, they become incapable of questioning, of thinking for themselves, they believe the lie, not only this but thinking for yourself, requires mental effort, which for quite a number of people is not a welcome challenge.
In The Hunt, the question is not whether Lucas is guilty of abuse or not, after all, we see exactly what happens and how one comment from a five-year-old child will live a life of its own. The director does not emphasize blame, but the consequences that such an accusation can have.
Your best friends, your boyfriend or your girlfriend, your neighbors, the nice baker or butcher on the corner all of the sudden turn out to be aggressive types that wouldn’t hesitate to burn you alive or hang you from the highest tree. That approach makes The Hunt an interesting terrifying, psychological study, because somewhere deep down you can easily imagine those feelings, those instincts in a mob of people.
Even when the little Klara, who has no idea what she has caused and would prefer that just like before Lucas and his dog would walk her from school to home as they previously always did. She withdraws her words and almost literally says Lucas has done nothing to her. The mass doesn’t believe her and appears adamant, unflinching.
Super strong and unsettling is the scene in the church on Christmas Eve when a heavily battered and disillusioned Lucas deliberately seeks out confrontation with the villagers. The tension can be cut with a knife, the silence in the church ominous...
For me, the essential question then remains (even if the director doesn’t really emphasise blame), who’s to blame? The little girl?, the townspeople?, the school and the phsychologist, the authorities? Or all of the above?
I certainly don’t think the little girl is, at best her parents for failing to deliver in a part of her education. But then again can you really blame the parents? Even having to live with the suspicion, the doubt that your daughter might have suffered sexual abuse by a man who’s supposed to be a man of the family is horrible enough…
So I’d probably blame the townsfolk, for getting involved in a business that didn’t concern them and the school for not being more objective, coolheaded and jumping to conclusions when there isn't any proof.
Jumping to conclusions too quickly can harm, scar, even destroy someone forever. Even if Lucas’s friends forgive him, he’ll never ever be able to forget that literally, everyone has turned their back to him, the psychological damage of that is irreparable, that’s for life.
And no person that’s innocent, that’s not guilty of what they’re suspected of, deserves to have to live with such a haunting memory for the rest of their lives.
The Hunt is a great film not only because of It’s dark, powerful subject that offers a deep look into certain social phenomena, such as social exclusion and mob mentality.
While It’s well crafted story, helps, it makes it into a deep cutting psychological drama or even physiological thriller in some ways, because It’s so engaging, so intense, scary and horrifying.
But it is also because of the acting, the whole story depends and is based on the actions of the people, It’s all about perception and social interactions, the whole believable would fall away if the cast turned in bad or even mediocre performances.
But luckily they all deliver believable work, that supports the story and that elevates it. All the performances are good and none of the are forgettable because they’ve all added curricula moments in the film.
But two performances stand out in their emotional power and their elegance, the two performances that stick to the mind. There is the performance of Annika Wedderkopp as Klara, the little girl.
A lot of child actors’s performances, often seem forced, coerced robotic even, they’re overly, ridiculously or unbelievably emotional. Or the child is supposed to be endearing, but actually comes across as unbearably bratty.
Or the child comes across as creepily adult, to old for his or her years. Anyway, my point is that children in film don’t comes across as children that often, like real life children would.
Wedderkopp, who played Klara does, and yet she seems to have perfect emotional control, the girl believably expresses different emotions and she still comes across as an actual, non creepy child.
Mads Mikkelsen as Lucas turns in a truly powerful performance as well. It’s not a particularly dramatic one, this character is mostly calm, tranquil, because he is convinced of his own innocence. Therefore he doesn’t feel ashamed and doesn’t feel like he should yell loudly to defend himself, this is only when he is attacked.
Yet Mikkelsen perfectly transports us into the mind of this man, at each moment we understand him, and ultimately we care about him, you’re invested in him, he feels real and if anything bad happens to him, it actually really gets to you, it hurts.
It’s a performance that doesn’t have many theatricalities to it, it really stands and falls based on facial expressions and the naturalness with which the actor delivers them and Mikkelsen never seems unsure, always confident and always spot on.
Something that could be a detracting factor for the film, are some of the inconsistencies, well not really inconsistencies, more like things that aren’t exactly plausible things within the plot.
But that’s really made up for by the quality of the overall direction and the acting. When it comes the direction, the naturalness of the acting and the spot on, often merciless emotion to it, it has the exact right dose of emotion, It’s truly beautiful.
As I said there’s in my eyes, a few inconsistencies, but the film’s pacing and timing is not one. It never seems slow, or too fast, it never falters, It’s confident and steady, it knows where it wants to go at all times and it goes there with no mercy, determination, delivering one emotional blow after the other, without leaving time to recover, the film wants to upset and unsettles, and it succeeded at it too, beautifully.
The Hunt is the type of film that has a deceivingly simple, clean looking cinematography. Like most Scandinavian films, it is quite dark, not only because it takes place during autumn which is when in Scandinavia, it becomes gradually darker outside.
But there is also, something unmmissably dark and sinister about it, partly because of its subjects, Scandinavian filmmakers seem to have a predilection for the darker sides of human nature: murder, emotional and sexual abuse, rape, sometimes all of the above: (The girl with dragon tattoo), and all those twisted things most of us prefer to not think about.
It doesn't seem like a coindince, that Scandinavia produces one of the highest numbers of crime novels in the world, and what is reffered to as murder mysteries. Camilla Läckberg, a famous author of the genre, (her work has been translated into 25 languages) for instance is Swedish. Perhaps the fact that during quite a large part of the year they have less light, invites them to think about dark subjects of human nature.
Now saying that all Scandinavian films are dark would be a cliché, but definitely, a lot of them are. A lot of them have a gritty, lucid quality to it, a spot on precision in their portrayal of certain things, that they become unnerving, you feel uneasy and they prove emotionally confronting.
The Hunt is not different. It's at first sight a beautiful film to look at, purely aesthetically speaking. It's simple, It's clean, stays away from special effects, and weird nontraditional camera angles and filming techniques, the film looks sleek and stylish and perhaps upon first sight not all that memorable.
But then you notice that just like in the film's storyline, something dark, something unnerving, permeates through its cinematography. It's a psychological drama, but the way it is presented at times is reminiscent of a classy psychological thriller, or a good executed true crime story.
This sort of atmosphere that lingers to the film, comes mostly from the fact that the light, is usually somewhat dark as well as the colours. There's also a play with contrasts, in harmony with what's going on emotionally, colours and light seem to deepen in intensity at times.
And the closeness that we feel to the main character also comes from the excellent use of closeups, or on the contrary scenes that are observed from farther away, that foreshadow that something dark is going to happen, It's all these little things that create tension and that you engaged throughout the whole film.
So The Hunt doesn't do anything particularly fancy at first glance, and keeps it perhaps quite traditional, no fancy or crazy techniques but if it works it works.
And The Hunt knows that it should make It's characters stand out above all, what happens to the characters or what they do to each other is what matters most, not really what's going on in the background.
So It's simplicity and its elegance are It's the biggest triumph, I remember almost exactly each thing a certain character did and not really something that was in the background, had it been the other way around the film would have more impersonal.
It has a good soundtrack, not exactly a memorable one but a good one, that adds to the emotional tensions between the characters, it often makes their scary actions seem even more extreme, senseless and completely crazy and irrational, it infuses them with an unsettling tone. So It did It's job.
I'd say that The Hunt is a beautiful film, and in many of It's aspects it is, but I can't go there. It is a brilliant film, but it is infuriatingly realistic and plausible, It's unnerving, truly terrifying.
As it shows that the darker side of human nature sometimes prevails, good people don't always get what they deserve, good doesn't always win, sometimes ignorance, intolerance and hysteria does, however there is one beam of light the truth shall eventually out, whether people want to accept it or not is something else entirely...
I would call The Hunt a necessary, hard hitting, sobering, emotionally confronting film, it is sometimes necessary to be reminded what people are capable of; the film's subjects are never easy or beautiful or poetic, they are repulsing, truly the lowest instincts of our nature and sadly seemingly inherently, irrevocably human...
“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.” - Mark Twain
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