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| Mads Mikkelsen and the effect of 'the others' on the chilling poster for Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt |
QUICK REVIEW:
Our hero Oscar is a kindergarten caretaker in the village where he lives, and he is just about to get his teenage son back from his vindictive ex-wife, when a little girl tells the kindergarten manager a story, which comes to drastically change his life.
Getting into the story here, we know where it is heading; The Hunt is the kind of movie that feels somewhat like tripping and falling down a rocky mountain in slow-motion. - It just goes downhill pretty much for the whole film.
But with the help of a generally good script, - co-written by director Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration (1998)) and Tobias Lindholm (A Hijacking (2012)), - and fine performances, this steady downwards motion avoids growing dull or overly depressing. - Although it is not a film most people will find themselves coming back to for a second watch.
Mads Mikkelsen (The Salvation (2014)) plays Oscar, the man who gets side-tracked in his little rural world, and he shows us all the emotions connected to this perfectly. Susse Wold (Matador (1978-81)) is eminent as his boss; and Thomas Bo Larsen (Pusher (1996)) is good as his best friend.
However, there is one scene, which was a fly in the soup for me: SPOILER The church scene, in which Oscar makes a big, loud and even violent scene during Christmas Mass. I lost sympathy for him in the scene, and I didn't think it was needed to go overboard like that. It's just too much. Also, the particulars concerning the prayer and the priest are obviously written by people unfamiliar with the rituals, and who also seem to be driven by their own prejudices of the churchly realm. This is disappointing.
The ending of the film is on first look pretty good. But on further thought, what does it really imply? SPOILER That despite the fact that Oscar is found innocent of the charges and is taken back into the community, he will always feel hunted? This seems to be it. It goes contrary to the scenes preceding it, and I don't quite buy it. I also don't want to feel bad for the strong male hero in perpetuity, somehow.
Still, The Hunt is a good Danish film and Oscar-contender for the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2014, which it lost to Paolo Sorrentino's masterpiece The Great Beauty (2013).
It is curious that this arguably Vinterberg's greatest film since he erupted internationally with the Dogme-masterpiece The Celebration/Festen (1998) is also a film that deals with child sex abuse. - However, The Hunt presents, in a way, the exact reversed situation of The Celebration: There the awful truth was shushed away and hidden for ages as a taboo, while in The Hunt, a viral lie of an imagined sexual abuse becomes the basis of a mass hysteria.
Vinterberg is at the moment putting his last touches on a remake starring Carey Mulligan, Far From the Maddening Crowd (2015).
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| Susse Wold and Annika Wedderkopp in Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt |
Watch the excellent trailer here
Cost: 3.5 mil. $
Box office: 16.7 mil. $
= Big hit
[Strongly supported by The Hunt's win in Cannes '12, where it also had its world premiere, for Best Lead Actor (Mikkelsen), it enjoyed nice runs, particularly in countries like the Netherlands and its originating Denmark.]
What do you think of The Hunt?
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