Thomas Vinterberg made what is still my favorite of the Dogma 95 movies, The Celebration. The film combined 50s style kitchen sink drama with a modern tone of brutal, brutal honesty.
The Hunt is not quite as shocking a film experience. In an odd way, the two films are connected at child abuse. In the former, abuse occurred and it went unspoken for decades, until it could no longer be contained. In the latter, the film shows no abuse… just a “silly thing” said by a little girl that turns into caution, then fear, then manipulation allegedly for the good of the child, then, most powerfully, an unwillingness amongst adults to step back and gain perspective (in this case, aka truth).
What truly makes this more than a familiar good story well told about false accusations is the time and care it takes in bringing the situation to a boil. There is the response of the lead character, played by Mads Mikkelsen, who rarely declares himself in absolutes… which feels both like how an innocent man might behave, but also how someone guilty or unsure of his guilt might behave. And almost every one around him, who starts by not believing, then wondering, then agreeing to a truth that has no logic or proof, based on a very few words spoken by a 5-year-old.
The story has many threads familiar to followers of the McMartin Preschool case in California. But it doesn’t get into all the mechanics. It speaks to the fear… as no possibility other than abuse is allowed to be considered once the adults head down this road.
Still, the film threatens to the end to flip on you. It forces you, by not giving any greater explanation than the ones of offer to the community, to wonder whether something happened… Understood, misunderstood, accurate or overly inflated. Of of the writing tricks that really works here is the sensory deprivation experience inflicted on the accused. He finds out what accusations have been made only in drips and drabs. So he is Hamlet, haunted by this ghost of an accusation, unable to change his circumstances because the entire kingdom thinks him mad.
There are a couple things I would have liked to have seen that aren’t in the film. The seed of the accusation sprouts in a kindergarten run by a loving woman who chooses to believe the child and not the adult… and with good intentions, lights the torches with the idea that any hangs in the story must be repression, not truth, leaving no room for exoneration in the minds of most people. She never has the confrontation scene that I would have loved to have seen on the 3rd act. Likewise, a romantic reunion that we don’t get to see seems like a great scene that’s missing.
It’s the different between a home run and a solid triple.
But it’s also a perfect film for this Cannes press experience. So many lazy, easy judgments by so many in a week of tweets can depress the soul.
