Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt is one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen, though beneath the gorgeous Autumnal scenery it is a masterful take on a difficult subject matter.
Set and shot in Denmark, Mads Mikkelsen portrays Lucas, a nursery school teacher wrongly accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a child, and the film chronicles the subsequent dismantling of his life.
Mikkelsen is simply terrific, bringing such range and presence as an actor to the role of gentle and paternal Lucas. He is a world away from the menace he brings to Hannibal, though both performances are utterly convincing. What is also utterly convincing is his portrayal of a man whose life is turned utterly upside down. It is Klara, one of the girls at the nursery who accuses Lucas, after forming something of a childhood infatuation with him. Lucas disarms and deals with this in an exceedingly professional manner, though her mild jealously as disastrous ramifications.
What is so infuriating is how utterly avoidable the whole situation is. It is the failings of Lucas’ colleagues in their mishandling of the situation that ultimately damns him. We have a deeply uncomfortable scene in which Klara is questioned about the incident by an exceedingly creepy official. The frustration is palpable, Klara clearly being desperate to leave and thus answers in the affirmative. The scene is unbearable but brilliantly executed, a real strength of the film in garnering such a strong reaction from its audience.
Praise must be given to Annika Wedderkopp who plays Klara, she is perhaps the most natural and utterly compelling and believable child actress I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t appear to be acting at all, there’s no awkwardness that sometimes comes with child performers, she is just utterly evocative of a real child and how real children would react in that given situation. The fact that she can be so captivating, even in a completely different language is a testament to her performance, and really helps to sell the film’s central dilemma.
The film looks stunning, shot and set in Autumn and into Winter, Vinterberg makes an excellent of a warming colour palette which is so utterly at odds with the frosty (to say the least) reception that Lucas receives. The colour scheme reverberates throughout the whole of the film, the school and the church at the film’s climax all share this warmth of colour. Instances where it is absent are more noticeable, the darker, colder blues and greys that light Lucas’ house as he is alone and ostracized are made even more cutting by the contrast. A slight side note admittedly, but Christmas in Denmark seems absolutely magical.
The Hunt itself refers to the more literal manhunt and persecution of Lucas, but also the hunting of deer. This hunt is reflective of manhood, a right of passage for young men, and Lucas’ teenage son is gifted a gun and is invited to join the hunt. This loss of innocence in growing up is of course tied with the loss of innocence that results from Lucas being falsely accused of child molestation, and indeed the whole film has a transitional air, from the changing of the season to the changing of boy to man.
Amongst the other hunters, Lucas is something of an oddity. He isn’t unmanly or effeminate in anyway, but compared with his bearded, grizzly, typically Scandinavian lumberjack compatriots, the quieter Lucas cuts more of an academic figure, the glasses especially. It is unsurprising perhaps that Lucas does become hunted then by his brethren, as Leo, Klara’s father and undoubtedly the manliest Viking of them all is the leader of both hunts. Loss of innocence aside, The Hunt seems in a big way to be about manliness and what it takes to be a man, not in the conventional sense of strength and being “macho”, though the film does present this aspect. No, more so it is about manliness in a more important sense, in the modern rather than the prehistoric world. Lucas, upon being blacklisted, beaten up and removed from his local grocery store, indignantly resists. He attends Christmas Mass resiliently whilst the whole town look on in disgust at his presence there. Leo becomes a real man by being the first to forgive and see the error of his ways, and it is qualities such as this, in a film where manliness and innocence are tested, that is far more important than shooting deer or drinking beer.
The Hunt is a wonderful looking film, but it has real meat beneath the luscious visuals, dealing with an incredibly contentious subject matter in a frank and direct way, aided massively by the strength of its cast of stunning performances, but by Mikkelsen and Wedderkopp especially.
Patrick on the Box 