The Hunt (2012)

The Hunt is a film that hits incredibly hard and holds no punches. This is a story about a man who is falsely convicted of pedophilia in his small hunting town. The film has been described in many other places as a modern-day witch hunt, a very apt description. The performances are the most notable aspect of the whole movie. The camera is not very flashy and gives itself wholly to the performers. Most of the film is composed of simple shot-reverse-shot conversations and the actors dominate every single moment of screen time. Mads Mikkelsen gives these incredibly reserved emotional moments, making you so profoundly resonate with a vast feeling of isolation. I don’t want to fill the whole page with remarks about the performances in the film, but everyone on screen pulls there weight. Like I said before, the camera is not at all flashy; for most of the film, it remains reasonably stable, gaining a bit of energy here and there. After reading a bit of other writing about the film, it seems some people were put off by the ending. I do not feel this way at all. It may be a little cliche, but I think it’s cliche appropriately used; life is cliche, and this film doesn’t seem to stray away from that fact. Humans do not always abide by rational thinking, especially when trying to protect the future generation. That is the core truth of this film. It reminds me of Doubt (2008), a film also about the accusation of pedophilia that film, however, is specifically analyses, you guess it, doubt. This film is more interested in the instinctual reactions of modern humans. It’s about how hunters hunt. I would recommend to anyone looking to explore foreign films and/or is a fan of Mad Mikkelsen.