The Hunt (2012)

Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp
Runtime: 115 minutes

Synopsis: A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son's custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.

Verdict: Is it safer to assume that an innocent person is guilty or to assume that a guilty person is innocent?

Nearly a decade after its release, Thomas Vinterberg’s “Jagten” still haunts me to my core. The Oscar-nominated Danish film takes a powerful look at the destructive consequences on the livelihood of a kindergarten teacher wrongfully accused of inappropriate behavior around children. In a time where many careers are destroyed due to accusations made on social media, watching it nowadays feels more relevant than ever as it tackles a very sensitive topic that is only dividing our society further.

And this is why revisiting it was like viewing an entirely different movie. I kept asking myself if I’d still feel the same way towards Mads Mikkelsen’s character had it taken a more neutral stance, one where the audience wouldn’t be aware of what the truth actually was. Would we still feel outraged by his community’s decision to completely cut him off their lives? Would we still be shocked by the decision to lay him off a job that requires him to be around children all day long? Would we still project out anger on Klara’s family who chose to believe their daughter instead of their friend? Even if I strongly believe in the innocent until proven guilty process, looking at the events from the town’s perspective would make me think twice before answering the previous questions in the affirmative.

The lies told by Klara quickly turned her into an antagonist in the eyes of many, another conclusion I’m not so keen on after my most recent rewatch. She’s clearly a confused young girl, alienated by a family who doesn’t care about her whereabouts despite her very young age. Lucas, who was brought to life by an all-time best performance by Mikkelsen, has always been a sort of father figure to her. With him being the only person in her life who deeply cared about her, feelings started to form towards him, materialized in a scene where she attempts to kiss him before quickly being told by Lucas that her approach was a highly inappropriate one. Hurt by the rejection of the only character she thought she could trust and desperate to gain the sympathy of her surroundings, she made up a story and recounted it to her teacher, not knowing what the consequences of her words would be.

The whole situation is a highly unfortunate one, but one I cannot see taking a different path than the one that occurs in the movie. Even if a small part of me wishes that the film showed the narrative through a more impartial lens to emphasize the rest of the characters’ points of view, I was extremely satisfied with the way it was handled as the biggest victim of this entire scandal is clearly the person who was wrongfully labeled a pedophile.

FINAL GRADE: 9/10