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A small Danish town. Lucas is divorced and plans that his teenage son Marcus moves to his place. Lucas works in a kindergarten, which also has a little girl, Klara. One day, Klara's teenage brother and his friend show her a photo of a naked man on a tablet, and mention the word "rod". Later, the director of the kindergarten, Grethe, overhears Klara mentioning that she doesn't like Lucas because he has a "willy" like a "rod". Grethe assumes that Lucas showed his penis to the child and thus has him fired. Lucas insists he is innocent, but the rumors spreak quickly over the town. He loses his girlfriend, Nadja, his friends shun him, whereas he is even forbidden to shop at a local mall. Only Marcus and a couple of friends believe him. While attending a church, Lucas confronts Klara's dad, Theo, and tells him he is innocent. After the judge drops the case due to lack of evidence, Lucas is rehabilitated. A year later, he goes hunting with Marcus. Someone shoots at him.
After ditching the Dogme 95 movement, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg returned in big style with this excellent drama that is a giant meditation on the legal notion of "beyond reasonable doubt", contemplating how difficult it is to remain objective when an innocent person's life can be completely destroyed in an instant by a single unsubstantiated accusation. Mads Mikkelsen is convincing as the honest protagonist Lucas who is wrongfully accused of being a pedophille, and the movie explores how the whole town, even his friends, turn their back on him and rush to conclusions, mass hysteria and the lynch mob mentality. It is almost a critique of "cancel culture". The storyline is simple, yet effective and ambitious, establishing the questionable methodology of the councelor drawing out random words from the 5-year old girl and asking suggestive questions, until he "deciphers" a whole criminal case from vague answers. The second half of "The Hunt" turns more and more intense, with two sequences (Lucas entering the shopping store with the arrogant butcher; Lucas attending the church mass during Christmas) standing out by creating almost unbearable anxiety and anticipation of the reaction of the hostile society that wants to kick out the protagonist, with a sequence of a deer shot during a hunt drawn as a parallel for Lucas' own situation where he himself will become prey in a hunt on himself by the town's people. While some ideas and moments could have been elaborated better and more, "The Hunt" is a clever drama that asks some uncomfortable questions and appeals to reason and the rule of law.
Grade:+++
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