Suzume

Suzume no Tojimari; animated fantasy drama / road movie, Japan, 2023; D: Makoto Shinkai, S: Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura, Eri Fukatsu, Shota Sometani, Sairi Ito

Teenage girl Suzume lives with her aunt in Kyushu, ever since Suzume lost her mother in the  2 0 1 1 Tohoku earthquake. One day, Suzume meets a guy, Souta, who locks doors in abandoned places which serve as portals for supernatural red "worms" who come through them and cause earthquakes, but are invisible to other people. A cat, the keystone that keeps the portals closed, transforms Souta into a three-legged chair which Suzume received from her mom as a kid. Suzume and Souta-chair follow the cat in a ship to Shikoku and seal off further "worms" coming through portals. They travel to Tokyo. Souta becomes a keystone and is "frozen", but Suzume awakens him and the cat takes the position of the keystone. Traveling through the door, Suzume meets herself as a kid when she was looking for her deceased mother, and comforts herself.

One of Makoto Shinkai's lesser films, "Suzume" is a peculiar allegory on the 2 0 1 1 Tohoku-Fukushima earthquake, as well as a meditation on trauma and loss in Japan in general caused by earthquakes. It's a pity though that his melancholic symbolism, various motives and disparate ideas are not bound by a more harmonious storyline. Shinkai has a sense for perfect animation, with stunning colors and gorgeous details (a bird's eye view of hundreds of buildings in Tokyo appear for only three seconds), yet if he sends the viewers on such a convoluted story, it better have a much better payoff than we got here. Suzume's new friend, Souta, appears, and already when he is transformed into a three-legged chair, just 20 minutes into the film, one already senses this is the point at which "Suzume" stopped being a great movie and became "only" a good movie. For some reason, Souta spends 90% of the remaining film in the shape of this three-legged chair, when his human form could and should have given rise to much better character interaction with Suzume. This permanent chair transformation is a wrong turn which wrecks the movie. The surreal supernatural red "worms" which cause earthquakes are a metaphor for fatalism and the anxiety for lives that can be wrecked by random chaos and natural disasters in the Universe, yet this is watered-down in this road movie format where Suzume and chair-Souta travel from Kyushu to Tokyo and meet random people, with several episodes straining the patience since the running time of 120 minutes feels overlong. The ending is both emotional and underwhelming, since it doesn't have a worthy point at the end, and feels too similar to the ending in Shinkai's better anime "Your Name".

Grade:++

The Terrorist

Bayangaravaath; drama, India, 1998; D: Santosh Sivan, S: Ayesha Dharker, Vishnu Vardhan, Bhanu Prakash, Krishna Kulasekaran

Malli is a 19-year old girl who is trained in a jungle camp of a rebel group fighting against the government. When she was a child, her brother killed himself for the group. Now, Malli is selected by the group's leader to become a suicide bomber and blow up an important politician from the government. She is led by a boy, Lotus, across the river, from where she takes a boat to a port city. There, two men pass her off as an agriculture student to find her an accommodation in an apartment. They train with her how she will place flowers around the neck of the politician, kneel down and then press the button of the bomb hidden underneath her waist. However, Malli finds out she is pregnant, and her landlord is very kind towards her. During the official visit, Malli mingles among women and places flowers around the neck of the politician. She reaches for the button, but then gives up.

Excellent psychological drama gained a permanent reputation when Roger Ebert included it in his list of Great Movies, and it is a pity it is relatively unknown in the world cinema. The director Santosh Sivan removes any kind of context—we don't know what the rebel group wants (independence? Or some fight for ethnic, political or religious ideology?), we don't know who leads them nor who is their enemy (the face of the leader of the group is always outside the frame; the politician of the government, their target, is seen only out of focus in the ending)—in order to reduce the story to its essence, a psychological study about the heroine Malli (brilliant Ayesha Dharker) and her slow realization of accepting humanity, her personal outgrowing of a dogma. Sivan, a cinematographer, takes great care of the cinematography, and thus, despite a rather conventional visual style, the film is very aesthetic to look at, with numerous close-ups of Malli's face, especially her eyes, or the nature. The story is rather thin, but codified more than enough to form a coherent narrative, thanks to several subtle ideas, symbols and allegories—for instance, Malli discovers she is pregnant, while her two mentors strap a bomb belt around her stomach, the place where her fetus is growing. The birds in the nest of a tree, or the landlord telling a story about two seeds (one grew to become a tree; the other, cowardly decided to stop just being a flower, so it was eaten by an animal), all form a sort of thought experiment for Malli, teeling her that she may become something more: either live and start a family, or die in her suicide bomber mission. Throughout the film, the image of the old woman lying in bed, in a catatonic state, is repeated again and again, while Malli lingers watching her from her room. In the end, the old woman "awakens" and holds Malli's hand—she is a symbol for Malli, since both are passive and apathetic, and have to become aware to think for themselves. Despite a limited budget and minimalistic repertoire, "The Terrorist" is a valuable and intelligent example of Tamil cinema.

Grade:+++

Cléo from 5 to 7

Cléo de 5 à 7; drama, France, 1962; D: Agnès Warda, S: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, Dorothée Blanc, Michel Legrand

Paris. Singer Florence "Cleo" waits from 5:00 pm until 6:30 pm for her medical results on whether or not she has cancer. A tarot card reader overturns a card featuring death. Cleo and her maid Angele meet at a diner, go shopping and then take a cab back to Cleo's apartment. At home, Cleo fleetingly meets her lover and starts her singing lessons with a piano player, but then leaves after she has to sing the word "despair". Cleo meets nude model in a sculpture class, Dorothee, and they drive off to a cinema. Cleo goes to a park alone and meets a soldier, Antoine, staring a chat with him. They both go to the hospital, but the doctor isn't there. Cleo and Antoine wait at a bench, the doctor shows up in a car, informs her she has a beign tumor and needs two months of chemotherapy, and then drives off.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, a great example of a movie covering an event in real time, "Cleo from 5 to 7" is a simple, unassuming little film about the title heroine waiting for an hour and a half for the results of her medical test, and yet the director and screenwriter Agnes Warda is able to make it interesting from start to finish, even though its focus is mostly on Cleo's conventional encounters and episodes in the city. It is a film that demands endless patience, but it still unravels, surprisingly, much more intriguing and entertaining than one would expect. As if following Hitchcock's statement about how "There is no suspense in the shot, just in the anticipation of it", this whole film is based on casual, everyday anecdotes of the main heroine Cléo, that are all emotionally charged because they are pointing out and anticipating the results at the end. The movie owns such a success mostly to the sophisticated, quiet, subtle, and considerate direction as well as a restrained, authentic and unbelievably convincing performances by the actors, whose characters seem like real people and their small, "trivial" problems close and easily recognisable. 

Even though it was filmed in black and white, the opening scenes of a bird's-eye view of tarot cards on the table are filmed in color, whereas the authenticity can be sensed in several little details (during the cab drive, the radio news informs about riots during the Algerian War as well as Edith Piaf's recovery from the surgery, a sly foreshadowing of the fate of Cleo, who is also a singer fearing she has an illness). Little details somehow become precious in this film: while riding in a cab with the radio turned on, Cleo suddenly says: "Stop it!" The cab stops, yet Cleo explains: "I meant stop the music!", since her singing is heard on the radio. Throughout these episodes as she wanders around, the movie slyly throws symbolism as it contemplates about art, love, a sense of purpose, birth and death, as Cleo encounters other artists (a sculpture model; a great little silent comedy film featuring a cameo from Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina), small kittens are inside her apartment, she is unhappy with her "formal" and unpassionate lover, or spots two doctors carrying a premature-born baby in an incubator. Finally, Cleo wants to escape it all and flees to park Montsouris, where she meets a soldier who has great observations about love: "I was often in love, but never as deeply as I wanted. Girls just like to be loved. They're afraid to give themselves, to lose something. They love by halves. So I stop halfway too." Some moments are indeed too conventional and arbitrary, but unlike Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman", "Cleo" shows a real-time event that doesn't become overstretched and has an ideal running time, articulating its themes in a much more compact manner. Each of the twelve chapters shows clarity and intrigues with ease ("Chapter I: Cleo from 5:05 to 5:08"), all aligning into a purposeful story that makes the viewers think about the fragilty and the search for meaning in life, as well as the fear of loss.

Grade:+++

The River

Le Fleuve; drama / romance, France / UK / USA / India, 1951, D: Jean Renoir, S: Patricia Walters, Thomas E. Breen, Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields

The last years of the British Raj. Teenage girl Harriet lives with her four sisters, one brother and parents on a British mansion near the Ganges river. Her father runs a jute plantation, using local Bengalis as labor force. One day, Cpt. John, a World War II veteran with a prosthetic leg, moves to live with them and Harriet is infatuated by him. The British go to a bazaar and observe a religious festival. John is also interested with Melanie, an English-Hindi woman, but ultimately kisses Valerie, angering Harriet. When Harriet's brother is found dead after a cobra bite, there is a funeral, and Harriet goes on a boat to drift away in the river, but is found and comforted by John. She returns back to her home. Her mother gives birth to a new baby, a girl. 

Jean Renoir's "The River" enjoys a high reputation in certain circles—most notably, Roger Ebert included it in his list of Great Movies, while filmmaker Scorsese included it in his list of 12 favorite films—yet its actual quality is still a little bit below this hype. It is an elegant, polished, unassuming little film with some pretty images and aesthetic use of colors, yet the whole first half seems more like a travel photobook of India than some tight story with a purpose. The first half establishes just a cozy, relaxed mood which is deliberately vague, yet the second half where the story finally sets in is definitely superior. The attempted romance between teenage protagonist Harriet and Cpt. John is subtly built and wonderfully restrained, even though not much happens. In one of the best moments, a wide shot shows Harriet running across the fence and heading towards the garden in the background, after John, as the narrator goes: "Suddenly we were running away from childhood, rushing towards love". After John kisses Valerie, and disappoints both Harriet and Melanie who were watching from a distance, the narrator concludes: "It was my first kiss. But received by another." There are echoes of the cycle of nature, where some events just naturally have to happen on and on, from funeral to birth, from love to disappointment, and as such the characters just accept them, yet the movie becomes too passive itself, since there is too much 'empty walk' and the first half slows it down. Peculiarly, no Indian character is given a proper character development, they are all just one-dimensional extras, overshadowed by the British characters. However, one feels a certain innocent nostalgia for these kind of introverted, intimate, gentle films, as one senses the end of the British colonial rule in India also signals the end of Harriet's childhood and teenage years, as more a complicated future awaits.

Grade:++

Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name; romantic drama, Italy / France / USA / Brazil, 2017; D: Luca Guadagnino, S: Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois

Italy, summer of 1 9 8 3. Teenager Elio has to make room in the house for the arrival of older American student Oliver who was invited by Elio's dad, an archaeology professor for scholarly research. Initially distant, Elio is slowly intruiged by Oliver's literacy and knowledge. At a trip to the countryside, Oliver and Elio kiss. Elio has sex with girl Marzia in the attic, but later on has secret sex with Oliver in his room at midnight. Later on, Marzia is disappointed Elio hasn't contacted her. Dad talks Elio and Oliver into spending the last three days by hanging out together in another city. Oliver departs via a train. Elio is devastated by his absence. Later, Oliver phones to inform him that he is engaged to a woman. 

A gentle, sophisticated romantic drama which seems like a gay version of "Brief Encounter", "Call Me by Your Name" received critical recognition which is almost proportional to its actual quality. Not only is it a story about sexual awakening of its hero, teenager Elio (excellent Timothee Chalamet), but also about the discovery of one's gay side, since the screenwriter James Ivory inserted several authentic biographical elements from his own life experience. While the story is simplistic and banal at times, and some more intricate directing or plot planning would have been welcomed, "Call Me by Your Name" has a genuinely emotional and intimate little story to tell, which is able to slowly absorb the viewers. Some of the Italian landscapes are highly aesthetic (Cascate del Serio waterfall), whereas several moments have spark: in one of them, after a long absence between them, Elio writes a poetic letter to Oliver, who writes him a direct response: "Grow up. Wait for me at midnight." Elio isn't idealised, nor is he always right in his decisions. One naughty moment has an anxious Elio lying in bed, carving up a hole in a peach, and then lowering it under his underwear to masturbate inside it. And there is a subplot of Elio having sex with girl Marizia in the attic (lower importance) and later with Oliver in his room (higher importance), to show that he neglected and cheated on her. After a devastating parting of ways, a deeply saddened Elio is comforted by his father who gives one of the most wise, untypical and remarkable outbursts:"We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything... what a waste." Despite a rather vague and familiar ending, the movie has power and artistic value.

Grade:+++

Rock the Kasbah

Rock the Kasbah; comedy, USA / Morocco, 2015; D: Barry Levinson, S: Bill Murray, Kate Hudson, Leem Lubany, Beejan Land, Danny McBride, Bruce Willis, Arian Moayed, Zooey Deschanel

Washed-up Los Angeles rock manager Richie Lanz accepts to fly to Kabul, Afghanistan with his only talent, singer Ronnie, who will perform at concerts for the US troops during the War in Afghanistan. However, once there, Ronnie steals Richie's passport and money and flees back to the US, leaving him stranded there. Since the US embassy needs two weeks to issue him a new passport, Richie accepts money from two arms dealers to smuggle ammunition to "good guys" in Paktia in several vehicles. Once there, Richie overhears a Pashtun girl, Salima, secretly singing American songs in a cave. She hides in his car and insists that he helps her perform on the Kabul TV show Aghan Star. She performs in the show, but since all the singers are men, and the Islamic fundamentalists threatens the staff, she is disqualified. However, Richie accepts to be Salima's manager, goes back to get her from Paktia, and allow her to continue singing on Afghan TV.

"Rock the Kasbah" is a confusing mess of a movie that doesn't know where its heading nor how to get there. The bizarre thing is that the 12-minute opening act is actually a good movie. It starts off with a funny sequence where a woman is singing terribly in the office of Richie, she stops, there's an awkward pause, until she says: "Mr. Lanz, I'm done", and then Bill Murray gives a typical Bill Murray response: "No, forgive me, no. You're just beginning". - "You liked it?" - "Liked it? You made me want to swallow poison." However, Richie then elaborates that Nicki Minaj and Christina Aguilera are "profoundly irritating" but huge stars, and that she is also that potentially successful "irritant", and accepts to represent her. There is also a sweet little moment when Richie talks with his daughter through the window and they have this exchange: "I love you." - "I love you more". Unfortunately, the story then switches to Afghanistan and that's when it stops being a good movie and becomes a weak one. It's not a good sign when the good first 12-minutes of a movie are followed by a terrible 90-minute main plot which feels like an intruder. 

Richie is robbed and wanders aimlessly through Afghanistan, when the movie wastes time on pointless, unfunny episodes of some arms dealers, chaos and sectarian violence. Shockingly, the main plot finally sets in as late as 53 minutes (!) into the film, when Richie finds a Pashtun girl, Salima, singing American music in the cave. He becomes her manager, and this is where the story has some good intentions, saying something about women's rights in Muslim countries (Salima is the only woman allowed to appear on the TV show "Afghan Star", and is chastised for ostensibly defying the traditions of religion), finding talent where you least expected it and accepting this unusual talent, despite opposition. Sadly, the focus is all wrong. Salima should have been given a much larger role in the film. Who is she? What motivated her to sing? What does she want to achieve? Is she affraid of what the people will say? All these important details are ignored, as Salima has too little lines in the film, and thus too little character development. The interaction between Salima and Richie should have been the main focus of the story. Instead, the focus is all on Richie and his aimless wandering through Afghanistan. Even Kate Hudson's supporting character has more lines than Salima. The ending is sudden and feels incomplete. The director Barry Levinson actually directs all these scenes surprisingly well and competently, from setting up Afghan warlords, locations up to sharp cinematography, but it is remarkable that all this competence is wasted to present a lame, undeveloped story. Screenwriter Mitch Glazer wrote scripts for five Murray films ("Passion Play", "Mr. Mike's Mondo Video"), of which only "Scrooged" was somewhat good, though even it was heavy-handed at times. He should have just spun a story out of the first 12 minutes of the film, playing out in L.A., since it is the only segment that worked and felt genuine.

Grade:+

Departures

Okuribito; drama, Japan, 2008; D: Yojiro Takita, S: Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kimiko Yo

Daigo Kobayashi finally finds a job as a cellist in an orchestra, but then it is dissolved due to a lack of audience. He sells his cello, leaves Tokyo and moves with his wife Mika to his hometown. He finds a job at a funeral parlor run by Sasaki and his secretary Yuriko, in a process called encoffinment, where a corpse is covered in sheets, cleaned and given make up before the funeral. He hides this job from Mika, but when she finds out, she leaves him because she is uncomfortable with death. Daigo stays and continues with his job. Mika eventually returns upon finding out she is pregnant. One day, Daigo is informed that his long lost father, who abandoned him when he was a kid, died. Daigo insists on doing encoffinment on his father. He also finds a small stone in his dad's hand, which he gave him when he was a kid.

Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, "Departures" is a gently ironic and refreshingly restrained film that refuses to treat the dark topic of funeral business and death too seriously. The emotions are, luckily, measured and subtle, refusing to go overboard into melodrama (except for maybe two scenes), whereas the characters are sympathetic, making it easier for the viewers to engage in their actions, even during prolonged, uncomfortable sequences of the funeral preparations. The film starts off with a symbolic "death" of the protagonist's career, when his dream job as a cellist in an orchestra is abolished, causing him to contemplate: "I should have realised the limits to my talent", and to move to another city to find another job: "What I'd always taken as my dream maybe hadn't been one after all", which already foreshadows the film's theme—every ending is in a way a new beginning. On the ashes of the "funeral" of his old job, Daigo and his wife Mika start a new chapter in life. It also starts with an awkward, inappropriate real funeral prelude when Daigo cleans the body of a dead woman, but then stops randomly half-way and informs his boss the woman has a "thing", a penis, revealing the woman was actually transgender. This scene doesn't work—what difference does it make if a deceased was trasngender? It should have no role in the procedure. The director Yojiro Takita inserts a lot of warm humor into the story, to show the humane side of the rarely talked about funeral business. Some of which does get rather grotesque at times, though (in order to wash the smell of the corpse from his body, Daigo applies soap all over his face, even inside his nose, takes a sip of water and then spits it out through his nose). Ryoko Hirosue as Mika and Kimiko Yo as the secretary are wonderful in their roles. However, the ending doesn't work as a natural conclusion. Predictably, it involves Daigo's long absent father, but the "reconciliation" doesn't really make sense, nor does it transmit a sort of a wise point as it should have had.

Grade:++

Get Low

Get Low; drama, USA, 2009, D: Aaron Schneider, S: Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Sissy Spacek, Bill Cobbs

Early 20th century. Felix Bush is an old hermit who has been living in isolation in a hut in the forest. One day, Felix goes to a nearby town to a funeral parlor and ask the employees, boss Frank and his assistant Buddy, to stage a funeral party for him while he is still alive. Frank is confused, but since Felix has a large amount of cash, he agrees to all of his wishes. Felix also goes to a radio show and invites everyone to his funeral party, offering a lottery for someone to inherit his land. Felix also meets his old friend, Mattie. On the funeral party, Felix admits he lives in a 40-year self-imposed prison for the crime he pepetrated: 40 years ago, he had an affair with Mattie's sister, Mary Lee, a married woman. When her husband found out, he hit Mary Lee and attacked Felix, and in the commotion the house burned down, killing Mary Lee and her husband. Some time later, Felix dies for real, and people attend his real funeral.

"Get Low" is a good little drama film centering around the unusual plot of the protagonist Felix (very good Robert Duvall) requesting a "sneak preview" of his funeral while still alive, resulting in some contemplations about redemption, suppressed secrets, closure and recognizing one's mistakes. Besides Duvall, Bill Murray is also really good as the sleazy funeral parlor businessman Frank who is willing to be as flexibile as possible to get cash, so much that he even presses his assistant Buddy into doing everything to reach a deal ("But we can't do that..." - "That is going be the last 'but' I ever hear from you! You're a salesman now. Sell!"). There is some snappy dialogue to be found in the first third of the film ("What would you say?" - "About what?" - "Me!" - "Oh, a eulogy! I don't know, what do you want me to say?" - "Say what you say right now to my face!"), but they get more routine in the second and third act, when the film also becomes somewhat standard. The culmination should have been when Felix gives a confession at his funeral party, about why he placed himself in a self-made prison and isolation in the forest for 40 years, and Reverend Jackson even gives a strong prelude when he introduces him ("We like to imagine that good and bad, right and wrong are miles apart. But the truth is, very often they are all tangled up with each other."), yet the confession of Felix's crime 40 years ago ends up strangely anti-climactic and not quite worthy to justify the story. Everything in "Get Low" is good, but nothing is truly outstanding or great in it. The film lacks some layers of surprises, inspiration or ingenuity, and fails to jump to some higher creative take-offs. Its story is honest and touching, yet meagre, almost too obvious for some cinematic trip.

Grade:++

Tito and Me

Tito i ja; comedy, Serbia, 1992; D: Goran Marković, S: Dimitrije Vojnov, Lazar Ristovski, Milena Vukosav, Milutin Dapčević, Miki Manojlović, Anica Dobra, Bogdan Diklić

Belgrade, 1 9 5 4. Zoran (10) is a little kid living in an apartment with his parents, grandmother, aunt and uncle. His father gets fired from the theatre when he played a piano for the leading opera singer, causing the mother to become jealous and slap the singer. Zoran daydreams about his idol, Tito, the Yugoslav leader, and one day wins a school trip to Tito's hometown Kumrovec after writing the best homework with the title "Why I love comrade Tito". Zoran boards a train with twenty other kids. Once in Zagreb, their tour guide Raja orders them to march by foot to Kumrovec. Along the way, Zoran is disappointed by his crush, the older Jasna (14), who fell in love with an older lad, Kangaroo. Zoran stays behind in the forest due to exhaustion, and later even goes to a church, causing anger from Raja. Once in Kumrovec, Zoran holds a speech on the stage, proclaiming that he loves his parents, his school friends and even Johnny Weissmuller more than Tito. Raja hangs himself. In Belgrade, Zoran gets a letter of invitation to Tito's birthday, but once there, Zoran is uninterested in Tito and only looks for food on the table.

Goran Markovic's fifth and arguably best film, "Tito and Me" is a subversive Communist critique disguised as an ironically gentle, innocent and simple comedy seen through the eyes of the 10-year old kid protagonist, Zoran. While it relies on the repertoire of nostalgic films about childhood and the past, "Tito and Me" becomes more and more critical of Zoran's idealization of Tito, slowly transforming into a sober tale about growing up and outgrowing dogmas, since Zoran's trip to Tito's hometown Kumrovec becomes an Odyssey in which he will get doubly disappointed by both his love for Tito and his love for the girl Jasna. The first half of the film is the best, since it abounds with numerous comical ideas (Zoran is so hungry he starts eating pieces of the wall, leaving holes in the wall of his home; Zoran "mimicking" Tito's hand gestures while watching a promotional film in the cinemas; Zoran observes Tito on a black and white photo on the classroom wall, but in the next scene, Zoran is surprised that Tito is "gone" from the photo, and then Tito suddenly enters the classroom, but nobody can see him), creating an amusing 'slice-of-life' depiction of that era, whereas Anica Dobra is great in the role of the mother. Not all episodes lead to a point, though: for instance, the subplot of Zoran's father having lost his job in the theatre and working now in a night club, doesn't play a role later on and feels rather superfluous. The second half, revolving around the protagonist's trip to Kumerovec, falters a bit. It still has a few good jokes and moments (a great match cut from a girl reading Zoran's homework in school to Zoran's dad continuing reading the rest of the sentence in his home; tour guide Raja disguising himself as a ghost in a castle to scare the kids during the night), but the ending feels rather incomplete and vague, failing to reach some more satisfying conclusion, and the absence of Zoran's parents for the rest of the film's hour is palpable. The movie is sweet and very good, and yet, there is still something missing to be considered an all-time classic. 

Grade:+++

The Hunt

Jagten; drama, Denmark, 2012; D: Thomas Vinterberg, S: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Lasse Fogelstrøm, Susse Wold

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:+++