Movies - The Hunt

In most mainstream movies, plots involving abuse of any kind mostly involve the victim or an authority figure investigating a case. But what happens when a film decides to focus on a person falsely accused of child sexual abuse? What happens when a usually black and white situation is subverted? What happens when there’s no one to blame? What happens to the truth and those who pursue it?

The beginning of the movie

The film tells the story of Lucas, just a nice, normal guy who works at a kindergarten in a small town where everybody knows everybody - it’s that type of town. He seems to have a great relationship with the children as well, as with everybody else apparently.

The film begins with a happy and playful mood. The beginning establishes the camaraderie and the friendship between the men of the town. We see Lucas and his friends having fun in the lake. Another happy scene shows Lucas drinking with his friends.

We see them laugh together, drink together, jump in a freezing lake together, all that jazz. We also meet Lucas’s best friend Theo, his lovely wife Agnes, and their daughter Klara.

The lie

The happiness gradually fades away as Klara tells Greta that Clara saw Lucas’s private parts. Greta immediately believes Klara.

Through a series of unfortunate events that are naturally and subtly weaved into the plot, one of the adults that works in the kindergarten (the person in-charge, middle-management, like a principal of the school) is led to believe that lucas has sexually harassed and maybe even sexually assaulted Klara. Klara tells Greta that Clara saw Lucas’s private parts.

Now, this lie is a complete fabrication. Before this, the kid tries to kiss him and give him a heart shaped toy. He gently explains to her that she should not kiss people other than her family members. The kid invents the lie probably as a way of coping with her rejection.

Greta immediately believes Klara. Most of the adults take Klara’s side.

The effect on his life

The lie grows and spreads frighteningly quickly. And when Lucas merely begins to understand the gravity of the situation at hand, it’s already too late. In a matter of just a couple of days, his whole world turns upside down. And we get to experience Lucas’s anguish and struggles for the rest of the film.

The happiness in Lucas’s life gradually fades away.

Lucas gets fired due to alleged child sexual abuse and most of the townsfolk believe it.

Both Lucas and his son are ostracized by society. Lucas is arrested.

Both the father and the son try their best to survive against the brutality of an unforgiving society.

They kill his dog, beat up his son, beat him up and threw him on the street.

You see the suffering that he’s going through. You can see it in his eyes. You can feel Lucas’s pain by way of the film building up everything he’s got and then tearing it away from him. He starts dating a co-worker who is cute and sweet. They have a fun time together but they break up due to the allegations. Lucas’s son looks like he’s about to move in with him after he says he’d rather live with his father than with his mother. But the lie reaches him too and he not permitted to make the move. However, Lucas’s torment is most felt in the deterioration of his relationship with his friends, especially Theo. Every single one of the town’s folk turned their back on him. He is completely ostracized from polite society. He loses his job, his income, hell, they won’t even allow him to buy groceries in the local convenience store. All because of a lie. And his friends aren’t just passively averting their eyes with indifference. They’re completely cool with it. Some of them even participate. They completely lose their minds.

The film does a great job at generating an atmosphere of dread and hopelessness. It is a tragic drama.

How the town handles this lie

Both men and women are equally capable of fear-mongering and promoting a mob mentality.

You desperately root for Lucas to clear his name. But the collective mind of the town just seems too far gone.

Even Klara herself takes back what she said regarding Lucas, but the adults just dismiss what she was trying to say - they tell her that she is trying to suppress her traumatic experiences. Just devastating.

The movie shows the town’s hypocricy. The townsfolk should act as a religious tight-knit community, innocent in spirit and forgiving of other people.

In the church scene, you can see the internal struggle that Lucas is going through knowing that all eyes are on him and that everyone believes the false accusations against him. The clawing of his face expresses the distress and anxiety within Lucas’s mind. Here, Theo is also seen struggling with Lucas’s presence in the church. Lucas, tired of all the physical and emotional trauma inflicted, snaps inside the church and starts hitting Theo. We see Theo having his breakthrough moment knowing in his heart that his best friend had not committed the heinous act that he had been accused of.

The ending

While his case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence, society continues to resent him.

In the end, a year later during fall, it seems that society has forgiven his transgressions.

But then, during an animal hunt, the final scene of the film, someone attempts to kill him.

This signifies that the cycle of the hunt is not over and the stigma remains. And that it will probably remain forever.

Lessons

This film is terrifying. It’s a harsh reminder of how group think, mass hysteria and sheer ignorance can easily and swiftly ruin a man’s life to the core.

The movie is a cautionary tale about jumping to conclusions in the absence of evidence and how good intentions, if taken too far, can cause the complete opposite of justice.

The adage “innocent until proven guilty” is subverted. People tend to believe whatever they want to believe. Even if proven otherwise. And much more if the truth is not what they expect.

Despite the essentially universal agreement about the presumption of innocence, people tend to presume otherwise. Especially on topics that involve the maltreatment of an inferior or helpless victim such as women and children. It seems that people are incapable of consistently aligning with what needs to happen with what we actually do. Why is this? Evolutionary psychology tells us that people are born with behaviors and patterns of feelings that fit with the current conditions of human society but what was adaptive then might be profoundly maladaptive today. Perhaps it was adaptive in those small bands of hunter-gatherers to join the crowd to protect those who look like they cannot protect themselves, to believe in a victims testimonies. But as shown in the movie, the majority does not dictate what is right. The innocent can be wrong. And both men and women are capable of doing great good and even greater evil. For the townsmen in the movie, the truce was largely incomprehensible - especially when this same truth was not what they had expected. When truth threatens or expectations it is truth we usually sacrifice often along with those who side with it.