The Hunt

Berlin is a wonderful town for film-lovers! I mean, where can you go see a foreign film in the original language the same week it opens in German in the normal theaters? In the Hackische Höfe there is a theater (up about 4 flights of stairs and no elevator) that was showing Jagten, The Hunt, in Danish with subtitles. So when the decision was between Kon-Tiki and The Hunt, we chose the Hunt, on the theory that Kon-Tiki will still be playing in a few weeks.

We are probably right. Even though the film is on a very serious subject - a male kindergarten teacher is suspected of "doing something" to one of the children, and the whole thing escalates to the entire village being violent against the teacher (who loses his job), even though he didn't do anything. It shows the very fine line that one walks as a male who enjoys playing with children in this hyperreactive world.

The twisted ending after the village quickly forgives him when the girl makes it clear that she was just making everything up is not believable. It rather has the feel of having been cobbled together to get the film over with somehow. It is unsettling to see how whispers and believing the worst of someone can quickly serve to do them grave injustice.

And in a way, as one review has put it, quite an anti-feminism film, as it is the women who are all behaving so irrationally, blaming the man. This is far too black&white, although there are certainly women who would behave exactly as some of the women in the movie.

Not a movie for a fun evening, and not enough food for thought on this quite grave subject. Nice Danish, though, although much of the scenery seems to be more Swedish than Danish.