Movie Review - The Hunt

The Hunt ***½ (R) This subtitled Danish drama is a heartbreaking study in sociology. Mads Mikkelsen stars as a kindergarten teacher in a small town. He’s apparently lived there his whole life, and has plenty of friends. He’s divorced, and trying to convince his ex to give him more time with his teenaged son. He relates well to the kids and his peers in the school, and is starting a promising new romance with a pretty new teacher. Among his charges is Klara - the adorable daughter of his closest pal. She becomes innocently infatuated with Mikkelsen’s character, kissing him during a moment of horseplay with a bunch of her classmates. When he tells her that’s not appropriate, she feels rejected and makes up a story about his doing something perverse to her.

Once told, the girl’s fib mushrooms into a terrible scandal that worsens even as she tries to recant it. She never meant any harm, having no idea what she was really saying, or what it would mean to grownups. But her later retractions are dismissed by the adults as symptoms of trauma, rather than truth. Nothing Mikkelsen or anyone else can do seems likely to reverse the destructive tide of public opinion. The ripple effects are wide as his life falls apart in every respect.

Pedophilia is a horrible problem, with far too many cases still probably under-reported or not prosecuted for many reasons. We rightly worry about protecting and healing the children who are victimized. Even so, this film offers an intelligent look at the flip side of that coin - the stigma of the allegation on one who may be wrongly accused. The film is hard to watch, but highly effective in presenting a cautionary tale within our natural desire to shelter those who are too young to understand such threats and defend themselves. The script doesn’t minimize the damage suffered by molested children and their families. It primarily affirms our concept of innocent-until-proven-guilty as a vital component of civil rights and justice for any society. (7/26/13)