Your Film Professor

The Hunt (2013, Thomas Vinterberg) is one of those disturbing films that depressingly reveals something seemingly fundamental about the human condition, e.g., just how easily “good” people can be reduced to “collective violence” (e.g., vigilantism, lynching, terrorism). (I haven’t really done any research on this topic — and thus would love feedback from anyone who has expertise on this subject matter — but I did come across this interesting essay: “Collective Violence as Social Control.”)

After being accused and then all too quickly condemned as a sexual predator preying first on Klara and then on all of the children of a kindergarten, Lucas is then “hunted” by his community, including his neighbors, co-workers and friends. What makes this film so disturbing is the realization of how otherwise “good” people can so easily be turned into the very predators they see in Lucas, meaning that even had Lucas been guilty of his crimes, becoming predators or “hunters” only reduces people to the very thing they see in a sexual predator, a degraded and repulsive humanity. That Lucas didn’t actually commit the crime(s) makes the actions of his community even worse. With their lack of rational, common sense critical thinking, they all too quickly judge him and then viciously punish him before they have actually established his guilt.

Klara in a Dark Place

Thankfully, one of the key choices that makes this film so richly nuanced is by not making young Klara (who set in motion these false charges against Lucas) some sort of villainous, hated child, perhaps why Vinterberg and co-screenwriter Tobias Lindholm chose to make her so young. (I suspect had Klara been older, say as young as 8, the temptation by some spectators would have been to vilify the child for falsely accusing Lucas.) Instead of vilifying Klara’s “lie,” the film makes Klara as much a victim as Lucas. Indeed, there are hints that Klara is indeed “abused,” in the sense that she is neglected (she seems to just regularly wander off without her parents knowing where she is!) and in the sense that she is subjected to listening to her parents constantly – and heatedly – fight. Of course, I think we can also say that Klara actually is sexually violated but not by Lucas. In her brother Torsten and his friend exposing too-young-to-know-what-she-is-seeing Klara to an erect penis (they show her a clip of pornography they are watching), she is traumatized in ways that truly need to be addressed by responsible adults if not a professional therapist! After Klara reveals her troubled mind to adults, instead of getting her the help she needs, the “responsible” adults only make her plight worse by essentially coercing her into accepting her own falsehood even when it is apparent that she is trying to – in her own innocent way – fix her initial misspeaking. And instead of attempting to unpack Klara’s expression of pain and get at the underlying truth of her pain, adults — and especially, apparently, her parents (!) — only make her suffering worse by not addressing her issues.

Christ Figuration:

Another striking symbolic element in the film is how these events are set around Christmas time, a time that is supposed to be a holy moment where humanity is at its most spiritual, compassionate and kindhearted, the profound contradiction and perhaps deconstruction of this Christian veneer perhaps part of the film’s agenda. (I sense there is something else with this thread but I can’t quite put my finger on it!) In any case, the church sequence seems to make Lucas a Christ figure as the preacher’s words of Christ’s birth are conspicuously cut with Lucas’s suffering, suggesting I think that like Christ who died for humanity’s sins, Lucas too is in effect “crucified” for the sins of the community/humanity, or more pointedly, his “crucifixion” by his community reveals their (and, allegorically speaking, humanity’s) “sins,” shifting the religious narrative to a humanist one.

Lucas and Klara’s Reunification

My favorite moment in the film comes during the coming of age hunting party for Lucas’s son Marcus. At one point, Lucas finds himself alone with Klara, who is standing in a doorway, confronted by a floor with a sea of “lines,” making it impossible for her to cross. Lucas, knowing about her internalized game of “lines” (she doesn’t allow herself to step on lines) and thus understanding her predicament, contemplates how to proceed. Should he help her knowing that by helping her he might risk exposing himself to further scrutiny and suspicion? Because of its existential nature – e.g., because this moment manifests in a singular way whether Lucas will allow previous events (the community’s belief in his guilt) to dictate his choices, how he will live his life (will he work with children again, will he have a relationship with Klara) – this moment is just so crucial for Lucas: He has to help Klara, because he is innocent and doing otherwise would validate the shadow of this charge hanging over him. Vinterberg powerfully creates a mise en scene to punctuate the profound symbolism of this moment, both Klara and Lucas standing in door frames, punctuating the liminal nature of this moment, the door frames signifying crossroad moments, passages between not just spaces but modes of being, in this case Lucas and Klara’s need to come together as they once were, move beyond the scars of their wounds and truly heal. And, so, in Lucas crossing the “lines” to carry Klara past her obstacle and in Klara embracing Lucas, we see at least one sign of hope in this otherwise dark ending moment, that for Lucas and Klara, they have begun the healing process and have re-established their loving relationship once again.

The “Hunt” Signifier (Signifying a Predatory Masculinity)

For me, the real deepness of this film stems from its complex use of the “hunt” signifier. The more obvious use of this metaphor of course is in how Lucas becomes the “hunted,” his former friends and neighbors turning on him with a vengeance, to the point of beating him, verbally and psychologically harassing him, and sadistically hurting him by killing his beloved dog Fanny.

But to my mind, there is an even deeper element to the “hunt” signifier. When I first watched the film, I thought that its one weakness was in not really getting at the root causes of why people could so easily be turned into “hunters” (for example, because they lack meaning and purpose in life and such situations give them a chance to overcompensate in the direction of feeling falsely empowered and good about themselves). The film seems to suggest that it is as if we have some latent predatory impulse in us that can be triggered by such situations, our predatory (e.g., “Hyde”) Selfs emerging in (self) destructive ways, which may indeed be part of the equation, some archaic genetic component for why otherwise good people act reprehensibly. Now, while I still essentially feel this way, I do think that one key root cause does come through, or at least as I read this “hunt” metaphor. At key moments in the film, we learn that “hunting” is an important cultural rite of passage for young boys entering manhood. In this way, young males are incubated from an early age to be predatory, to “hunt” not as a way to get food but as a way of proving one’s virility.

In other words, this  phallic act is an archaic mode of achieving phallic power, instilling in phallocentric males a sense of power, domination, control, aggression, in effect equating violence and power with masculinity. And this then gets played out in the film, e.g., most of the figures who violently attack (or “hunt”) Lucas are males. In short, I read this “hunt” motif as also pointing the finger to at least one root cause of this disturbing ugly manifestation of this lynch mob mentality, phallocentrism or hypermasculinity, a toxic, predatory masculinity that has lost some of its (empathetic, critical thinking) humanity in the process of identity formation.

The Monster From Their Own Id

Finally, we see all of this played out in a most potently disturbing way in the end note of the film, some mysterious individual (Vinterberg purposely films the shooter in a way that blurs his identity) shooting at Lucas while they are hunting, suggesting that (A) because we don’t get the identity of the individual shooting at Lucas, the shooter then becomes deeply allegorical, a signifier of what he represents, the community itself never letting Lucas come out of the shadow of their perception of his guilt, which, in turn, informs an even deeper meaning, that (B) most crucially, in the process of demonizing Lucas beyond the pale, the community of this town have not only turned Lucas into something monstrous, they have revealed something about themselves, that this monster they have manifested is really a kind of monster from their own Id, something ugly and monstrous itself, Lucas then morphing into a potentially constant and painful reminder or mirroring of something in them that they don’t want to see or know about, and thus something they have to refute less they admit that there is something in themselves that is monstrous.

Alternate Ending

Just a brief thought on the deeply disturbing alternate ending: Instead of the shot missing Lucas, he is mortally shot and presumably killed during the hunt. I can see why Vinterberg chose not to end the film this way, a truly depressing choice! Having said that, I think one could make a case for either of these endings, making this alternate ending to my mind one of the most interesting cases for endings ever in cinema! On the one hand, keeping Lucas alive with his shocked and deeply disturbed reaction, enacts his (and by the fact that we have taken on his point of view, our own) fundamental understanding of what I convey above, again, that either he will always be seen as “guilty” (as a sexual predator) or that his continuing presence reminds people of their own monstrousness. On the other hand, having him murdered speaks to a kind of finality to this lynch mob devolution, still enacting what I convey above but also registering that the predatory “hunters” merely camouflaged their “hunt,” signaling that the “hunt” never ended and would be inexorably seen through to its end.