6/6/14 (Part One): All the Little Devils are Proud of Hell

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1970's cinema, Al Thomas, alcohol abuse, animal cruelty, animal massacre, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, based on a book, bonded teacher, Bundanyabba, Chips Rafferty, cinema, civilized vs savage, depression, desolation, Doc Tydon, Donald Pleasence, drama, Film auteurs, film review, films, First Blood, gambling, Gary Bond, homoerotic tension, hunting, isolation, Jack Thompson, John Grant, John Meillon, kangaroo hunt, Kenneth Cook, male friendships, mining town, Movies, North Dallas Forty, obnoxious friends, Peter Whittle, Purgatory, repressed sexuality, school teacher, stranded, Sylvia Kay, Ted Kotcheff, the Outback, the Yabba, Tiboonda, Tim Hynes, Uncommon Valor, urban vs rural, Wake in Fright, wasteland

Many times, we discuss vacations in terms of “getting away from it all.” The presumption, obviously, is that we’re getting away from all of the tedious, mundane and unpleasant aspects of our daily lives: all of the annoying things like 9-5 jobs, chores, responsibilities and anonymous authority figures. People will hike deep into the woods, sail away to the middle of the ocean and climb the tallest mountains possible, all in the pursuit of “getting away from it all” and finding some internal serenity. In a day and age where we all seem to be alarmingly “plugged in” almost 24 hours/day, there’s something not only attractive but downright necessary about dialing everything back to a more simple level: just “us” and nature, our phones on silent and our brains turned off. By “getting away from it all,” we’re actually hoping to get back to ourselves, that core version that exists below the commitments of civilized society.

But what if we went so far away from polite society that we ended up in an altogether darker place? What if our quest for internal peace and discovery of the self led us not to personal evolution but to devolution? Is it possible to embrace our primitive, savage ids so much that we become nothing but flesh-sacks for volcanic, primal emotions like lust, hate, fear and the need to inflict pain? Getting away from the everyday bullshit of polite society is a noble goal but it leads to a dangerously slippery slope: once we’ve begun to accept a more primal, savage lifestyle, we automatically become at odds with the rest of the “civilized” world. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it, “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” In Ted Kotcheff’s disturbing Wake in Fright (1971), we get the distinctly perverse pleasure of witnessing someone not only stare into the abyss but get consumed and shat out the other end.

It’s Christmas vacation for bonded school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) and he eagerly closes the doors on his one-room schoolhouse in the tiny Outback town of Tiboonda, looking forward to his next six weeks of leisure. He’s heading for the bright lights of Sidney but must take a train to the small mining town of Bundanyabba in order to catch his flight. Ostensibly only in town for the evening, John takes a rather dim view of the hard-drinking, overly “friendly” locals: their earthy behavior is at decided odds with his more “civilized” big-city upbringing. As a local tells him, however, the “Yabba” is actually the best place in Australia: no one cares where you are or where you come from, as long as you’re a “good bloke”. John meets one of these “good blokes” in the person of Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), a local state trooper who proceeds to buy him one beer after the other at a local pub. When John complains that he’s hungry and would rather eat than drink, Jock thinks for a moment and does the most sensible thing: he takes John to a different bar so that he can order a steak along with the booze. “Best dollar you’ll ever spend,” Jock reckons, as he leaves John in the less than capable hands of local sawbones Doc Tydon (Donald Pleaseance).

Tydon is an amazing character, a slovenly, feral, ridiculously self-assured train-wreck who deflates the previously positive affirmations of the Yabba with the ominous declaration that “all the little devils are proud of Hell.” It’s here that John also gets introduced to the backroom gambling game of two-up, which involves betting on the flipping of a pair of coins. In a classic example of the fatal flaw, John initially scoofs at the game, before becoming intrigued, betting and winning. Unable to leave well enough alone, John continues to bet (and win), all with the hope of earning the $1000 bond necessary to buy his way out of Tiboonda and end his perceived servitude. He displays an amazing streak of luck, all the way up to the point where he loses all of his money. And, just like that, John’s one-night stay in the Yabba is about to turn into a whole lot more.

Unable to pay for his flight, John watches helplessly the next morning as it flies away overhead. He visits the local labor exchange but it’s closed: the only place that actually seems open is the bar (of course) and John drags himself there to spend his final coins on some sweet, if temporary, escape. Once there, John meets Tim Hynes (Al Thomas), another “good bloke” who buys him multiple drinks (after shouting down John’s initial protests) and takes him home to drink some more (pretty much the official past-time of the Yabba). Once there, John meets Tim’s strange daughter, Janette (Sylvia Kay), who mopes around silently while John and Tim continue to drink until they pass out, at which point they’re roused by Tim’s obnoxious friends, Dick (Jack Thompson) and Joe (Peter Whittle) for more drunken debauchery. After Doc Tydon shows up, Janette sneaks the blotto John away for a little drunken making out session, although his contribution to things pretty much begins and ends with puking on her. When John passes out, he wakes up in the Doc’s absolutely filthy pigsty of a home, a place that looks just like the dreadful Turkish prison in Midnight Express (1978). This leads to more drinking, of course (as Tydon tells him, Yabba water is only for washing, not drinking), while leads to more debauchery which leads to an absolutely horrifying kangaroo hunt, drunken rampage and possible rape. As John gets further and further away from his former gentle “civilized” nature, he finds himself in a shadowy world where the only diversions from a brutally bleak life are drinking, fucking, killing, fighting and destroying. Will John be able to pull himself out before he’s lost forever? Or will he end up just another permanent resident of the Yabba? And, in the end, can anyone ever really leave the Yabba?

It’s quite possible for a film to be both utterly intriguing and fairly repellent and Wake in Fright is certainly both of those things. On a purely narrative level, the film makes imperfect sense, existing somewhere between a fever dream and the French New Wave. Thanks to the editing style, which helps to heighten the sense of disorientation, it’s often difficult to establish continuity or, in some cases, even establish quite what’s going on. More often than not, the film is aggressively unpleasant: ‘roo hunt notwithstanding (and we’ll address that shortly), there’s a groddy, dirty edge to everything that makes a heady stew when combined with the sense of vast, open isolation and personal fatalism. The Yabba definitely appears to be some sort of a stand-in for Purgatory (or perhaps Hell, depending on how you look at it) and any satisfaction wrung from watching poor John Grant descend into its depths is grim, indeed. It’s not so much that John is a really good guy: he seems like a perfectly average guy, which makes his destruction, somehow, more upsetting. We can cheer if a “bad guy” gets his come-uppance and smirk when an unnaturally pure “white knight” fails. When a “normal” person fails, however, especially if they fail thanks to essentially good reasons (John keeps betting because he wants to get out of Tiboonda so he can be reunited with his girlfriend in Sidney), it hits a bit closer to home. John could be any of us, under the right circumstances: his degradation and destruction could be ours.

Despite how unpleasant the film ends up being, it’s a consistently fascinating film, thanks in no small part to the exceptional cast and stellar filmmaking. Donald Pleaseance, in particular, is absolutely amazing: Doc Tydon is the id in flesh and Pleaseance doesn’t so much chew the scenery as immediately become the center of any scene he’s in. Whether standing on his head while drinking a beer, cutting the balls off a dead kangaroo, graphically describing his sex life with Janette or engaging in a little drunken, homoerotic semi-nude wrestling with John, Doc Tydon is a ferociously alive, unrepentant, hedonist. More animal than man, Tydon may actually be the Yabba, a living personification of this hard-scrabble area that grinds men into pulp in the mines and pours the remains straight into the bars. I could practically smell Tydon’s stench through the screen, thanks to Pleaseance’s firebrand performance, and that’s no small compliment.

Gary Bond is good as John Grant but there’s not a whole lot required of his character: he’s a strictly reactive force and spends more time wobbling about in a state of semi-coherence than actually developing in any given direction. While it’s easy to empathize with John, it’s difficult to truly like the guy: he’s given the opportunity to climb out of the hole on multiple occasions but always seems to choose the path of least resistance (which, of course, is usually the worst path). Unlike Tydon, John takes no pleasure in his debauchery: as such, he tends to vacillate between confusion and moral agony.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Wake in Fright is exquisitely crafted. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and shows off the vast, epic emptiness of the Outback to great effect. The opening shot, a slowly revolving wide-shot that shows us the entire, tiny emptiness of Tiboonda in one, smooth 360-degree motion, is an amazing mood setter. Equally impressive is the score, which manages to swing from lighter to oppressive on the drop of a hat: the weird, eerie “sci-fi” theramins that kick in after John loses all of his money and begins his descent are a really nice touch, as are the droning tones that inform the latter half of the score. The score is a perfect example of subtly building atmosphere and mood without resorting to overly obvious musical stingers.

Despite all of the things to recommend here, I must admit that I didn’t really care for Wake in Fright. The film left me cold, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it also left me queasy on many occasions, which is a more significant issue. One of the main reasons for this, although certainly not the only reason, is the astoundingly awful scene where Tim, Joe, Dick and the Doc take John out kangaroo hunting. I’d heard rumors about this scene, which apparently features actual footage from a real kangaroo hunt, but nothing I imagined could have prepared me for the actual film. The closest thing I can compare the hunt to would be parts of Pier Pasolini’s Salo (1977) or the disgusting animal footage in Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1985). As with those films, I will freely admit to looking away from the screen at times: there’s simply no way that anyone who loves animals (and I’m pretty much a fanatic) could watch the wholesale kangaroo butchery without dying a little inside. This is compounded with a bit (I’m assuming staged but only because I would never want to entertain the alternative) where John Grant graphically stabs a wounded baby kangaroo to death, while the guys cheer him on, hooting and hollering. Wake in Fright is not, technically speaking, a horror film but the kangaroo hunt is easily the most horrific thing that I believe I’ve seen in some 30 years of movie watching…and that says a lot.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether to recommend Wake in Fright or not. The film will certainly not be for everyone and I can see quite a few people turning it off midway through (for better or worse, the ‘roo hunt really does draw a line in the sand). There was also much about the film that still mystifies me, including the question of what, exactly, happened between John and the Doc. As an important piece of Australia’s New Wave, Wake in Fright certainly bears discussion with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977), although I’m less fond of it than either of those films. In certain ways, parts of Wake in Fright even prefigure modern-day Aussie exports like Wolf Creek 2 (2013), which features its own variation on the kangaroo slaughter. Australia has always had a vibrant and fascinating film industry and astute viewers could do worse than rummage through their 1970’s back catalog. That being said, Wake in Fright is pretty strong stuff and I can’t honestly see myself revisiting it anytime soon. The Yabba might be an interesting place to visit but I sure as hell don’t wanna live there.

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6/1/14 (Part Two): Friends, Zombies, Fellow Men in the Country…

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actor-director, actor-writer, B-movies, backwoods folk, Billy Ray, Buck WIld, chupacabra, cinema, co-writers, Dru Lockwood, dude ranch, dumb films, Edgar Wright, film reviews, films, guys' weekend, horror, horror films, horror movies, horror-comedies, hunting, Isaac Harrison, isolated communities, Jerrod Pistilli, Joe Stevens, Mark Ford, Matthew Albrecht, Meg Cionni, Movies, rednecks, Shaun of the Dead, Tom and Jerry, Tyler Glodt, white trash, writer-director, zombie films, zombie movies, zombies

By this point in world history, plain ol’ “vanilla” zombie films don’t really have much effect anymore. Sure, they may be one of the easiest low-budget productions for fledgling filmmakers to get involved in (Got some friends, a camera and a location? Guess what, Jack: you just got yourself the beginnings of a zombie film!) but that also means that we’ve been drowning in this kind of direct-to-video filler for a good thirty years, at this point. Once the “prosumer” camera revolution occurred, it was even easier for filmmakers to pump out this kind of product and it seems that zombie films have been multiplying like Tribbles within the last decade or so. In order to inject a bit of life into the subgenre, filmmakers have turned to various ways to “spruce” up the ol’ gut-munchers, the most popular of which involves slamming comedy and the zombie film together, chocolate and peanut butter-style, to create an entirely new (well, kind of new) sub-subgenre: the zom-com.

While Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) definitely wasn’t the first zom-com (I’d give that title to Dan O’Bannon’s outrageous 1985 yuk/yuck-fest The Return of the Living Dead), it’s probably (still) the most popular one, as well as the first to take the “zom-com” tag and run with it. In the decade since Simon Pegg and the lads tried to forestall a zombie invasion of the UK, there have been several fistfuls of zom-coms, ranging in quality from “drop-dead hilarious” to “just drop dead, already.” In a fairly glutted field, I’m managed to see several worthy successors to Shaun of the Dead: Fido (2006) was an ingenious melding of zom-coms with candy-colored 1950’s nostalgia, while Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) managed to overcome a terribly generic title with solidly-paced jokes and thrills. And, of course, who could forget Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg trading quips in Zombieland (2009)? Mixing zombie chills with chuckles isn’t the easiest task but, when done well, the results can be lots of fun. Unfortunately, Buck Wild (2013), the newest feature from the team of Tyler Glodt and Matthew Albrecht, isn’t so much a “big, dumb blast” as a “really dumb film,” only slightly less stupid than the head-smackingly awful ’80s Troma film Redneck Zombies (1989).

Buck Wild starts promisingly, if crudely, with a fairly funny segment involving beleaguered father Clyde (Joe Stevens), his perpetually horny daughter, Candy (Meg Cionni) and her stupid boyfriend. After decking the boyfriend with a wrench (humping his daughter in the garden is one thing, stepping all over the flowers is a whole other bucket of manure), Clyde ends up getting attacked by a chupacabra. Yes, a chucacabra, ladies and gentlemen. We that, we seem to be off to the races, establishing a crude, fun and extremely tongue-in-cheek attitude.

Unfortunately, the good will begins to fade as the movie proper begins, mostly because we get saddled with a pretty obnoxious group of protagonists. Our “hero” is Craig (co-writer Matthew Albrecht), one of those perpetually put-upon, straight-arrow types that exists solely to become irritated by various indignities. His “best friend,” Lance (Isaac Harrison) is a ridiculously metrosexual “ladies’ man” who happens to be boinking Craig’s girlfriend, Carla (Amerlia Meyers), unbeknownst to our “hero.” The little group is rounded out by Tom (Dru Lockwood) and Jerry (Jarrod Pistilli), who seem to serve as a perpetually at-odds odd couple: you know, cuz they’re named Tom and Jerry? Like the cartoons? The ones with the mouse and cat? Yeah, it just ain’t funny no matter how you slice it, is it? Tom is the typical mealy-mouthed, glasses-wearing dork: we’ve seen at least a million iterations of this character in just the last couple years, nevermind the last couple decades. Jerry, however, is the real prize in this Cracker Jack box: bedecked in a ridiculous fedora, given to smoking cigars in small cars and practicing his nunchuks in the nude, Jerry is supposed to be the epitome of the batshit crazy outsider, that one guy who just…does not…give a FUCK, bro! Except he’s a colossal weenie, sort of a gene-splice between Crispin Glover and Bobcat Goldthwait’s award-winning performance in the Police Academy movies. As such, not only is it impossible to buy the scene where he puts the cigar out on his own hand (cuz this guy totally looks like he would start bawling) but it’s almost offensive to believe that this nitwit occupies the “badass” role in the film. When your bar is that low, no good can come of it, mark my words.

The plot, such as it is, involves one of those “guys-only weekends,” this one ostensibly set-up to allow for not only some male bonding but some animal-shooting, as well. The “gang” heads to the Buck Wild Ranch (Hey! That’s the name of the film! Clever!), which just happens to be run by Clyde. Clyde’s not looking too good and if you’ve seen any zombie films besides this one, you’ll know why. Besides being infected by a chupacabra, Clyde’s also kind of a dick: he calls the guys “punks” and “pissants” (put up your dukes!) and tells them to make sure to stay within the borders of the ranch. Turns out that Clyde’s next-door neighbor is a self-proclaimed “badass” named Billy Ray (Mark Ford) and he doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. The guys end up running afoul of Billy Ray (an absolutely, astoundingly terrible creation that seems to be part frat-boy, part John Waters, part lame-ass rockabilly clothes horse and completely, totally unbelievable) and a completely awful park ranger, Officer Shipley (director/co-writer Tyler Glodt), which don’t really expand the narrative so much as pad it out. Ultimately, they also run afoul of zombies: turns out Clyde has been infecting other locals and, soon, our city slickers are up to their haircuts in the redneck dead. Revelations are had, truths are learned, friends turn into the walking dead, Jerry acts like a badass, yadda yadda yadda. If the ultimate destination of this one-legged mule isn’t readily apparent by the end of the first act…I’m guessing you might actually enjoy this. Hmm…

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this at all: Buck Wild is a stupid film. Aggressively stupid. Worse yet, it’s a hyperactive, self-aware, tone-deaf kind of stupidity that reminds me more of films like Scary Movie (2000) than Shaun of the Dead. Let me give you a good example of the “humor” on display here. After Officer Shipley pulls the guys over because he’s heard “enough gunshots for Baghdad,” he proceeds to stand outside his car and give them a speech about how if you smell shit, you’re probably standing in it. Officer Shipley, it turns out, smells shit: guess what, he asks them. You’re standing in shit, the others point out. And he is…he really is standing in a big pile of shit. Now, if anything about that was humorous (keep in mind that the “delivery” of said “joke” doesn’t help things), Buck Wild just may be right up your alley. Lest we think that the writers only have one kind of joke up their sleeve, they also show us how hilarious and timely their references are: Tom ends up a captive at Billy Ray’s compound and Jerry goes to save him, in a scene that features an ultra-sleazy brass song, Tom bent over a table wearing only his underwear and Jerry wielding a samurai sword. Yeah, that’s right: it’s a fucking Pulp Fiction reference. Not only that, but it’s a “humorous” reference to the rape scene: now that’s comedy!

Lest it sound like Buck Wild is completely worthless, there are actually three elements of the film that really work. The first element is the cinematography, which is consistently well-done and clear: in low-budget films like this, you’re usually lucky if you get something that looks half-way decent, let alone good. The second element that works (spectacularly well, I might add) are the fake TV shows that we occasionally see. One of them, a public access show called “Fucking Hunting” that features Billy Ray and his motley crew, is an absolute scream, miles away the funniest thing in the film. Hot on its heels, however, is another gem of a fake show, this one called “Living Through the Gray,” a self-help show about dealing with color-blindness. The TV shows are not only the funniest moments in the film, hands down, but they’re actually two of the funniest moments I’ve seen in any film recently: it’s a shame that they’re left to die amid the humorless wasteland that is the rest of the film.

The third element that actually works in Buck Wild is an extremely smart and subversive little commentary on the casual female nudity that inundates most low-mid budget horror films. Unlike similar films that might feature a terrified young starlet running around topless, Buck Wild chooses to make Tom the object of the “male gaze.” For the majority of the film, due to one incident or another, Tom rarely wears more than his underwear and socks: at one point, he fashions a toga out of a garbage bag, only to have a zombie rip it to shreds. Later, he gets to take a shower and emerges, clad in a bathrobe, only to have a passing zombie yank it off, exposing him once again. I’ll be honest: this particular running gag never got old and displayed the kind of invention and thought that I wish the rest of the film possessed. I don’t actually recall any female nudity at all, to be honest, although we get plenty of Tom. In some ways, this seems to be a callback to the Pee Wee character in Porkys (1982), who likewise spends the majority of that film in a constant state of embarrassment, harassment and undress. While the film often seems to be exceptionally mean to Tom, it ends up paying off big dividends, especially during a nicely emotional final setpiece.

Ultimately, however, a few worthy elements don’t a worthy film make. If Buck Wild were just a little less inane and stupid, it would be mighty easy to recommend it as the kind of low-budget romp that it thinks it is. Unfortunately, the film mostly ends up being a showcase of missed opportunities and foul balls, with nary a true home run in the batch (unless we count the TV shows, which really only amount to 2-3 minutes of screen-time, max). While I’m more than willing to give Glodt and Albrecht another chance, there’s no way I would put these guys on my radar: Fool me once, fool me twice and all that jazz.

2/3/14: Shouting Into the Snow (Oscar Bait, Part 5)

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Academy Award Nominee, Academy Awards, Alexandra Rapaport, Annika Wedderkopp, Best Foreign Film nominee, child abuse, cinema, Danish films, Dogme 95, false accusations, film reviews, films, Franz Kafka, guilty until proven innocent, hunting, independent films, Jagten, Lars von Trier, lies, Lucas, Mads Mikkelsen, Movies, Susse Wold, The Hunt, Thomas Bo Larsen, Thomas Vinterberg, tragedies, witch-hunts

Journey back in time to last week…Monday, to be exact. On that particular day, my Oscar viewing continued with the first of the Best Foreign Language Film nominees that I’ve been able to see: Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt.

Imagine being accused of a crime that you know you didn’t commit. Regardless of how much you protest, how much evidence you amass in your favor, the tide of public opinion continues to turn against you. Former friends shun you or, worse, spit on you. Loved ones doubt you. You’re not even able to shop at the local grocery store, since they don’t even want your money. Everywhere you turn, there is nothing but obscenity, hatred and fear: you have become, truly, an island unto yourself. This Kafkaesque scenario would be terrifying enough under the best of circumstances. Now: imagine that you’re a beloved elementary school teacher and the crime you have been falsely accused of is child abuse. This bleak, terrifying and soul-crushing experience forms the crux of Vinterberg’s powerful, solemn The Hunt.

Lucas (the always amazing Mads Mikkelsen, never better) is a well-liked elementary school teacher still trying to put the pieces together after a particularly acrimonious divorce and custody battle. He is absolutely devoted to his students, the kind of teacher that makes Mr. Holland look like a raging bully. Lucas is best friends with seemingly every male in town, hanging around with best friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen) whenever possible. Lucas has just began to date one of his co-workers, Nadja (Alexandra Rapaport), and has finally received word that his son, Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom), will be able to stay with him, signalling a thawing, of sorts, in the battle with his ex-wife. Lucas is adored by every student in the school, none more so than Theo’s angelic little daughter, Klara (Annika Wedderkopp).

Klara, unfortunately, is the definition of a troubled child. Her parent are constantly fighting, her older brothers have gotten into the disturbing habit of showing her internet porn and she’s looking for affection from whomever will pay attention to her. The object of her affection, unfortunately, becomes Lucas. When he admonishes the girl after she plants an illicit kiss on his lips, Klara becomes sullen and upset. Later on, she tells the school’s administrator Grethe (Susse Wold) that Lucas has exposed himself to her, confusing the porn that she has seen with reality. Grethe jumps on the story and, in an effort to move as quickly as possible, does little to no fact-checking. In no time at all, the entire town has turned against Lucas: he’s let go from his job, the local grocery store refuses to sell to him and his friends, led by Theo, have turned violently against him. No matter how much Lucas protests, no one will believe him. Even worse: the other students are now beginning to say that Lucas molested them, as well, even if their shared story prominently mentions a non-existent basement. It’s up to a small, dedicated group of relatives and friends to try and clear Lucas’ name but will they succeed? And will there be anything left of Lucas or his reputation if they do?

Foreign-film fans might recognize writer/director Vinterberg as one-half of the team responsible for bringing the concepts of Dogme 95 to the world at large. Along with famed agitator and all-around genius Lars von Trier, Vinterberg came up with Dogme 95 as a reaction against the spiraling budgets and endless special effects extravaganzas of films in the 1990s. The first “official” Dogme 95 film was actually Vinterberg’s The Celebration, which The Hunt resembles in many ways. There’s also quite a bit of von Trier’s dour influence to be found here, whether it be in the icy, sterile environments or the escalating piles of misery heaped onto the lead character. And make no mistake about it: there is plenty of misery to go around here.

Like von Trier, Vinterberg examines the many, many forces that conspire to utterly crush and destroy a person’s humanity and the capricious way in which luck and fate can make this possible. The entire source of Lucas’ downfall comes from one single lie, a lie that he had nothing to do with and did nothing to contribute to. This stands in sharp contrast to traditional notions of tragedy, where a character’s fatal flaw always contributes to their inevitable downfall. In this case, Lucas’ biggest sin seems to be that he genuinely likes and cares for the children. His caring is twisted into something ugly but it’s completely illusory: never once is the audience made to believe that Lucas is guilty in any way, shape or form. This fundamental understanding of his innocence, on behalf of the audience, stands in sharp contrast to his neighbor’s absolute belief in his guilt, sans any proof. As Theo says, he knows that his daughter would never lie, about anything, so Lucas has to be guilty, regardless of any proof.

It’s a maddening concept but one that’s been played out too many times in the media to be discounted as simply a fictional construct. Just as any claim of abuse must be thoroughly investigated, so, too, must that investigation be through, fair and clear-headed. The violent persecution of an individual based on nothing but innuendo and hearsay is, as the film makes abundantly clear, nothing short of a witchhunt (perhaps “the hunt” of the title, despite the prominence of deer-hunting in the story).

The Hunt is a sober, unrelenting and unflinching film, although there are just enough moments of levity and joy to make the surrounding darkness and misery hit that much harder. The film actually begins with its most joyous sequence, a bit where Lucas and his friends skinny-dip in a icy lake, only for Lucas to end up saving one of the others from drowning. It’s a great bit of shorthand that quickly and efficiently establishes the characters and their relationships. This scene stands in sharp contrast with the film’s emotional centerpiece, the Christmas Eve service.

In a film that contains many striking scenes and images, the Christmas Eve church service still manages to stand head-and-shoulders above the others. At the nadir of his experience and ostracized from everyone in the town, Lucas decides to make his stand at the church. The entire town is gathered there, bathed in the beautiful warm glow of lights, candles and holy righteousness. Lucas enters the church and makes his way to the very front, past every disapproving glare and silent reproach, past the downcast, baleful glances of Theo and his family. As he sings the hymn, we get a close-up of Mikkelsen’s face and the effect is like getting kicked repeatedly in the stomach: we see the sorrow, the pain and the fear in Lucas’ eyes, feel them through the tears that stream down his face. We also, however, get a front-seat to the anger and hatred that have been simmering in him, emotions brought to a full-boil as Lucas finally directs his rage at the town, in general, and Theo, in particular. It’s an amazing scene, one of those moments that is simultaneously too painful to watch and too incredible to look away from. In any other hands, whether a different director or a lesser actor, the scene may have stumbled into the realm of the histrionic. As it is, however, it’s a perfectly brittle, lacerating moment, easily the equal of anything in von Trier’s films.

In many ways, The Hunt can be seen as a sort of Dogme 95 film, although the cinematography is genuinely gorgeous and much better than one usually sees in Dogme films. The raw emotions, simple structure and naturalistic lighting, however, are all elements that are readily associated with the Danish film movement. As with other Dogme films, the acting is of primary importance and The Hunt does not disappoint on that angle. Were there any justice, Mikkelsen would be a lock for whatever the Danish equivalent of the Best Actor award would be: he’s one of the only actors I’ve ever seen who can be simultaneously chilly and vulnerable. If Ingmar Bergman were still around, I’m pretty sure that Mikkelsen would be his muse. There’s one moment, where Lucas returns to the grocery store that turned him away, that serves as a minor bright spot of badassery in an otherwise grim landscape: after being beaten and humiliated by the butcher and several bag-boys earlier, Lucas returns to collect and pay for his groceries, mustering as much dignity as he can. When he’s confronted by the butcher, Lucas proceeds to lay the kind of righteous ass-whupping upon the guy that made me stand and pump my fist in the air: it’s a small victory but it’s his victory, dammit, and ours, by default.

In the end, The Hunt is an exceptional film, the kind of quiet, powerful art that sinks its claws into you and refuses to let go. There are no easy answers, here, and no handy villains. Despite the destructive power of her lie, it’s impossible to hate Klara: she’s just as much a victim as Lucas, ultimately. Likewise, we cannot hate Theo: he’s only making the same terrible decision that any parent in a similar situation would need to make. What, then, can we blame for Lucas’ turmoil? As vague as it may seem, Vinterberg seems to have a clear target in mind: if you want to blame anything for what happened to Lucas, blame the misery of humanity. It’s a heart-breaking revelation but it’s the closest we’ll get to absolute truth in The Hunt.