So it's obvious to say that sexual abuse on a child is a terrible thing and that no one should have to go through the ordeal of finding out that someone you knew for quite a long time did things like that to your child. Yet it is one of those things where a simple slip of the tongue can completely ruin someone's life as is the case for The Hunt, a 2012 Danish film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, who was one of the founders of the Dogme 95 movement in film making. The character of Lucas, played here by Mads Mikkelsen, lives in a small town where everyone knows each other and has struggled a bit over the past few years after his divorce from his wife along with wanting to be with his son. He works at a local kindergarten where for the most part, he gets along with all of the children and at one point in the beginning starts up a relationship with one of the workers named Nadja. One of the students that he is rather close to is Klara, the daughter of his best friend Theo, and it is with her where this problem arises. After an interaction where Klara kisses Lucas and is scolded on the matter, she throws a fit where she lets slip some wording that she took from her older brother and his friend that the director of the kindergarten, Grethe, takes as a sign that Lucas sexually abused her.
The rest of the movie follows Lucas (and later his son Marcus) as he becomes a pariah of the community as he is fired from his job, no one believes him aside from his brother and that side of his family, and his former friends become extremely violent throughout. Even when he is proven innocent due to inconsistent information from Klara and the other students who their parents think were also victims, the community does not let go of it's grudge and perhaps becomes even more violent. Eventually at the end though, Theo does realize that Lucas is innocent and after a year has passed, everyone at least has accepted the fact that he is innocent, although where the ending is concerned, someone still sees him as a pedophile.
An overarching theme of this story that is prevalent throughout is that everyone in the town trusts the word of the young Klara without giving it a second thought and not considering that maybe she just said something wrong. There is a point where Klara's mom is trying to talk to her about it and when she admits that she didn't tell the truth, her mom makes her believe that she was and this was probably the case for the other kids who came out and told everyone that Lucas sexually abused them too. They preach that children don't lie, especially about things like that and for the most part, I do agree with that but the movie also showed with a later scene where Klara goes to see Lucas and is shown to now believe her own lie, that kids are easily persuaded or manipulated (in this case, unknowingly) since at that age, they have no way of knowing how to think for themselves. To be honest though, as much as it is hard to see any of the people that do terrible things to Lucas in the movie, knowing that they are in the wrong, it is really hard to say that in that situation that I would not do the same thing. Maybe not to the extent that they go to, but even though I would think that I would be willing to give my friend the benefit of the doubt that he might be telling the truth, like the characters said, why would a child lie about that? The paternal instinct would override any sense of willing to work things out in a civilized manner but hopefully in that situation, I would not become that violent (and hopefully so would the rest of the town).
I'll get into SPOILERS here for a moment so if you are interested in watching this, do so before reading this paragraph. At the end of the movie, the main group of people that Lucas called friends are altogether with him and his son to celebrate the latter's recently acquired hunting license and they go out to hunt deer. Lucas sends his son out to his stand in order to get a good vantage point and he is left alone to look for his own target, when all of a sudden one of the other hunters shoots at him, barely missing him. Due to the sunlight shining in his eyes, Lucas is unable to identify the attacker who manages to reload his gun yet chooses to leave him alive. There was this lingering feeling of discomfort at the presentation of Marcus getting his family's gun passed down from generations as some of the guys in the room looked at Lucas as if they still do not trust him, leaving the sense that because of the accusation, the stigma of it will probably never leave him no matter how many times it has been dis-proven. And since the attacker is never identified, Lucas will always be looking among his friends and the rest of the community with the knowledge that at least one of them still views him as a sick man and wants him to pay for his crimes, even if he is innocent.
The Hunt is the most pure example of how something as simple as someone saying the wrong words put together can destroy someone's life quite easily and watching Lucas go through all of the things proved to be rather a heartbreaking experience on watching an innocent man being shunned from everything that he had worked so hard to get at. This could have been easily melodramatic in the way that would be a made for TV movie that would be on the Lifetime movie network or something along that, yet the direction, the writing, and acting elevate it into something that can tackle the subject matter in a way that does not pull any punches or talk down to the audience or turns the townsfolk into villains despite all of the things that they do. It is rare that a movie can make me feel the amount of emotions that this one did, that made me really think about from the perspective of everyone how it is difficult to see that anyone was making a mistake in their decisions. I could not recommend this movie any more than I can right now so if you haven't seen it yet, go watch it right now.
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