The Hunt (2015) is a Oscar nominee film from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, who was a co-founder of Dogme 95 movement along with Lars von Trier, Vinterberg’s ’Festern’ (1998) was the first film of the movement.
Although Dogma may be dead, Vinterberg goes full circle with The Hunt in terms of theme not style.
Plotline:
’’Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) is a former teacher who is recovering from a difficult divorce and battling over his son's custody. He lives in a small community where everyone has friends in common. Lucas spends a lot of time with his closest friend, Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen), while currently working at a daycare. The film opens with a lot of laughter between Lucas and his friends first and between Lucas and the children who adore him at the daycare, but this friendly community changes when one of the little girls named Klara (Anika Wedderkopp) accuses him of sexual abuse. This innocent little lie begins to grow as the community reacts with hysteria and accuses him without having any other proof than what this little girl said. The only reasoning being that clearly a girl wouldn't lie about something like this. Lucas's life is shattered and his reputation has been stained forever despite the law finding him innocent. The little lie affects everyone around Lucas including his son Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom) and his girlfriend Nadja (Alexandra Rapaport). The damage has been done. ’’
(taken from letterboxd.com/film/the-hunt-2012/)
While the film’s title clearly suggests the witch-hunt against Lucas, it also portrays the values of this small town, it’s masculine and predatory environment, and how easily emotions cloud judgment.
On the deeper level it examines the psychological phenomenon called ’false memory’ (“the distorted and fictionalized recollection of facts and events that did not happen the way the person remembers them.“)
Even when Klara confess later that "I just said something foolish", no one wants to believe her, and other parents even suggest to their children that Lucas abused them, trying desperately to build a case against him.
Vinterberg plays on the idea of a community being so scared of something that they end up seeing it everywhere. And the lie becomes the truth because of its collective social acceptance.
In the film the villain isn’t Lucas or Clara it’s the community.
What makes the story even more potent is that the town is filled with people that have known the main character his whole life. They grew up together, they spend their time drinking and hunting every week, and the bond between them seems very strong, but just on the basis of accusation from a little girl, all loyalties are burn to the ground, and Lucas is turned into a monster overnight.
Even do nothing about Klara’s lie is random, because just before she makes her accusation, her older brother and his friend show her a picture of a woman engaged in a sex (so her lie is a result of confusion, it’s not random), it still doesn’t explain this calculated accusation. The film explains how adults believe kids are pure and not capable of lying, and in their instinct of protecting them they become mindlessly destructive.
Austrian director Michael Haneke played with a similar idea in his film Das Weise Band.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149362/)
In The Hunt its easy for the audience to take the high road, because we know from the begging that Lucas is innocent, but you should ask yourself the question- what would you REALLY do in that circumstances?