The Hunt

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#26 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:42 pm

I think what derailed a more analytic response from all and sundry was repeat's insistence and reliance on Vinterberg's own vision, which if you couldn't divine and accept invalidated your response to it.
Yet to read that the actions of the neighbours were 'well intentioned' and steeped in 'innocence' is tantamount to asking us to believe in a benign lynch mob .

TMD's point about Mads character being 'one of the lads' before his fall from grace also fails to acknowledge the hero's status as star, better looking/better groomed by light years / divorced/ separated from his family and, particularly given the rugged nature of the social terrain, quasi-feminised by his job with primary school aged children. All that conspires to mark him out as 'otherly' despite the occasional sing song with the boys.

Perhaps I rolled to many allusions into the "straw shaggy dogs" analogy but if characters are drawn crudely and designed to be straw men to be disliked pure and simple as per Vinterberg's demands that doesn't hold water or interest as far as I am concerned and no recourse to fairy tale logic is gonna heal that.
The marauding neighbours did also dredge up the spectre of Straw Dogs at its simplistic worse but what works for me in that particular can of worms is precisely 'tackling' (to use repeats term) Peckinpah's intentions such as in the highly contested 'she was asking for it' rape sequence and the turning of Hoffman's character from academic softie to fearful avenger to name but two obvious examples.
So isn't it richer and more 'critical' to delve into those intentions through your own response than just accede to the director's stipulated reading.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#27 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:59 pm

repeat wrote:but to call something "terrible" because it doesn't conform to one's personal preferences is useless, and to say that something "fails" because it fails to please oneself is just plain wrong.
Not to turn this into a big thing, but you are massively overestimating the objectivity of your critical standards. Look at them rigorously enough and you'll find personal preference is inescapably at the bottom of every critical standard, methodology, and hermeneutic ever erected. Many critics have tried to give criticism in the humanities an objectivity like that found in science, and while they've made some admirable attempts, they haven't succeeded yet, and I doubt they soon will.

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repeat
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#28 Post by repeat » Fri Mar 29, 2013 2:55 am

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:I think what derailed a more analytic response from all and sundry was repeat's insistence and reliance on Vinterberg's own vision, which if you couldn't divine and accept invalidated your response to it.
I don't really want to say that any response is invalid - of course the bottom line is always: to each their own, de gustibus etc. etc. - but I would like to suggest that the criticisms the three of you share might very possibly constitute a misreading of the film.
NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:if characters are drawn crudely and designed to be straw men to be disliked pure and simple as per Vinterberg's demands that doesn't hold water or interest as far as I am concerned
Once more, I don't think the persecutors are designed to be disliked, on the contrary - I don't think the film vilifies them, but it works in a way that (through the unconditional identification with Mikkelsen's character) encourages the viewer to do it themselves. Vinterberg says he was a bit shocked to hear some people in Cannes saying that they hated the little girl; that reaction, and the unease and shame that such a reaction will hopefully engender in the viewer is where I think the film makes a real impact. It then proceeds to show the consequences of submitting to these impulses, and the viewer feels those consequences exactly because they've been taken by the hand to feel the potential evil in letting yourself hate someone you don't really know. I realize that it didn't engage you in the first place and consequently none of this happened for you, I'm only suggesting that a different approach might bring about different results - I don't know! I'd like to hear from someone who didn't approach it as an issue-driven drama meant to be believable.
NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:So isn't it richer and more 'critical' to delve into those intentions through your own response than just accede to the director's stipulated reading.
I've said this already, but I'll say it again: everything I've said about this film is based entirely on my own personal response to it, which was initially negative, subsequently confused, and finally positive. I had no idea of what I was going to see, and only turned to the interviews afterwards because I wanted to see if anything there would support my reading of the film. To be honest, I don't really understand this insistence on prioritizing one's personal presumptions over everything else - haven't you ever misread anything and then read another take on it that made you question your initial response?
Last edited by repeat on Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:56 am, edited 4 times in total.

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repeat
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#29 Post by repeat » Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:37 am

Mr Sausage wrote:Not to turn this into a big thing, but you are massively overestimating the objectivity of your critical standards. Look at them rigorously enough and you'll find personal preference is inescapably at the bottom of every critical standard, methodology, and hermeneutic ever erected. Many critics have tried to give criticism in the humanities an objectivity like that found in science, and while they've made some admirable attempts, they haven't succeeded yet, and I doubt they soon will.
Of course. It goes without saying that our personal psychological makeup steers us towards certain preferences, certain readings, and also makes us averse to other things. I'm not saying I'm above this at all: in fact I've already suggested that it might indeed have been my personal preference for ambiguous and allegorical films over realistic dramas that led me to my reading of The Hunt (which I afterwards found was supported by the director's statements). Total objectivity is impossible, but there's no reason to throw it out the window and just say that everything is subjective; it is still worthwhile to strive for a certain amount of objectivity. And when for example an astute review or a statement by the author seems to suggest a reading that is in contradiction with my initial personal response, I tend go back to the work and see if I've missed something.

People misread films all the time, I do it myself and I don't have any problem admitting it. I used to really hate Leos Carax because I'd only seen Lovers on the Bridge, which at that time rubbed me totally wrong (I was young and had very strict ideas about what cinema should do and how, and it was just like the total antithesis of those ideas). And consequently, without ever having read so much as an interview with him, I deduced all sorts of things about what sort of a filmmaker he "is", and made him into this sort of an aesthetic enemy (even though my tastes in general became more accommodating over time). Only after Holy Motors made a huge impact on me did I start to look seriously into his work, watching the other films and reading all the interviews I could find, and I was ashamed to realize that I had painted a completely false, even downright opposite picture of his motives just on the basis of my personal (biased) response to that one film. That's just one example though: there are plenty of filmmakers whose work doesn't agree with me, even though they succeed in what they're going for, but I don't go around criticizing them for failing to please me.

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#30 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:04 am

repeat wrote: I would have no issue at all with the points raised about The Hunt if I only found it convincing that Vinterberg was trying to make a believable issue-driven drama and couldn't keep himself from destroying it with a truckload of over-egged, incredulous and reductive absurdities.
Your point about 'misreading' still seems to insist that there is one unassailable reading of the film that equates with the director's intentions. Not only that but you also keep painting the naysayers into a corner which has them sharing an equally monolithic view of it as a failed issue-led drama.
I do not see it as such but would rather label it quite simply as facile and after reading Vinterberg's intentions this only serves to reinforce my view. As zedz noted in this thread earlier there is no indication that we have torn the veil into a world of artifice or fairy tale logic to support such a reading without Vinterberg's say so /supplementary material.
I think you said you are Scandinavian? Is there any thing in the language or mode of speech that suggests this, that is not apparent to danish speakers?
I admit that from the perspective of more alarmist cultures the sight of a very small child walking along a major road alone seemingly with the parents blessing does raise an eyebrow. But this naivite suggested more Scandinavian laissez faire than Hans Anderson inspired reality slippage.
A little final note on 'misreading'. Do you completely rule out Kiarostami films in your viewing given his view of his films being 'half finished'-to be completed by the viewer? Or perhaps the fact of this manifesto itself underwrites the ability to allow your self a 'personal' reading?

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repeat
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#31 Post by repeat » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:05 pm

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:Your point about 'misreading' still seems to insist that there is one unassailable reading of the film that equates with the director's intentions.
Well, of course there is. Unless it's the case that the director himself doesn't know what he means, which also happens; and some, like Kiarostami, expect the viewer to complete the meaning each in their own way. When I say there is a correct reading I mean that in a very general sense, for example a grasp of whether something is intended as satire or not (cf. famous misreadings of Verhoeven). (To prevent this from derailing into a debate about intentionalism vs. textualism, I hasten to add that while I lean towards the former, I don't categorically reject the latter)

I'm sorry if I misread your position, I didn't intend to lump everyone who dislikes the film into the same corner, but I did get the impression that like zedz and rs you found the film fails because of its lack of realism, and I was questioning the assumption that it was even intended to be realistic in the first place.
NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:I think you said you are Scandinavian? Is there any thing in the language or mode of speech that suggests this?
I understand Swedish and even some Norwegian, but Danish still sounds like a Welshman with a potato in the mouth to me, so I relied fully on subtitles. What pushed me towards the purposefully-absurd-allegory reading was solely the speed and lack of compromise in the "complicating action" part (when everyone very suddenly and unequivocally turns against the protagonist). So, probably in the same place where you thought "this is ridiculous, what a bad film", I thought "this is ridiculous, what's he driving at?"

It might well be a weakness of The Hunt that, if it is indeed meant to be read as an allegorical fairytale, it doesn't direct all viewers forcefully enough into that direction. But it's a risk that comes with the territory if you're trying to do something original; for example if you work within a genre and then proceed to do something that eschews genre expectations in a non-obvious way, it can lead to people saying "this is a bad genre picture". Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an example of a director whose work is often misread in this way. Someone like Altman would be more difficult to misread, because his fucking with genre is more obvious (no one would mistake The Long Goodbye for a "straight" noir - but a lot of people have mistaken Pulse for a "straight" J-horror.)

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zedz
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#32 Post by zedz » Mon Apr 01, 2013 11:00 pm

repeat wrote:I would have no issue at all with the points raised about The Hunt if I only found it convincing that Vinterberg was trying to make a believable issue-driven drama and couldn't keep himself from destroying it with a truckload of over-egged, incredulous and reductive absurdities.
Considering that this is precisely the flaw of so many "believable issue-driven dramas," I can't really give Vinterberg huzzahs for replicating it. I think you're giving him way too much credit for saying (in Pee Wee Herman style), "I meant to do that" in some interview.

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repeat
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#33 Post by repeat » Tue Apr 02, 2013 3:06 am

zedz wrote: I think you're giving him way too much credit for saying (in Pee Wee Herman style), "I meant to do that" in some interview.
It might be that I am. After all it's a well-known hermeneutical pitfall to interpret a flawed work in a contrived way that will give the "best possible" reading. I think that's exactly why authorial intent needs to be taken into account as much as possible, otherwise we can just devise fantastical "he meant to do that" defenses of any old piece of turd.

I'll give it a rest as I think I've repeated myself too much already - judging by the reviews it's a highly polarizing film, so I think we can just agree to disagree like everyone else; I certainly appreciate that it might be viewed negatively, just wanted to suggest a different angle. For future reference I'll just quote the relevant bits from the (I think five or six different) interviews that I've alluded to:
Thomas Vinterberg wrote:We did everything we could to keep him innocent, because I found it less interesting with the ambiguity. We are very used to it, it’s almost a convention in filmmaking that directors play tricks with the audience, so it was very difficult to avoid this doubt. It was a challenge all the way through, fighting against this convention of storytelling. Even when the camera was just a little bit too low-angled he could look like a paedophile, so we had to change the angle. I wanted the audience to be close to this guy, and there’s no way that can happen if there’s any possibility he touched a child.

[It's] a dark Christmas tale. There’s a Hans Christian Andersen quality to it I think. This isolated, good-hearted society, far away in a forest, and then this splinter, something to change the whole thing to darkness and evil, and everybody freezes to ice. I hope the Christmas tale comes through... Like a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of evil spreading like a virus. So maybe they react too fast, maybe they are too easily convinced. That was a delicate thing to balance.

This film is a much more civilized version of what actually happens. We made it watchable. We made the airplane version of real life.

This is how it worked in the '90s, but doesn't anymore. We had to address this to be able to create drama. We have decided not to give the system a name, define it. We couldn't name it, because the police, nowadays, would never do anything like it does in the film. (...) That’s the mathematics of drama. You want to put your character in the most unjust situation and have him fight out.
Mads Mikkelsen wrote:We made it into our own story. Our film is much more about how fragile life is and about how fragile friendship is. My character is up against irrational emotions, and they kick me. It’s like I’m in a Kafka novel. It’s not a story about trying to defend the man who is wrongly accused.

We were definitely not making a film here to speak out for the men wrongly accused, if that happened and we triggered debate that’s fine, but this is not what our film is about.

Zot!
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#34 Post by Zot! » Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:00 pm

Catching up late here. Masterpiece. I can't make any sense of the forumers concerns about "realism", as the film screams ALLEGORY, but this thing is an exceptional and unique film. Perhaps it is precisely because of it's unfashionable resistance to differing persepectives, or analysis that frustrates viewers, but yeah, there is very little ambiguity, and it lays all it's cards in the table. Reminded me of Kieslowski's Blind Chance or something like that.

Peter-H
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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#35 Post by Peter-H » Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:52 pm

I don't understand what people find absurd about this movie? Sure, the events of this movie were optimized for tension and drama, but everything that happened seemed possible.

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Re: The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)

#36 Post by JabbaTheSlut » Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:00 pm

Zot! wrote:Catching up late here. Masterpiece. I can't make any sense of the forumers concerns about "realism", as the film screams ALLEGORY, but this thing is an exceptional and unique film. Perhaps it is precisely because of it's unfashionable resistance to differing persepectives, or analysis that frustrates viewers, but yeah, there is very little ambiguity, and it lays all it's cards in the table. Reminded me of Kieslowski's Blind Chance or something like that.
Peter-H wrote:I don't understand what people find absurd about this movie? Sure, the events of this movie were optimized for tension and drama, but everything that happened seemed possible.
Agree with you both. The ending is perfect!

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swo17
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Re: The Hunt

#37 Post by swo17 » Mon May 15, 2017 12:12 pm

NEW UK TITLE: The Hunt (Blu-ray and DVD releases)

A sublimely orchestrated exercise in tension which features a tour-de-force central performance from Mads Mikkelsen

Pre-order your copy on Blu-ray via Arrow: http://bit.ly/2riJez1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Pre-order on DVD via Arrow: http://bit.ly/2riMLgU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Pre-order on Blu-ray via Amazon: http://amzn.to/2riMv1q" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Release date: 7th August

THE LIE IS SPREADING

Alongside Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg (Festen, Far From the Madding Crowd) is one of Danish cinema’s finest modern exports. Perhaps his greatest film, The Hunt, is a sublimely orchestrated exercise in tension which features a tour-de-force central performance from Mads Mikkelsen (Rogue One, Casino Royale), who was awarded Best Actor at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for his performance.

Mikkelsen is Lukas, a recently-divorced primary school teacher locked in an acrimonious custody battle over his teenage son but just as his fortunes begin to change with the arrival of a new love his world is torn apart by an innocent lie. Persecuted by his local community, accusations escalate and Lukas soon faces unanimous condemnation from everyone around him, including his closest friends.

Featuring a stellar supporting cast from Danish Film and TV’s finest including Thomas Bo Larsen (Pusher), Anne Louise Hassing (The Idiots) and Susse Wold (Unit 1), The Hunt, eschews the rules of Vinterberg and his colleagues’ filmmaking manifesto Dogme95 for one of the most beautifully photographed and perfectly scripted films in recent years.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
• High Definition digital transfer
• Original 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 2.0 stereo options
• Optional English subtitles
• The Making of ‘The Hunt’ - featuring director Thomas Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Alternate ending
• Outtakes
• Original trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Booklet featuring new writing on the film and a contemporary interview with Thomas Vinterberg, illustrated with original production stills.

DVD SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
• High Definition digital transfer
• Original 5.1 surround sound audio and 2.0 stereo options
• Optional English subtitles
• The Making of ‘The Hunt’ - featuring director Thomas Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Alternate ending
• Outtakes
• Original trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork options

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PianoMan88
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Re: The Hunt

#38 Post by PianoMan88 » Mon May 15, 2017 3:22 pm

Wow! What a coup by Arrow Academy. Love the film, and now I can buy it in a physical format, while also supporting one of my favourite labels. That's what I call a win-win scenario.

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rapta
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Re: The Hunt

#39 Post by rapta » Mon May 15, 2017 5:35 pm

A pleasant surprise, but also a frustrating one for those of us who already bought the Arrow Films release a few years ago. Oh well!

PS: I wonder if they'll do the same for their two previous Koreeda titles (I Wish, Like Father Like Son), or things like A Touch of Sin and A Simple Life?

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Ribs
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Re: The Hunt

#40 Post by Ribs » Mon May 15, 2017 5:59 pm

After the Storm is a confirmed future release, so I guess it could maybe be a paired release with one/both of the earlier ones.

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rapta
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Re: The Hunt

#41 Post by rapta » Tue May 16, 2017 7:01 am

True, but still might be slightly awkward since they skipped/were outbid on Our Little Sister. A neat idea nonetheless though, if they're commissioning booklets and extras anyway, and looking to 'upgrade' some more of their older Arrow Films titles. Koreeda, Zhangke and Hui are arguably worth the extra attention.

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What A Disgrace
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Re: The Hunt

#42 Post by What A Disgrace » Tue May 16, 2017 7:42 am

This is great and all, but what an utterly uninspired list of extras.

Zot!
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Re: The Hunt

#43 Post by Zot! » Tue May 16, 2017 8:13 am

Ummm...great film, but the Arrow bare-bones is less than half price. Hope they find some takers, but they're undercutting themselves. If there are Jagten fanbøys out there who this is catering to, I'd like to know about it.

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tenia
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Re: The Hunt

#44 Post by tenia » Tue May 16, 2017 9:25 am

What A Disgrace wrote:This is great and all, but what an utterly uninspired list of extras.
Yes, it's basically just a port of the US release, which wasn't particularly loaded to begin with. The booklet might actually end up being the deepest bonus.

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