There is often an element of fortuity in the timing of a film’s release – sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Only recently, Robert Redford’s muddled and ambiguous thriller, The Company You Keep, with its sympathetic portrayal of idealistic 1960s domestic terrorists motivated by their desire for a better world, would not have been helped by going into theatres just after the Boston Bombings. I doubt many Americans, or others, would have been much in the mood to empathise with these ageing bleeding-hearted liberals who thought the way to utopia was by bombing innocent people.

I don’t imagine it ever crossed the mind of Danish film-maker, Thomas Vinterberg, that his dour drama, The Hunt (Jagten), centring on allegations of paedophilia  would come out just as British police were making headlines across the English-speaking world by questioning, arresting and naming  a whole swathe of television personalities accused of such heinous offences from around 40 years ago. (If they themselves are not naming them, they are certainly giving enough clues for their identities to enter the public domain.)

The Hunt focuses on a rather lonely middle-aged divorcee, Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), a redundant school-teacher who is making ends meet working at a local kindergarten. Things appear to be on the up for him as he begins a relationship with an attractive woman, and his teenage son prepares to move back in with him, in preference to his unseen mother to whom Lucas is sympathetic.

This incipient happiness comes to a crashing halt when a young girl at the kindergarten – the daughter of his best friend – falsely accuses Lucas of exposing his erect penis to her. The girl wasn’t being malicious; her elder brother had shown her an inappropriate image the day before which she couldn’t understand and in her confusion a vague allegation is made. Despite almost immediately trying to recant her story, it is believed. Child care professionals repeat the accepted orthodoxy that children never lie about such things and guilt is assumed.  Allegations then snowball. Parents are warned that their children may too have been victim of assault and before long Lucas faces a barrage of accusations from children whose stories are consistent in their recall. There is no proof, however, and the Police drop charges when the stories lose credibility – the children all stated they had been taken to the basement at Lucas’s house where the abuse took place. His house has no basement.

Despite this, the townsfolk are no longer acting rationally. Lucas is ostracised and the victim of threats and physical abuse himself. His dog is shot. His son and a small group of his hunting friends stay loyal to him but he has been tainted by just about the worst crimes imaginable, mud sticks and most people are not prepared to believe there was no substance to them. The film’s sympathy was totally with the innocent accused to such a degree that more than once I wondered if we were being fed a misleading narrative.

The film is unremittingly bleak. Set in small-town Denmark, its action takes place in winter against a backdrop of perennially grey skies. Likewise, Mats Mikkelsen’s portrayal of the accused is monotonal in its depiction of an ordinary man facing the opprobrium of those he once thought were supportive friends. Even when he displays anger, there seems to be some suppressed control to it. On several occasions, I was crying out for him to grab the lapels of someone and shake some sense into them. Only toward the end does he break out from his introspection to accuse his accusers. I would have liked to have seen more emotion earlier on – his own denials of wrong-doing were sometimes just too low-key.

Nonetheless, this was a gripping film, well directed and atmospheric. But don’t expect to come out from the cinema saying ‘Wasn’t that enjoyable!’

More importantly though, it is a good reminder of the maxim from the great American broadcaster, Edward R. Murrow: We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

****

Tim Meade