THE HUNT is one of the best contemporary movies! Just perfect! I’m speechless! There is nothing better than these 115 minutes to understand how human memory works and how most of us is ignorant about it! Memory is malleable and every time that we remember, we modified it! Memory could never be used in the court because memory is never an evidence! Thomas Vinterberg goes much further and focuses on human mediocrity and the panic  that humans have against facing reality… generating a savage violence and ostracizing a suspect that claims to be innocent! A mandatory film for anyone wishing to be minimally coherent! First, for parents who do not want to create monsters, and for all the others to learning how to never be vulnerable as the character in the film, Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen). Necessary task especially for those who are always ready to believe in the sweet and naive words of a child – confused and troubled by the visual and noise pollution we live in. THE HUNT is a watershed in my life!

Review written by Stephen Holden for The New York Times:

“”The life of Lucas, a much-loved teacher in a Danish hunting village, begins to come apart when Theo’s young daughter, Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), vaguely intimates to her teacher, Grethe (Susse Wold), that Lucas exposed himself to her. What the little girl has seen and quickly forgotten is a glimpse of pornographic imagery on an older brother’s iPad that in her mind has become confused with Lucas, on whom she has an innocent crush.

Even though Klara takes back an incriminating description that is coaxed out of her, the adults won’t let it drop. And before long, other children, responding to grown-up suggestions, help build a case against Lucas as a predator who lured children into his home’s nonexistent basement. Lucas is not jailed after a court inquiry, but villagers are still convinced of his guilt, and his life is in danger.

“The Hunt” is a merciless examination of the fear and savagery roiling just below the surface of bourgeois life. Because the film is set in a community of hard-drinking deer hunters, its comparisons of humans to the creatures they stalk run deep. An early scene of rowdy woodsmen drinking themselves insensate seethes with an undercurrent of potentially explosive violence.

The nightmare appears to come out of the blue. Lucas, who is recovering from a bitter divorce, has a new girlfriend (Alexandra Rapaport), whom he furiously kicks out of the house when she voices a tinge of uncertainty about his innocence. Instead of cowering in terror, Lucas confronts his accusers and fights back. But an irrational mob mentality has seized the village. Lucas becomes a pariah, expelled from civilized society, reviled by neighbors who throw rocks through his windows and prevent him from shopping in stores. When his teenage son, Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom), stands up for him, the boy is attacked.

An unspoken question addressed by the movie is why adults so readily believe the words of confused young children. The self-righteousness of those eager to believe the worst is as galling as it is believable. The movie suggests that the solidarity of the village’s condemnation is a measure of individual uncertainty. It’s a matter of finding safety in numbers.

Very pointedly, the story is set in the months leading up to Christmas. The contrast between the villagers’ fear and hatred and the lofty spiritual ethos in the season of lights infuses “The Hunt” with an extra chill. The Christmas scenes bring to mind Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, in which wondrous enchantment collides with demonic religiosity.””