Lucas
Versantvoort / April 5, 2013
This. Is.
Emotional. Thoughtful. Filmmaking. That’s what it is, really. It’s the kind of
movie where you become fully engrossed in the drama, unaware of your own time
and place. But what is it about, you might say.
Well, it’s about a man named Lucas who is wrongfully accused of child
molestation. That’s it, basically. That is the movie summed up in one sentence.
But the real payoff lies in the great performances, particularly by Mads
Mikkelsen who plays Lucas and the social questions the film implicitly raises. These
can’t be sensed by summarizing the plot, but arise naturally from the story as
it develops.
Mikkelsen was a real eye-opener for
me. I had seen him in Casino Royale, playing the villain Le Chiffre, but
his performance in Jagten is something else. His role is an emotional
one, trying to desperately fix a situation spiraling out of his (and anyone
else’s) control, but his performance is more on the subtle side of things,
never overacting. There’s a scene where he asks his best friend Theo whether he
believes that he could have molested his daughter, Klara. Much to Lucas’s
astonishment, Theo does not immediately reject the idea and you can see the
slow realization in Mikkelsen’s eyes that Theo thinks very differently of him
now. It’s all in the eyes.
The film starts out slow, with many
scenes setting the stage for what is to happen. Director Vinterberg allows us
to first become acquainted with Lucas and his social circle, so that when ‘the
hunt’ actually begins, the change is all the more visceral. Klara, the daughter
of Lucas’s best friend Theo, is quite attached to Lucas. He is there for her when
her own parents are not. At one point she kisses him which he makes clear to
her is not appropriate. In her frustration she lies to her kindergarten
principal that Lucas touched her inappropriately. Soon the whole village knows
and everyone rejects Lucas immediately, worried that he might go after their
own children too. The entire film basically shows the consequences of this
little lie and the impact it has on Lucas’s life which I’ll not talk about
here. I was worried how such a film might end, but it definitely did not
disappoint despite it being a rather open ending. It’s an ending that’s fully
relevant to the film’s theme and leaves one with a growing amount of questions
regarding parenting, evidence versus hearsay, sons taking the blame for their father’s
(in this case supposed) sins, etc.
Jagten reminds me in many
ways of the witch hunt McCarthy conducted in the 1950’s. The example of sons
taking the blame for their father’s sins reminds me of a case during the
McCarthy hearings. Milo Radulovich, a lieutenant in the Air Force reserve, was
discharged after his father and sister were accused of being communists. I'd like to end this review by quoting US senator John McLellan (yes, I had to look up
the name) who made an important statement during the 1954 House
Un-American Activities Committee hearing of Annie Lee Moss - the one where McCarthy famously left. After he left, his chief counsel Roy Cohn
made a statement which McLellan then rebuked because he, Cohn,
was merely alluding to evidence instead of presenting it. When senator Karl
Mundt subsequently ordered what Cohn said to be stricken from the record,
McLellan immediately emphasized the impossibility of such an action: “You can't strike these statements made by
counsel here as to evidence that we're having and withholding. You cannot
strike that from the press nor from the public mind once it's planted there.
That's the – that is the – evil of it. It is not sworn testimony. It is
convicting people by rumor and hearsay and innuendo.”
No comments:
Post a Comment