The Hunt(Jagten)

Script: Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm
Direction: Thomas Vinterberg
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen
Genre: Drama

Jagten begins with innocence. Innocent kids jumping and climbing on their lovable Kindergarten teacher Lucas. An innocent girl develops a crush on her teacher and kisses him on his lips. An innocent boy naughtily asking Lucas to wipe off his ass after he is done with "number two". And to this you add an innocent lie about the Lucas abusing the kids sexually and suddenly the above images change their nature.  This is the horror with which Jagten hits you.

Jagten is about the frailty of the human mind and how it horribly it can affect someone else. We are shown the slow and painful degradation of Lucas's life after the lie. But there is no one to blame for his situation. Neither the kid who starts the lie, neither the people who over-react, neither his colleagues, no one. Everyone is behaving the way they would be expected to behave. The way you and I would behave. There are many things remarkable about Jagten. But the most unsettling is the feeling of helplessness. Lucas is thrown to the mercy of the society who refuse to believe him even after he is acquitted by the law. A badly divorced 40 year old man living alone with limited access to his kid is not exactly considered a reliable person in a society. But its not just helplessness at Lucas as he attempts to live respectfully as an innocent man in vain, but helplessness at the general human condition who are helpless against prejudices, biases and conformational tendencies. We, human beings, are not perfect. We are not free. We are slaves of our minds, of our opinions, perceptions, biases we have knowingly or unknowingly developed as we grew into what we are now. Imperfections which sometimes make the truth inconceivable for us. We may try hard to know the complete truth. But there will always be times and situations where we will not. We will make mistakes. There will always be a margin of error. And in those margins of errors we will create tragedies out of innocent lives.