The tag line on the poster for the new film, After The Hunt, is “not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.” I would call it a warning to the audience, rather than just a tagline for the film.
This whole movie, from the nerve-wrackingly tense score by the team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to the confining locations such as small college classrooms and the home of the lead character Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) and her husband Frederik Olsson (Michael Stuhlbarg), is the components that keep the audience boxed in and on edge. However, it never really earns our unease with the storyline. It’s just the mood that the brilliant director Luca Guadagnino, nominated for a directing Oscar for 2017’s Call Me by Your Name, and his production team have put on the screen that makes this happen. This is disappointing, as the film features Oscar-winning and nominated performers stuck with a stilted and play-like script.
The movie is about two friends and professors trying to get tenure in Yale University’s Philosophy Department. Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) and Henrik Gibson (Andrew Garfield). Add to the mix Maffie Price (Ayo Edebiri), who is a young graduate student from a wealthy family and Alma’s protégée, who is working on her thesis. After a student-teacher mixer, Maffie is walked home by Frederik. This leads to accusations of sexual assault against Henrik. Putting Alma in a difficult position between her colleague and protégée.
The rest of the film, using only three main characters and three supporting characters, slowly explores the complex epistemological failures inherent in a social matrix defined by politically charged rhetoric and pedagogical structures. Through a critical analysis of constructed guilt and the discursive mechanics of slander, it is postulated that truth is not a static endpoint but a perpetually contested site, inaccessible amidst competing narratives. Ok, now if you had to break out Google or an old-fashioned dictionary to look up any of the bigger words I used in this description, this film may not be for you.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been amazing films that dealt with intellectually challenging stories like the creation of the atomic bomb or complex mathematics. They have even been nominated and have won Academy Awards. However, those films managed to make their topics accessible and human. After The Hunt just seems to be so in love with its highbrow, Yale-esque way of talking that it shuts the door on quite a few moviegoers who may have enjoyed this story of a modern-day witch hunt.
I give After The Hunt 2.5 stars. Even though Julia Roberts is great in it and Michael Stuhlbarg steals every scene he is in as her ever-loving husband, it’s hard to follow sometimes. It is an arthouse film that I only anticipate a small, highly educated audience able to find the movie interesting enough to stick with it long enough for its enigmatic, weak ending payoff.
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Written by: Nora Garrett
Rated: R
Running Time: 2hr 19min
Psychological Drama
Release: In Theaters Oct 17th
Starring: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg
The Selig Rating Scale:
5 Stars – Excellent movie, well worth the price.
4 Stars – Good movie
3 Stars – OK movie
2 Stars – No need to rush. Save it for a rainy day.
1 Star – Good that I saw it on the big screen but wish I hadn’t paid for it.