Saw The Hunt a couple of weeks ago, starring mad Mads Mikkelsen. Only he's not so mad in this. Not as mad as he was in Casino Royale and not nearly as bonkers as he seemed in Valhalla Rising (a hugely underrated flick, in my view).
Mikkelsen is mostly about hidden emotional undercurrents. And in The Hunt, where he plays a nursery school teacher wrongly accused of child abuse, he is at his best. Indeed, this performance got him an award at Cannes. It's also bang-on timing. The country is grappling with its attitudes to child abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Saville and Lord MacAlpine scandals. Saville, a long-term abuser, MacAlpine an innocent man wrongly accused. We seem to have developed a profound national confusion over the issues with little idea of a way forward. The Hunt illustrates our problems neatly.
Anyway, it's out this Friday so if you fancy a dark Scandinavian exploration of a personal identity crisis, this one's for you.
Review - click here.
Labels: