But he radiates both decency and pain in this film and expertly charts the emotional journey that Lucas takes. That’s why I’m not surprised to hear that he’s going to appear as a bad guy in “Thor 2.” He’s got one of those faces where he can play cruel with a mere gesture or expression, and that’s how Hollywood seems to be determined to use him. He’s probably best known to audiences as Le Chiffre in “Casino Royale,” and he’s certainly good at playing villains. I cannot say enough good about the work that Mads Mikkelsen does here. Instead, he’s more interested in the idea of how a thought can become a virus and how it spreads and, most importantly, the damage that it can do. It is abundantly clear to us as the audience that Lucas is an innocent man, and Vinterberg doesn’t try to play to the situation for suspense. He goes from being part of a community to being a monster almost overnight, caught in a nightmare he can’t understand. Lucas suddenly finds himself looking around at these people he’s known his whole life and seeing only strangers. While she tries to handle the situation carefully at first, her sense of moral outrage gets the better of her, and things get out of hand very very quickly. Grethe doesn’t want to believe it at first, but she can’t fathom that a five-year-old girl would have any way of even expressing an idea like this unless it really happened. She barely has the vocabulary that can describe the incident, but observant viewers will see how the idea is planted, and she’s just clear enough to cause Grethe to panic. It is all very sharply observed and drops some key puzzle pieces in a way that is very subtle, but also very precise.Īs a result, when Klara gets her feelings hurt by Lucas in passing, he’s not even aware it happened, but Klara simmers on it until she ends up telling the principal of the school, Grethe (Susse Wold) that Lucas exposed himself. Vinterberg and his co-writer Tobias Lindholm are careful to take time setting up dynamics and establishing the way the community as a whole works. We see that Klara is a dreamy kid, prone to walking away from the house because she’s thinking about something else, and that her older brother is at an age where he’s a bad influence on her without even realizing it. Her father Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen) is Lucas’s best friend, and Lucas is part of their family, constantly around and trusted completely. She’s an adorable little thing who basically looks like a miniature blonde Bjork and she gives a lovely, unaffected performance. One little girl in particular, Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), is smitten with Lucas in the way kids are often smitten. Watching him in these early scenes as he plays with the kids, Mikkelsen is at his most tender and charming. He’s a kindergarten teacher, and it’s obvious that the kids love him and vice-versa. It’s hard because he’s still fighting with his ex-wife over custody of their teenage son, but he’s able to distract himself with hunting, a pastime that is crucial to the social fabric of his community, as well as his work at an elementary school. Thankfully he’s surrounded by the friends who grew up with him, and he’s finally starting to find some sense of balance again. Mads Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a newly-divorced man who is struggling to rebuild his life. This lies at the heart of “The Hunt,” which is incredibly well-made and well-performed, and it is also absolutely infuriating. They are driven by desire and need and powerful waves of emotion that they barely understand. But left to their own devices, kids are basically wild animals and morality is something we teach them, not something that is inherent to them. I love my kids, and I think they are well on their way to being good people. We tend to paint children in our culture as these pristine moral figures, and when I hear that, it makes me wonder if the people who believe that have ever actually met any children. Instead, Vinterberg began his process on this film by reading some disturbing reports on how children are so unclear on the notion of fantasy that they can lie with complete emotional conviction, and how adults, unclear on the way that works, can sometimes believe the unbelievable because of the source. It’s interesting that you could read this as an almost direct inversion of “the Celebration,” but I don’t think that was by design. The films he’s made since then have not worked with the same focus, but he’s remained an interesting presence with the potential to put it all together again.Īnd now, with his new film “The Hunt,” he’s done exactly that. CANNES – Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film “The Celebration” was a blistering piece about repressed secrets as a form of familial cancer, and it established him as an important voice in Danish film on part with Lars Von Trier.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |