Pages

Sunday, July 27, 2014

"The Hunt," A 2012 Danish "Art Cinema" Release, Now #124 On IMDb's "Top 250"


Alan: Moviegoers "should" know as little as possible about the films they intend to see. 

If, on first viewing, a movie deserves reprise, read "the reviews" before you see it again.

When deciding if a movie is good enough to see "in the first place," a trusted reviewer's recommendation -- un-read -- is guidance enough. 

A sketchy description of the theme is also advisable to prevent two hours' confinement in a "moral universe" without any resonance. 

Directors understand that their creation strikes a viewer's consciousness "out of the blue," lightning-like.  They have no option (nor do they want one) but to create de novo "universes," assuming their viewers are as unknowing as virgins.

Movies are designed to thrust us into sudden cross-sections of universes with no known past and opaque futures. 

Movies begin -- or "should" begin -- with the power and mystery of an amnesiac waking from coma.

By approaching movies with no preliminary insight, that existential moment when "the curtain rises" falls on a moviegoer's tabula rasa like a painter's crimson stroke on white canvas.

Movies are created to "come at us" unannounced and "whole," not mediated by "he said, she said," or pre-existing memories.

Needless to say, such beliefs make review problematic.

With the exception of a mysterious occurrence at the end of "The Hunt," the movie's genius and appeal are due to a well-known human occurrence and its iron-clad implications. 

"The Hunt" makes us clamor for justice while letting it be known that - in the absence of "viewer omniscience" - we would have become the oppressors we condemn.





No comments:

Post a Comment