The Hunt & A Hijacking

This film from Denmark, which opened in the US in July, has left no one indifferent, at least not among those I know who’ve seen it. E.g. one cinephile friend, in an email, called it “a must-see film…reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.” Another wrote that “Mads Mikkelsen was excellent in this film…I recommend highly.” But then one couple—and with highbrow tastes— “actively hated it”… Such contrasting reactions are probably inevitable given the subject matter: a middle-aged man—divorced with children—in a well-to-do Danish town, an upstanding member of the community known and respected by all, who works with the children in a nursery school and, out of the blue, comes under suspicion of molesting one—based on a tale the child recounted to the school director—, and overnight becomes a social outcast and kept at a distance even by his best friends, all while vehemently protesting his innocence (and he manifestly was innocent). US reviews of the film have been good on the whole, as were reviews in France, where the pic opened last November. Le Monde’s critic panned it, however—putting it in its films “to avoid” category—, prompting me to initially strike it from my “to see” list. But after a few weeks of its run I noted that the audience reviews on Allociné were particularly high. And as I have asserted numerous times, when in doubt go with the Allociné spectateurs over the snooty Parisian critics. So I went to see it and am glad I did. It’s an engaging film, well acted, and at no point rubbed me the wrong way. And it effectively depicts the Kafkaesque nightmare of a man falsely accused of one of the worst crimes possible short of murder. One comprehends why those accused of pedophilia, even if they are utterly innocent, contemplate suicide, or even end up committing it. I was reminded of the numerous day care abuse scandals/hysterias in the US—e.g. the one in Minnesota in the 1980s—and that ended with the defendants’ acquittal, and of the outrageous Outreau affair in France. Of course there are pedophiles out there but the issue here—the one treated in the film—is those who are falsely accused of this—by mythomaniacs or children under the âge de raison, invariably coaxed by adults—and of the collective hysteria that ensues. It’s a delicate subject, needless to say. I recommend the film. If one doesn’t like it, that’s okay. Chacun son goût.

Another Danish film seen recently was ‘A Hijacking’, about a Danish-owned freighter on its way to Bombay—and to the scrapyard after—that is seized by Somali pirates and held for ransom, with the hostage drama lasting for several months, the ship—having dropped anchor out in the ocean—being provisioned with food and water by boats from the Somali coast. The film alternates between the ship and the shipping company headquarters in Copenhagen, which has to deal with the situation and the pirates’ ransom demands. It is very effective in depicting both. On the ship—where the drama is seen through the eyes of the ship’s cook (played by actor Pilou Asbæk)—, one feels the despair of the crew as the crisis drags on and the sanitary conditions go from bad to worse, not to mention the hostages’ permanent state of terror, of being at the mercy of the kidnappers—the actors here are all Somalis, recruited in Kenya— who speak nothing but Somali, are totally inculte, their fingers permanently on the trigger, have a distinct lack of empathy, and little regard for human life. At the Copenhagen HQ, one equally feels the dilemmas of the company CEO (actor Søren Malling)—and the intense pressure which he is under—as he negotiates with the pirates—who have an English-speaking intermediary on board (he says he’s just the translator, not a pirate, but who knows?)—by satellite phone and fax, and their absurdly unreasonable ransom demands—and who has to decide when to follow or not to follow the advice of his hired negotiating expert, who is experienced in dealing with Somalis (played by Gary Skjoldmose Porter, who does this in real life; when it comes to cultural codes, Somalis and Danes—and Westerners in general, and even most non-Westerners—are not on the same wavelength). Again, the film is very effective on all counts. Slick, well done, and absolutely “realistic.” The way things were depicted in the film are no doubt the way they really happen. Kudos on this to director Tobias Lindholm (who, BTW, co-authored the screenplay of ‘The Hunt’ with that one’s director, Thomas Vinterberg). Reviews in the US (where the film opened in June) have been very good. In France too (both critics and Allociné spectators). But I won’t say that I enjoyed sitting through it, as I felt too strongly the hostages’ terror, the anguish of their families in Denmark, and the pressure on the negotiators at company HQ as they had to deal over several months with the crazy Somalis thousands of miles away. For me at least, the film was a little too angoissant. But that’s me. Others are less squeamish (which I know for a fact). So I recommend the pic, malgré tout.

As it happens, the lead article in last week’s New York Times Magazine, “12 Minutes of Freedom in 460 Days of Captivity,” is an excerpt of a book due out this month about a young Canadian woman’s hostage ordeal in Somalia (A House in the Sky, by Amanda Lindhout with Sara Corbett). And Slate had a piece on it a week ago, “460 days in a hell of captivity: An interview with Amanda Lindhout.” Given the high-profile advance publicity, it’s bound to be a best-seller. And à propos, Business Insider—a trashy but fun website—had a slide show recently entitled “The worst place in the world: See what life is like in Somalia.”

I actually have a personal relationship with Somalia, which I’ve mentioned here.

Back to movies: For the record, I saw a film from Iceland—a country that was part of Denmark until sixty years ago—last spring, ‘The Deep’ (en France: ‘Survivre’), by Icelandic auteur Baltasar Kormákur. The pic reenacts a real life story from 1984, of a young, corpulent fisherman (actor Olafur Darri Olafsson) whose trawler capsized and sank in the ice-cold waters a few kilometers off the Icelandic coast, and who managed to swim to shore. Having spent six hours in the water—and with the air temperature below freezing—his survival was literally a miracle, as lasting that long in such cold water was/is simply not possible for the human body. He thus became an object of medical/scientific study—in Iceland and the UK—, with doctors and scientists trying to comprehend how he could have possibly survived the ordeal. A freak of nature. But he was otherwise just a regular guy (though who, as a child, had lived through his town being buried in lava from a volcanic eruption; so for a simple country boy from Iceland he’d been through a lot). It’s not a bad film. Reviews are positive (here, here, and here; French here). I won’t recommend going out of one’s way for it but it’s good for DVD.

ADDENDUM: It occurred to me after posting this that there is a common thread in these three films, which is the protagonist—a man in his 30s-40s—going through a terrible ordeal that hits him out of the blue and that could end in personal ruin or death. He is a victim of circumstances—of larger forces—over which he has no control but that are linked to his employment, and that were a possible, if unforeseen, occupational hazard given the nature of what he does (and that he would not have contemplated when taking up his line of employment). Each man is saved (or vindicated) in the end but does not come out of the ordeal unscarred.