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I was aware what this was about going in, paedophillia is something i don't handle well and while i knew it was about a false accusation it would still be about it so i never went through and watched it.
It was interesting and well thought out how they established how this young girl would even know of such things, her brother showing her the porn pictures; i'm guessing that wasn't an isolated incident and she has maybe even looked at those pictures alone when her brother wasn't around out of curiousity. I do wonder how she would make the connection that this is something she could hurt Lucas with at that age but then this clearly happens in real life so it's just something i'll never understand i guess. Maybe her parents had spoke to her about adults acting inappropriately, definitely think that contributes to stuff like this at least some of the time, it's a double edged sword: you want your kids to know that adults (or anyone) shouldn't be doing stuff like this to them but in some sense you've given them a weapon, don't really want to call it that but i think people will know what i mean. Man i hate talking about stuff like this, it's a fine line between condemning the false accusation and outright blaming the young kid who didn't know any better. In any case it wasn't said in the film that her parents had spoke to her about this sort of stuff. I'm not even sure if she was setting out to get him in trouble or not, she was clearly angry at him which would tell you she was but she quickly changes the subject which indicates that it was more of a momentary lashing out thing. That's always the sad thing in these cases she is a really young girl who doesn't understand the gravity of her accusations and once they've been planted she feels she has to stick to them.
I thought the shape of Lucas life at the start was nice and subtly crafted. The scene when he finds out his son wants to live with him is pretty quietly devastating as it's also the same scene that the accusation has been planted, he literally waves her out the door while on the phone in what turns out to be very positive news. By that point we don't know him that well but we do know that his life isn't the best and in this scene everything comes together; his son is coming to live with him and he is flirting with who will become his girlfriend seeing him now finally move on with his life, and only we know that something has happened in this short happy period of time for him that could threaten all of this. There's something really dark about that. My only problem with that part was i felt it was a little over the top having Klara sitting in the dark talking like a serial killer hahah.
The actual part where Klara goes ahead with the accusations to Ole is tough. It's difficult to say what should have been done, us knowing that Lucas didn't do it don't want Ole to further press the issue after she denies it but then there's several reasons he has to. The accusations are very serious and there's every chance that Lucas has told her not to say anything, an adult giving you instructions of that type could make the child believe she is going to get in trouble for not obeying them and even if not that her meeting a new adult about this makes it clear to her that this is now getting serious which again could see her clam up. It is an unfortunate situation; in her mind she has got two choices admit to lying and get in trouble or follow through with her first lie and not get in trouble. Not quite understanding what will happen if you stick to your first lie that's a very easy decision as a kid; i'm sure we all broke something in the house at that age or whatever and continuosly denied it was us. I remember falling outside and scraping my arm when i was very young and for some unknown reason i blamed my older cousin saying he pushed me, he got in trouble and i really regretted it but no way was i going to admit that and get myself in trouble, it's the same albeit much more serious situation and has very sound logic so i think it was well done. Completely felt the teacher vomiting as well, the whole situation was gross and she has to think that she may have employed and been friendly with a paedophile.
Another really tough situation is telling the parents. There's so many things both ways that i don't even know. One of the big things that kicked off the McMartin Sexual Abuse Accusations and by extension the Satanic Panic was parents being informed before there was any investigation. One woman who turned out to be mentally ill accused the McMartin people of sexually abusing her child and forcing him to take part in satanic cult activities. Without investigating further the police decided to send letters out to parents of current and former pupils asking if their child was abused and detailing all of the accusations brought against the McMartin people. Some parents would have handled it better than others but some understandably would be going nuts believing their child had been abused and they'd grill their children believing that they had been told not to say anything until the point that the kids just started agreeing that this stuff happened to them. While not the exact same situation it is similar and as a parent the moment you hear there's a possibility that your child has been abused it will be there forever, children of this age are very easily lead in alot of cases so these matters should be handled with care by trained professionals; but if you are going home with your kid that night it's difficult to not ask them yourself. So while i do think the other parents had a right to know i don't think it was handled well at all, i don't even remember Ole saying she should notify the other parents, seems like she just took it upon herself and while she meant well it wasn't great how she went about it.
One thing this film did was portray everyone fairly. There was so many people to feel sorry for here, Lukas above them all but pretty much everyone else including Klara too. One of the most powerful scenes to me was Theo breaking down; that scene doesn't actually ring true to me because there's no way i'd be able to sit there in my home with the guy who was accused of this no matter if it was my best friend but everyone is different and you can see how much it is tearing him up. Your default position is always going to be believing your kid and either way your life is going to take a serious knock from this because either your daughter was abused or your daughter lied about it ruining your friends life and most likely your relationship, that will most likely lead to some trauma anyway for your daughter and she will likely not be treated the best if that comes out despite her age as you know how people are. Worst situation for him and his wife that you'd never wish on anyone. I can't even blame his wife for confusing Klara after she confesses to it being a lie because it's went far enough that she has become convinced it is reality. Still though the mums logic is screwed to say the least, maybe you don't want to remember what happened: how does that work if she did and she made the accusation twice, did she instantly forget after the second time? Not thinking straight in this situation is probably the most understandable thing in the film though so i find it tough to blame her.
Mads was great. Not that familiar with him, watched the first four or five episodes of Hannibal and thought he was great but i didn't like the show. He was very likeable here which made the crumbling of his life that much harder to watch. Some things he doesn't handle that well but then who would? Nobody expects something like this to happen and nobody is equipped to deal with it. The idea of people not trusting you, people honestly believing you are capable of doing this must be soulcrushing. It has to be taken seriously it can't just be dismissed on your good character but that's not something you can take knowing yourself that you have never and would never do something of this nature. Think Mads brought all of these things to life and he deserves the acclaim he has gotten for this performance. Another very good performance was from the kid who played Marcus. Was a bit confused about him being allowed to see Lukas as his relationship with his mother didn't sound great on the phone but then i think she probably thought that despite our differences i know he wouldn't have done this. Think my automatic expectation is for the mother he's seperated from to be a bad person because they so often are in movies. Anyway he did a great job putting across what this all did to him with him being another innocent victim of this horrible situation and his relationship with Mads felt very authentic.
The period after he was realeased was really horrible, dunno what to say about it. I mean the dead dog man damn. How did they even get it? Does he let his dog run about outside like a cat? Whatever it was awful anyway and was really obvious the moment you saw the bag. The beating by the employees, dang the way he is treated in that part is awful. Overall i'm not sure how i feel about how it was resolved, i get that the dad hearing Klara say he didn't do it was what turned things but then would the mother really accept it when she had heard her say so before? I dunno, things just kind of go back to normal, the church and the scene that Theo accepts he didn't do nothing were very well acted but i kind of hoped for something different what i don't know. Anyway very good film, probably won't ever watch it again because it's about a very grim subject and i feel i got most of what i can out of it. Glad it was nominated.
The Hunt
I was aware what this was about going in, paedophillia is something i don't handle well and while i knew it was about a false accusation it would still be about it so i never went through and watched it.
It was interesting and well thought out how they established how this young girl would even know of such things, her brother showing her the porn pictures; i'm guessing that wasn't an isolated incident and she has maybe even looked at those pictures alone when her brother wasn't around out of curiousity. I do wonder how she would make the connection that this is something she could hurt Lucas with at that age but then this clearly happens in real life so it's just something i'll never understand i guess. Maybe her parents had spoke to her about adults acting inappropriately, definitely think that contributes to stuff like this at least some of the time, it's a double edged sword: you want your kids to know that adults (or anyone) shouldn't be doing stuff like this to them but in some sense you've given them a weapon, don't really want to call it that but i think people will know what i mean. Man i hate talking about stuff like this, it's a fine line between condemning the false accusation and outright blaming the young kid who didn't know any better. In any case it wasn't said in the film that her parents had spoke to her about this sort of stuff. I'm not even sure if she was setting out to get him in trouble or not, she was clearly angry at him which would tell you she was but she quickly changes the subject which indicates that it was more of a momentary lashing out thing. That's always the sad thing in these cases she is a really young girl who doesn't understand the gravity of her accusations and once they've been planted she feels she has to stick to them.
I thought the shape of Lucas life at the start was nice and subtly crafted. The scene when he finds out his son wants to live with him is pretty quietly devastating as it's also the same scene that the accusation has been planted, he literally waves her out the door while on the phone in what turns out to be very positive news. By that point we don't know him that well but we do know that his life isn't the best and in this scene everything comes together; his son is coming to live with him and he is flirting with who will become his girlfriend seeing him now finally move on with his life, and only we know that something has happened in this short happy period of time for him that could threaten all of this. There's something really dark about that. My only problem with that part was i felt it was a little over the top having Klara sitting in the dark talking like a serial killer hahah.
The actual part where Klara goes ahead with the accusations to Ole is tough. It's difficult to say what should have been done, us knowing that Lucas didn't do it don't want Ole to further press the issue after she denies it but then there's several reasons he has to. The accusations are very serious and there's every chance that Lucas has told her not to say anything, an adult giving you instructions of that type could make the child believe she is going to get in trouble for not obeying them and even if not that her meeting a new adult about this makes it clear to her that this is now getting serious which again could see her clam up. It is an unfortunate situation; in her mind she has got two choices admit to lying and get in trouble or follow through with her first lie and not get in trouble. Not quite understanding what will happen if you stick to your first lie that's a very easy decision as a kid; i'm sure we all broke something in the house at that age or whatever and continuosly denied it was us. I remember falling outside and scraping my arm when i was very young and for some unknown reason i blamed my older cousin saying he pushed me, he got in trouble and i really regretted it but no way was i going to admit that and get myself in trouble, it's the same albeit much more serious situation and has very sound logic so i think it was well done. Completely felt the teacher vomiting as well, the whole situation was gross and she has to think that she may have employed and been friendly with a paedophile.
Another really tough situation is telling the parents. There's so many things both ways that i don't even know. One of the big things that kicked off the McMartin Sexual Abuse Accusations and by extension the Satanic Panic was parents being informed before there was any investigation. One woman who turned out to be mentally ill accused the McMartin people of sexually abusing her child and forcing him to take part in satanic cult activities. Without investigating further the police decided to send letters out to parents of current and former pupils asking if their child was abused and detailing all of the accusations brought against the McMartin people. Some parents would have handled it better than others but some understandably would be going nuts believing their child had been abused and they'd grill their children believing that they had been told not to say anything until the point that the kids just started agreeing that this stuff happened to them. While not the exact same situation it is similar and as a parent the moment you hear there's a possibility that your child has been abused it will be there forever, children of this age are very easily lead in alot of cases so these matters should be handled with care by trained professionals; but if you are going home with your kid that night it's difficult to not ask them yourself. So while i do think the other parents had a right to know i don't think it was handled well at all, i don't even remember Ole saying she should notify the other parents, seems like she just took it upon herself and while she meant well it wasn't great how she went about it.
One thing this film did was portray everyone fairly. There was so many people to feel sorry for here, Lukas above them all but pretty much everyone else including Klara too. One of the most powerful scenes to me was Theo breaking down; that scene doesn't actually ring true to me because there's no way i'd be able to sit there in my home with the guy who was accused of this no matter if it was my best friend but everyone is different and you can see how much it is tearing him up. Your default position is always going to be believing your kid and either way your life is going to take a serious knock from this because either your daughter was abused or your daughter lied about it ruining your friends life and most likely your relationship, that will most likely lead to some trauma anyway for your daughter and she will likely not be treated the best if that comes out despite her age as you know how people are. Worst situation for him and his wife that you'd never wish on anyone. I can't even blame his wife for confusing Klara after she confesses to it being a lie because it's went far enough that she has become convinced it is reality. Still though the mums logic is screwed to say the least, maybe you don't want to remember what happened: how does that work if she did and she made the accusation twice, did she instantly forget after the second time? Not thinking straight in this situation is probably the most understandable thing in the film though so i find it tough to blame her.
Mads was great. Not that familiar with him, watched the first four or five episodes of Hannibal and thought he was great but i didn't like the show. He was very likeable here which made the crumbling of his life that much harder to watch. Some things he doesn't handle that well but then who would? Nobody expects something like this to happen and nobody is equipped to deal with it. The idea of people not trusting you, people honestly believing you are capable of doing this must be soulcrushing. It has to be taken seriously it can't just be dismissed on your good character but that's not something you can take knowing yourself that you have never and would never do something of this nature. Think Mads brought all of these things to life and he deserves the acclaim he has gotten for this performance. Another very good performance was from the kid who played Marcus. Was a bit confused about him being allowed to see Lukas as his relationship with his mother didn't sound great on the phone but then i think she probably thought that despite our differences i know he wouldn't have done this. Think my automatic expectation is for the mother he's seperated from to be a bad person because they so often are in movies. Anyway he did a great job putting across what this all did to him with him being another innocent victim of this horrible situation and his relationship with Mads felt very authentic.
The period after he was realeased was really horrible, dunno what to say about it. I mean the dead dog man damn. How did they even get it? Does he let his dog run about outside like a cat? Whatever it was awful anyway and was really obvious the moment you saw the bag. The beating by the employees, dang the way he is treated in that part is awful. Overall i'm not sure how i feel about how it was resolved, i get that the dad hearing Klara say he didn't do it was what turned things but then would the mother really accept it when she had heard her say so before? I dunno, things just kind of go back to normal, the church and the scene that Theo accepts he didn't do nothing were very well acted but i kind of hoped for something different what i don't know. Anyway very good film, probably won't ever watch it again because it's about a very grim subject and i feel i got most of what i can out of it. Glad it was nominated.