The filmmaker makes fascinating cinema. All of the aesthetic choices in cinematography and music are original and unusual.
But the faster the pace of production becomes, the initial excitement over the early films gives way to a slightly puzzled look at the more recent choices. The new film, The Truth Behind the Hunt, the third released within a year and a half, at a pace of one film every six months, is on the one hand a master class in camera direction, and on the other hand a work overloaded with manipulation.
It aims to be intellectual dynamite, but in practice it feels like an editorial that compresses into two hours and twenty minutes everything that has preoccupied American culture in recent years. The academic world in America seems to be constantly looking for enemies to fight, and in the absence of real enemies outside, the closest and most similar people become the targets.
This becomes an academic battlefield in which the characters fight for their privilege to be offended. This could have been a meaningful film, a bright warning sign in the contemporary cultural landscape, but it seems that the filmmaker simply hates all of the characters being portrayed.
The filmmaker is not alone.
Another recent film began from a similar narrative premise dealing with the sexual assault of a student by a popular lecturer.
That film was told from the perspective of the assaulted student and was therefore full of emotion and an honest search for healing.
In contrast, this film presents characters whose every move is a manipulation and whose every event is part of an escalating battle.
As in other works dealing with moral ambiguity, the audience does not fully know for most of the film what really happened, how severe the act was, and to what extent the incident becomes a weapon in the hands of all sides, each of whom rushes to present themselves as the victim. Perhaps this is what the film is about, a present in which everyone is a villain and everyone is a victim at the same time, and the only question is who can profit from it.
This is a film filled with cunning choices, starting with the casting of a beloved actress as a philosophy lecturer at an elite university.
As an actress, she is one of the most liked people in the world, so we are automatically on her side and captivated by her charm, even though the character is highly controversial.
The film plays on the spectrum of empathy. What causes us to judge people favorably or harshly.
Is it their actions, their work, or their personal charm. What makes us forgive some and crucify others.
She plays Alma, a name meaning soul, and also a term for an academic institution, suggesting that she is not a character but a symbol.
She teaches thinkers whose philosophies did not necessarily align with their personal morals and is eager to receive a promotion and secure tenure in the humanities faculty.
When one of her students tells her that another lecturer in the department, who is also the closest friend of the protagonist, sexually assaulted her, she freezes. She, and we, do not fully know what actually happened, but each side sees her as an ally and hopes she will stand by them, believing that a positive character reference from her will tip the balance in their favor.
The film is set at an American university campus in 2019, before the pandemic.
It clearly shows how students can turn into an incited and violent crowd that demands the heads of lecturers if they feel the lecturers do not meet proper moral standards.
Perhaps for this reason the film was shot on campuses in England and not in the United States.
The Truth Behind the Hunt is a moral minefield.
It seems to demand that anyone who reviews it declare who they believe and whose side they are on in the scandal.
It is a polemical film designed not to provoke discussion but conflict, and too often it says out loud what would have been better left implied.
It is a film whose true purpose is to be screened as an introduction to study days or panel discussions about morality, values, privilege, truth, and cancel culture.
Anyone watching it will likely identify with the character closest to them and judge the others harshly.
The film places three philosophy academics of different generations into the arena. A white woman, a white man, and a young Black woman.
It asks who the other is in an era where everyone sees themselves as a persecuted minority, but no one is willing to recognize the other as such.
Above all, it confronts philosophy itself. A discipline that excels at talking about ethics but struggles to live ethically. It speaks about the helplessness of the world of ideas, which deals in lofty values but fails to live by them in practice.
In a key scene, Alma angrily asks her students not to turn philosophical theories into tools for judging the worldviews of their lecturers or the reality around them, insisting that study is meant first and foremost for education and not necessarily for application. Similarly, the filmmaker creates a film that strives to be sharp but occasionally makes artistic choices that signal to the viewer that this is only a film, only a parable, only fiction, and not reality itself.
This may be the filmmaker’s way of creating satire without humor, criticizing elite American institutions that are preoccupied with privilege battles rather than education. In the intellectual world portrayed here, everyone is guilty of something, everyone sins, and everyone deserves crucifixion.
The final shot of the film focuses on a close up of a twenty dollar bill. It is a long and deliberate shot. There is a message here, but what is it. That in the end everything is money and not values. Or that controversial figures are eventually immortalized regardless of their past. This is how these films operate. They demand interpretation, but it is not clear that there is anything to interpret.
It seems that what occupies the filmmaker across these works is relationships with a vampiric element. Sometimes these are relationships between an adult and a younger person. Sometimes a romantic triangle filled with desire and interests. Sometimes a dependent bond between an artist and a muse. And sometimes it is literally a vampire horror story in which one character feeds on the body of another. The filmmaker is an exceptional musical editor. Whenever music plays within the film, in bars or living rooms, the musical choice is inspired. In the university bar, for example, only one band is played, until someone switches to a different playlist, causing surprise among the characters, since the singer associated with it is supposedly canceled by younger progressive audiences.
As in the filmmaker’s other films, The Truth Behind the Hunt is visually flamboyant, presenting characters and spaces from unconventional perspectives.
It is always fascinating and sometimes pretentious.
Watching the film, it is hard not to wonder whether the filmmaker is so busy inventing strange camera angles simply because he is bored with the story and the characters.