- Content: “To Woke or Not to Woke?”
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What You Need To Know:
AFTER THE HUNT makes some interesting points against wokeism, identity politics and the MeToo movement. However, it has a tendency to walk back these excellent points a little bit. Eventually, the movie becomes too cryptic and ambiguous and ends up with a nihilistic, relativistic view of truth. The director has said he wanted his movie to support a free flow of ideas that avoid censorship. AFTER THE HUNT also has brief nudity, some homosexual references, and many strong obscenities and profanities in the dialogue. So, AFTER THE HUNT is at least slightly excessive and unacceptable.
Content:
Strong humanist, nihilistic worldview supports the false, paradoxical idea that truth is unknowable and a young woman spouts a Neo-Marxist ideology at least once but the movie has some moral, traditional elements that skewer her radical politics and undercut the METoo movement and that mock woke identity politics and shallow transgender politics, but movie also has some political correct elements, plus movie ultimately is pro-homosexual;
At least 62 obscenities (including at least 49 “f” words), four strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus Christ, one GD profanity, one light profanity, and woman with some kind of periodic stomach issue/pain gets sick and vomits in two or so scenes (the medical problem is revealed toward the end of the movie);
Verbal references to sexual assault and there’s an attempt to force sex on a married woman but it’s rebuked, and it stops, plus there’s a reference to a man committing suicide after falsely being accused of fornicating with a teenage girl;
Man starts to force sex on a married woman, but he stops when she resists and before any clothes come off, and lesbian female graduate student accuses thirtysomething male professor of rape (movie never reveals if it really happened or not), young woman kisses another woman who’s “transitioning” into a man, and woman later reveals she broke up with the trans character and is now in a lesbian relationship with another woman (movie seems to support homosexual relationships, but a line of dialogue insults the trans character pretty well);
Upper male in one scene where a woman exposes her chest and there’s a scar where she had her breasts removed to “transition” into a man, and regular upper male nudity in another scene;
Some alcohol use and drunkenness;
Some tobacco smoking, people seem to be smoking marijuana in two or so scenes, and woman takes opioid pain killers for stomach pains; and,
An accusation of plagiarism by a Marxist graduate student turns out to be true, woman forges a doctor’s prescription for opioid painkillers, but she’s caught and punished by her employer (her employer is Yale University).
More Detail:
The movie begins in the female professor, Alma’s, house where she and her husband, Michael, have just finished giving Alma’s Yale friends a dinner. Now, they’re all relaxing and discussing academic issues. Among the issues being discussed is the fact that Alma and her best friend, a thirty-something professor named Hank, are both up for tenure. Both Alma and Hank covet tenure. They agree it would be best if both received tenure. However, both admit that, if only one of them gets it, they hope it’s them rather than the other person. A man at the party notes that, if only one of them gets tenure, it’s going to be Alma because she’s woman. Not everyone agrees with the man, but some guests do.
Among the people at the dinner party is Maggie, Alma’s star pupil. A young black lesbian, Maggie was adopted by a rich couple, who have given Yale a large endowment. Privately, Alma’s husband, Michael, a psychologist, tells Alma he doesn’t think Maggie is that smart. He also thinks Alma is biased because Maggie clearly has a crush on her and sucks up to Alma.
Maggie takes a bathroom break. Alma tells her to go to the room at the end of the hall. While searching for toilet paper in the cabinet, Maggie finds some photos and a newspaper clipping about a man who committed suicide. Maggie’s discovery is a very convenient occurrence that will play a significant role in the movie’s second half.
At any rate, Hank is very drunk when he leaves the dinner party. In the hallway of Alma’s apartment building, which has an elevator, he offers to walk Maggie home. Alma watches this encounter from a peephole in the door.
A day or two later, a clearly upset Maggie comes to see Alma and tells her that Hank raped her when they went into her apartment for a nightcap. Alma naturally starts to question Maggie about what exactly happened and whether she went to the hospital to get a rape kit. Maggie gets angry. She refuses to give her mentor any details and accuses Alma of siding with Hank. Maggie leaves in a huff.
The next day, Alma meets Hank at his favorite Indian restaurant. Hank is somewhat of a ladies’ man and often flirts with his female students. He also takes many of his romantic targets to that restaurant.
At the restaurant, Hank denies assaulting Maggie at all. He also tells Alma that the reason he suggested a nightcap at Maggie’s place was because he wanted to confront Maggie that he knows Maggie is plagiarizing significant portions of the doctoral dissertation she’s writing.
Hank sounds convincing, but he admits to Alma that his story will be unconvincing to the politically correct crowd at Yale. That’s because it’s his word against a black lesbian woman.
It turns out that Maggie’s accusations immediately get Hank fired. Not only that, but one day a drunken Hank angrily interrupts Alma’s philosophy class to berate her and the whole university.
So, will the truth about Maggie’s accusation against Hank be revealed? Will Alma take a stand in favor of one friend or another? Is Maggie really plagiarizing her dissertation? Has political correctness gone too far at Yale? And, what’s up with that news clipping that Maggie found hidden in Alma’s bathroom? Finally, is Alma cheating on her husband with Hank?
AFTER THE HUNT is too talky. The academic witticisms and insults fly pretty quickly. At one point, Alma even teaches her students in a class about the nihilistic French homosexual philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (“Foo-CO”). Foucault’s complex theories became very influential among many leftist, feminist and homosexual activists, despite Foucault’s criticism of classical Marxism. In another scene, she discusses the pros and cons of woke identity politics with several students.
Eventually, however, Alma confronts Maggie in public, at the Hewitt Quadrangle at Yale, where many protests have occurred. Alma mocks Maggie’s shallow, politically correct leftism. She also mock’s Maggie’s lover, a young woman and leftist activist who’s “transitioned” into being a “transgender man.” In retaliation, Maggie writes a vicious public article attacking Alma for being a typical hypocritical white female liberal who pretends to be free of racism but harbors a hateful racist, capitalist attitude toward people of color.
Later in the movie, a scene between Alma and Hank suggests that Hank is capable of rape and may indeed have raped Maggie. A third scene, however, shows that some accusations of sexual assault against men are false and can leave disaster in their wake.
So, sometimes AFTER THE HUNT attacks political correctness, wokeness and the MeToo movement’s attitude of “believe every woman,” but sometimes it seems to support these controversial social positions. It’s part of the movie’s attempt to remain cryptic and ambiguous. Thus, for example, the movie never reveals whether Maggie’s story or Hank’s story is true. Both characters are deeply flawed human beings, neither all good nor all bad.
As a result, Director Luca Guadagnino has created a movie about human relationships, identity politics, power, and privilege that defies specificity. Thus, AFTER THE HUNT seems to hint that truth is ultimately unknowable. As such, it seems to echo the nihilistic, somewhat relativistic philosophy of the French author Michel Foucault that the main character, Alma, discusses in and outside her classes.
That said, in the press notes, the movie’s director says one of the movie’s points is for society to recognize “all the possibilities of truth” and not to let people “run from ideas, or worse, to censor them, even if they challenge our deepest beliefs.” [SPOILERS FOLLOW] Even so, however, despite her harsh public criticism of Maggie, Alma eventually apologizes to her for it, but Maggie never apologizes to Alma for the mean article she writes about Alma. Also, Maggie eventually breaks up with her goofy transgender lesbian lover and ends up having a lesbian relationship with a woman. So, the movie’s ending includes a pro-homosexual theme.
AFTER THE HUNT also has at least 54 strong obscenities and profanities. There’s also a scene where the transgender “man” has his shirt off, and viewers can see the scar where she had her breasts surgically removed.
So, taking into consideration all the movie’s negative content, MOVIEGUIDE® rates AFTER THE HUNT at least slightly excessive and unacceptable, despite its surprising attacks on the woke, identity politics of America’s elite colleges.
