After the Hunt [movie]

🍒 Short version. Loved it. There is definitely a lightning in a bottle element -- bringing a team together that made it better. The Garrett ending, nah, for instance. But I do think that is true of any art. I tend to think making it a collaborative event prevents up-your-own-arseness and can make a thing better. That's why you have editors and publishers and audiences and skin in the game.

Font. I initially stopped watching the movie twice because of that Monster font. I couldn't. I immediately thought it was him. And that niggle said, But Julia wouldn't. Surely. Not now. I don't really watch movies with strangers in. They have to be introduced to me by the previous moviemakers. You endorse them, reflect on them when you choose them. We are the sum of who is around us. That's why the movie industry goes to such lengths to hide their misdeeds. So that font reeked of misdeeds. I do have the hair's breadth divider of -- she is over 18, and you become responsible for yourself, for managing yourself, for taking the consequences of your poor choices. No one holds that for you when you turn 18: you can vote, you can drive, you can drink (I see you, America, with your 'underage' bullshit). But still, there's something icky about that situation in my feminist thinking. You know the thinking I mean? The one that says, Why does he need someone seemingly so far off his power level. I have no choice but to assume that she is not. That she is fabulous and wields her power. I have no choice. But I still couldn't watch the movie. And then Julia got the better of me. I checked on IMDB the third time the movie passed. 

Semiotics. I see why they used that font. The film toys with my uncertainties and more. Oh that cinematography and semiotics! Maggie with her Mac, and Alma's proxy victim for the Maggie tirade about the Other -- a girl trying hard, with her papers and books and pens. You should know better, be wise to the discourse, the system, know what needs to be done, say it, write it, do it. A classic moment. Of which there are many, some subtle, and some not. Alma wears the Monster clothes, and Maggie wears Diane's clothes. 

Generations. I think the upshot is that the film is a collection of vignettes about how we are presenting ourselves in the identity-politics brigade. Gen X's having to steel themselves and do it alone, silently, offline, only their closest loved ones seeing the lies and sometimes not even then. Millennials raging performatively, just trying to show people up, not yet having the words; the discourse is still new, fresh, and unformed. Gen Z is bored to death with the drama of the discourse, anti-intellectual, gaming the system, looking for possessions, the big engagement ring and the credibility that association can give them. 

Messy. No easy moral answers are handed down. No blue-ribbon happy cathartic endings where the bad guy is left in the background in a pool of blood. Everybody gets swept up in a tornado of narcissistic, self-congratulatory up-your-own-self-righteous-arseness. No goodies and baddies. We aren't allowed to know if Maggie is lying, because The Adult In The Room has to be The Adult. They are responsible. BASTA. Don't accept the nightcap. Don't go up. Don't invite her to your lair. Don't let her invite you to her lair. There are no interiority narratives. We are looking in from the outside. Some of the characters look right at us. We are there, but we can't hear their motives. We can only hear what they say, see what they do. And every one of them is messy. 

Race. Definitely, race is thrown in there as chum. So clever. 

Takeaway. Kindness, I think. As flawed as the kindnesses are. Shall we call it: in the department of kind. Both Maggie and Alma get what they want. We don't know the path, except what is given in the scene. Maggie, in a red dress, is now gushing over her diamond: a more role-playing image of a lesbian relationship. Alma, now not in Monster white; now blue, is the dean of a university. When she tells Fred the blatant truth, it's that she loves her abuser. Fred says he loves her. There's kindness. Maggie says she's happy for Alma. True or not, she came there, and she showed that she was happy, without having to drag Alma down. She was prepared to come here and be in the department of kindness. Alma says she is sorry she hurt Maggie -- there's a kindness there. Usually that sort of apology is a non-apology -- a real one would be I am sorry for my actions, but there were no other actions she could have taken. A girl who knows better doesn't shower; she knows the discourse, she knows what to do in the system, and if she doesn't, she reveals that she [may be] lying. ((As irrelevant as that might be because The Adult should not be in the room. That action is where the violation starts, not the [possible] lying. The [possible] lying would be incidental.))