Jagten

I should really write more often. I am not good at expressing emotions and I don’t do it very often. Almost never actually. I often feel not at home in the world. I took off two weeks from work to compose myself and try to crawl out of this depression. Stress from work, feeling unhappy. Watching way too much television. I need structure. Rules. Sometimes I skip dinner and as a result lose weight. I want to gain about 20 kilos in order to get to the normal weight a person my height should be. I should exercise more, take walks, lift weights. Eat fruit, vegetables and at least just enough in calories.

One way to be a bit creative without getting too personal (which is more difficult) is to write about the movies I saw. Today I went to see Jagten (the hunt), a Scandinavian movie by the maker of Festen. Jagten is about a Kindergarten teacher who gets suspected of inappropriately touching a young girl. As audience we know that the accusation is completely ridiculous. The child just made a stupid remark that was taken out of context. He gets arrested and is cleared by the police. However, he lives in a small town and not everyone believes his innocence. So this one stupid remark a small child has made escalates and ruins his life.

The male lead in this movie has won in Cannes for this role and rightly so. The character seems to do everything right and is an ideal citizen. The actor’s portrayal of this man and how he deals with this terrible situation is a terrific performance. The story itself seemed a bit old fashioned. The reaction of the kindergarten’s headmistress seems unrealistic. It is 2012 and we all know that children do not always tell the truth. I have seen other films with the same plot. Maybe if the story had been set in the year 2002 or 1992, or, even better, if the film had been made in that year, then it would have been groundbreaking and new. Now the story seems boring because you get the feeling that you have seen it before and is at points unrealistic.