Nowadays, making a film about the atmosphere in American universities and the phenomenon of ‘Cancel Culture’ is probably as difficult as living, learning or teaching in such an environment and being confronted with these problems. A good example could be ‘After the Hunt‘, the film directed by Luca Guadagnino on a script written by Nora Garrett. The film begins with the mention ‘It happened at Yale’, although the exteriors were filmed in Cambridge, UK and the entire plot and characters are, as far as I understand, fictional. Fictional but not implausible, because the general lines of the action are very plausible and similar cases have happened and will happen again. It is a complex reality that the script tries to address without simplifying. As in real life, however, it is difficult to decide in situations like those described in the film where stands the truth. Each of the characters is more or less something else than they try to seem.
Alma is a professor of philosophy at Yale, highly regarded and awaiting permanent appointment after ten years of teaching. She is loved by her students and esteemed by her colleagues, including her doctoral student Maggie, who seems to have made her a kind of role model in life, and her assistant professor Hank, with whom she may have a connection beyond the strictly professional relationship. The next day after an alcohol-soaked evening, to which Alma had invited Maggie, Hank, and other students and colleagues, Maggie appears at the professor’s apartment door complaining that Hank attacked her after driving her to her apartment. Hank denies it, and Alma hesitates to take a stand, not knowing exactly what is the truth. In fact, we, the viewers, do not know exactly what happened either. The intellectual environment with its indirect speak and the pressure of political correctness make truth difficult to reveal. It seems to be a classic case of ‘her word vs. his word’, but each of the characters has a lot to hide. Caught between the student – potential victim – and the professor – potential aggressor -, under the pressure of the rules of academic ethics and the atmosphere of suspicion on the university campus, Alma falls into a personal crisis that risks destroying her career as well and brings to the surface details from her own past that she wanted buried and forgotten.
The two hours and 18 minutes of the film pass quite slowly. The screenwriter and the director asked for time to develop their characters, but not all of them are equally well-defined, and the discussions between them are not always interesting. A slightly more inspired script would have given more substance to what happens in the classrooms or hallways of the elite university, and that in fewer words. The film’s chance lies in the performance of Julia Roberts, who has a complex role and fills the screen most of the time with the personality of a career woman who had overcome all obstacles until then, but whose life and profession were suddenly questioned. Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie. The actress is OK, but it seems like some more could have been taken out of the very interesting character of a young gay African-American, coming from a wealthy family, struggling to assert herself in an environment dominated by men. Andrew Garfield didn’t seem to me to have managed to get everything he could out of the role of Hank. On the other hand, I was delighted by another supporting role, that of Alma’s husband, a model of support, humor and devotion, a role deliciously played by Michael Stuhlbarg. ‘After the Hunt‘ addresses a difficult issue in a period of tensions of all kinds on American campuses. Public pressure fueled by social media, relationships between students and professors, and the fragility of academic careers have preoccupied and continue to preoccupy American writers, screenwriters, and filmmakers. However, the heroine’s indecision seems to have been shared by the film’s authors, which, together with the lack of focus and the multiplication of dialogues with too little substance, make the film something less than it could have been.