Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
AISHA HARRIS: A warning-- this episode contains discussion of sexual assault.
[THEME MUSIC]
HARRIS: The director Luca Guadagnino has been quite busy. Last year, he released the campy tennis love triangle, Challengers, with Zendaya and the hazy period romance Queer with Daniel Craig. And now he's back with After the Hunt with Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri.
LINDA HOLMES: Roberts is a professor who finds herself in a hard place when one of her star students makes an allegation against another faculty member. Who's telling the truth? Who's the victim? Is there a victim? The film poses a lot of questions, but are any of them answered? I'm Linda Holmes.
HARRIS: And I'm Aisha Harris. And today we're talking about After the Hunt on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
HARRIS: It's just the two of us today. So in After the Hunt, Julia Roberts plays Alma, a philosophy professor at Yale who's blurred the lines between the personal and professional. Her obvious favorite student is Maggie, played by Ayo Edebiri. Alma also has a very intimate, flirtatious dynamic with her colleague, Hank, who's played by Andrew Garfield. Now, Alma hosts dinner parties for students and faculty, and Maggie alleges that Hank sexually assaulted her after walking her home from one of those parties the night before. Hank vehemently denies it, and Alma finds herself unsure of who to believe and what to do about it. We should note that After the Hunt is being released by Amazon MGM Studios. Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. It's in theaters now. So, Linda, there's a lot to talk about here. I actually don't have any idea how you feel about this because we have not talked about it ahead of time. So tell me, how did you react to After the Hunt?
HOLMES: I had mixed feelings, which is consistent with a lot of the reviews that it's gotten. I think Julia Roberts is very good in this. I like this performance a lot. I think this is one of her more straightforward, dramatic performances, where she's accessing a kind of a patrician distance that she's actually better at than maybe some of her other more, kind of, affable, giggly, for lack of a better phrase, early roles might have suggested. I really like her in this. In the theater, when I saw it, I thought, you know, I think, to this movie's credit, I don't think this is supposed to be, like, a lesson for our times. I think it's supposed to be about these very specific people who are in this very specific situation, which, obviously, grows out of some things that are sort of a thing of the moment or whatever. But I got the impression they were not trying too hard to, like, say something about anybody else, except these people. And then I read the production notes. And if you're not familiar with production notes, they're basically-- they're part of the kind of publicity process, that they send them out, and it'll be, like, interviews with the cast and the director talking about their intent and information about the movie that you can use as you're reviewing it. And in the production notes, it became clear that they all really think this is a statement on our times or a provocative opportunity for everyone to talk about cancel culture and all the things that I kind of hoped it wasn't supposed to be--
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: --because I don't think it's nearly as effective or interesting as that, as it is a story of mostly Alma, this woman who has set up all her relationships to be so transactional that when they are suddenly kind of upended, in a way, she doesn't know whether to do the right thing or the most transactional thing. And she doesn't know what the most transactional thing is.
HARRIS: Right, yeah. Look, the thing about this movie that I found most fascinating is that, like, within this entire-- I don't know if it's fair to call it a genre at this point, but there's a collection of, quote unquote, "MeToo" movies or movies that are supposed to be about the MeToo movement and are representing it in some way. And what I found most interesting about this is the fact that most of those stories tend to be from the perspective of the person who was the victim, whereas this is from the perspective of someone who actually can't say for sure, although, you know, we get kind of a hint of how they may feel about it. Like, this is about what to do when you are told that someone else has been the victim. And I think that's an interesting entry point into this because it's very thorny. It's very complicated. It's definitely not black and white, or it couldn't be in this case. Where I struggled with this, as it unfolds, is the fact that, as you said, it did feel to me like this was trying to make some sort of statement, but it doesn't really take a stance in any way. I also just, like-- I looked at the production notes afterwards, and Guadagnino, he said something along the lines of, like, you know, I found this as a way of exploring how to tell a story, showing all the possibilities of truth without saying one point of view is most valuable, which, to me, kind of reads like, I'm just going to make sure that I don't actually take a stance. I'm just going to kind of all-sides this thing. And that comes through in this way that I found kind of, like-- like a cop-out and kind of, like, not necessarily needing all the pieces to fit together perfectly. And I don't need it to be sort of black and white, but I do want some point of view that clarifies, even if it's not for the characters themselves. Like, it's not necessarily black and white. But I feel like this movie ends up being-- especially when we get to the end of the second act into the third act, I guess, where there's this big reveal about Alma that kind of, like, turns everything on its head. And I was just very baffled by that choice and didn't quite understand it myself.
HOLMES: It's very intentional that you get to the end of this movie, you certainly do not have impression of exactly what happened, you know, on the night that these two left the party, and the allegation of abuse has happened.
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: The real reason for that is that it is an Alma POV story. So that makes sense, right? She wouldn't know.
HARRIS: Mm-hmm, yeah.
HOLMES: You know, I think sometimes people think, well, maybe she'll get the clarity of absolute evidence, you know, one way or the other. She doesn't, right?
HARRIS: Right.
HOLMES: And in reality, you might not. And so that makes sense. The problem that I have is that I think this kind of muddy, unclear, "lots of information missing" approach starts to spread to other parts of the story that she would have access to more information. And it just seems like the movie isn't telling us. Like, you get the outcome of-- you know, the university says, we're going to do an inquiry or whatever. You get the outcome of that increased order, but it's not clear, like, what they did.
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: Because the way it goes down is essentially that she makes this accusation against him. His response is, that's not what happened. What happened is, I discovered that she was engaged in academic dishonesty. I confronted her about that. And that's why she's now making this accusation, to protect herself, right?
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: But you can watch this whole movie, and to me, it's like, did he make that allegation as part of the inquiry? Did they talk about it? Did anybody investigate whether it's true?
HARRIS: Right.
HOLMES: Like, it's all kind of jumped over. And I understand that the point is not to lay out every individual thing. But, like, from Alma's point of view, there are things that she does that make sense if it's one way and not if it's another way, right?
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: And so what they're really trying to do is show that Alma is somebody who is always, to some degree, calculating because both of these people are relevant not only as people she knows well, but in her career, because Maggie is a student who, you know, potentially can complain about her, particularly because we learn that Maggie's family, the Ayo Edebiri character, her family is very rich and gives a lot of money to the school. So they're powerful in that way. And so, you know, Maggie is a person that Alma might not want to make angry. Hank is obviously somebody that she has a relationship with. And it's almost like for her, what actually happened is not the thing she's most thinking about. And that makes sense to me, right? That's a fair thing to put into that character's work.
HARRIS: Well, yeah, she's also up for tenure, too, right?
HOLMES: She is. She's up for tenure. But it's like, she would be thinking about these other things. Like, the academic dishonesty stuff gets kind of thrown around in a way that, like, you know, you get the feeling, like, maybe there's some truth to it, but it's not clear whether it has anything to do with the accusation or not. And then--
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: --I understand not being totally clear. It's the same thing with Doubt, right?
HARRIS: Mm, yeah.
HOLMES: The John Patrick Shanley play, and, later, movie, where the entire title, Doubt, is about, you know, both the fact that, A, you might not actually know what happened, as somebody who finds out about an allegation like this, and, B, how people respond to that sometimes has to do with a lot of other things going on in their lives other than the truth or not of whatever the allegation is, or the details of whatever the allegation is.
HARRIS: Yeah. I love that you brought that up, and I can't believe I didn't think about that before. I think for Doubt-- it's been a few years since I last saw it, but I still think it's a very good movie. And I think it does a good job of handling that murkiness in a way that this movie falls short on. And I want to kind of pull out a little bit more on this idea that you brought up about how we don't really understand how much Hank and/or Alma have told the administrators about the suspicions of Maggie, because on top of everything, Maggie, obviously, played by Ayo Edebiri, is a Black woman. She's portrayed as queer in this film. That's also kind of leveraged against her, in some ways, within the script, and also through some characters in this film. Because it's not just that she's, like, the favorite student of Alma, but also, there's, like, a suggestion that maybe Maggie might have a crush on her. So there's that as well. And I think it's interesting to have a Black character who's not perfect and who we don't necessarily like. It is a very fine needle to thread, especially now, when DEI has been attacked and basically dismantled. But it made me think of the show Industry, which, you know, this is the HBO series. It's set in a very high-stress financial industry world. And one of the main characters, played by Myha'la Herrold, is Harper. She's a character who's super cutthroat, but is often questioned, like, are you actually good at what you do? And I think that show does a really good job of sort of, like, putting that out there, but also showing, you know, does that even matter? Because when you're in this world, everyone in this world is there for reasons that are other than their actual talent. It's like, they know someone-- whatever. And this movie, it just kind of puts it out there in a way that felt, to me, accusatory of, like, maybe she doesn't deserve to be here. Like, you know, Alma's talking to her husband, Frederik, who really does not like Maggie. Frederik is played by Michael Stuhlbarg. And at one point, she's like, Maggie's brilliant. And he's like, is she? Or does she think you're brilliant? Like, are you just attracted to this and how she kind of fawns over her? And I found myself being like, OK, cool. I like that she's not exactly perfect. But at the same time, Maggie's just this kind of, like, collection of isms and everything that people rail against. And there's this sense that she's just putting on a show and pretending that, like, she's all these things and doesn't really deserve to be there. And when you mix that up with was she actually a victim, and it doesn't actually clarify any of that, to me, it just felt, again, like, you're going to wade in these waters, but you don't actually want to make any sort of clear point of view. And I think this is the type of movie where you have to take some sort of stance, if you're going to make a statement like this. And I don't think we've mentioned, but the screenplay was written by Nora Garrett. This is her first credited feature film, and I think she's done some acting work before. You know, I'm curious to see what she does next, but it also made me a little worried that, like-- it just feels like a first-time script. And I wanted more of a sense of, like, an understanding of what they wanted to say, for me, at least.
HOLMES: I think it gets very muddled along the way. And I-- you know, sometimes, after I see a movie, once I'm pretty sure that I kind of know my own mind about it, I will go and look at a couple of pieces of writing about it. And I was really struck by how often the word "muddled" and similar words have come up in this because I think that's what happens, is that there are some things that are really interesting that get seeded, particularly in this opening sequence of this party at Julia Roberts and Michael Stuhlbarg's house.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
SPEAKER 1: When did-- when did offending someone become the preeminent cardinal sin?
SPEAKER 2: I mean, I don't have a date, exactly, but maybe it's around the same time your generation started making sweeping generalizations about ours?
SPEAKER 1: Are you scared that we're going to think less of you if it isn't perfect?
[END PLAYBACK]
HOLMES: And I know this is a thing that happens at Ivy League schools that the professors are having, like, a dinner party, and everybody's drinking, and all the students are there, you know, because Maggie's a PhD student.
HARRIS: Right.
HOLMES: She's an undergrad or anything like that. But, you know, you have these students there. And I just looked at this scene just thinking, all of this is such a bad idea. Like, all of this--
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: --is just such a bad idea. And I understand for a lot of these folks, it's part of kind of the-- I don't know-- the adulthood process of, like, joining the community of scholars or whatever. But I just looked at it like, you should not be doing this. You should not be doing this. And when I was in school, we did not do this. I-- I just-- uh-uh.
HARRIS: Yeah. The movie does take pains to specify that this is taking place in 2019. So there are no hints of that. And then later, it fast forwards to five years later--
HOLMES: Right.
HARRIS: --which I thought was also interesting because it still wasn't satisfying to me. But it does kind of hint at 2019 was a different place to be in versus now, in terms of how we think about inclusion and all of that stuff.
HOLMES: And what the incentives are to behave in different ways around that.
HARRIS: Yeah, exactly. So the first scene, that opening scene, as cringey as it was, the whole time, I was like, this is a great scene. I love the way it's establishing these relationships just through glances and looking and small touches. And I loved that first scene. But then the final scene is, like, this weird-- Linda, we can talk about this offline.
HOLMES: We'll talk about this offline because I don't want to spoil it, but I-- it's a really difficult scene to understand to me.
HARRIS: Yeah, it's kind of surreal. And I don't understand what that was trying to say.
HOLMES: Yeah.
HARRIS: There's interesting ideas here, but the execution was just not there. And on top of that, I just-- [SIGHS] I found this kind of boring.
HOLMES: Yeah.
HARRIS: I think I could forgive it if it was a little bit-- it's weird to say-- not, like, fun, but a little bit more weird and just, like, had a little bit more energy. It just feels like a slog, in a way. And, you know, Guadagnino has Queer. That, I had some issues with that movie. But there was still something about it that moved and just felt kind of, you know, otherworldly, in a way, that was very transfixing. And here, maybe it's just that it's Yale-- it's an Ivy-- it's kind of stuffy. It just feels claustrophobic in a way that I also found really boring.
HOLMES: Yeah, I get that. You know, I think there are individual things that, from a filmmaking perspective, work well about this movie. I like the way that Guadagnino uses editing and different shots. There are a couple of kind of abrupt shifts to the kind of straight-on, face into the camera, Errol Morris, Spike Lee-style [LAUGHS] that I thought were very well used. There are a lot of close-ups of--
HARRIS: Hands. So many hands.
HOLMES: --hands, and also, sometimes, of, like, a place where a person just was or is about to be that I thought were effectively used.
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: This is a Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score that I think is very interesting in a bunch of different places. I do like what they did with the score and what they did with the sound design. And so there are a few things like that that I really liked. But ultimately, I think what I walked away from is, like, this is what I think of as, like, a "yeah, man, that's the point" movie, right, where--
HARRIS: Yeah.
HOLMES: --you come to the end of the movie, and you're like, but I didn't really understand, like, what was she talking about at this point? Yeah, man, that's the point. Like, I couldn't really figure out, like, what the purpose of this scene was. Yeah, man, that's the point.
[LAUGHTER]
HARRIS: Yeah, well, on top of it, there are philosophy professors and students, so it's, like--
HOLMES: Oh, i know.
HARRIS: --there's a lot of that. And I'm like, OK, all right. Like, I like philosophy as much as the next person, but like, come on.
HOLMES: I think it comes off being just a sketch on the nose maybe because they are constantly talking about, like, the ethics of different things that they do. And you see, yes, there's a story here about hypocrisy and people who study ethics, but don't have any, and that's all true. I just think the whole thing, like, it has some powerful moments. There are a couple of scenes-- I think there's a late scene between Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield that I think does get some real, like, drama into it. I think it does get some meat into that conversation. But a lot of the rest of it, I think they just-- it felt like I liked it OK when I was watching it. But the more I think about it, the less I [LAUGHS] like it.
HARRIS: That's the point, man.
HOLMES: Yeah, that's the point.
[LAUGHTER]
[THEME MUSIC]
HARRIS: Well, tell us what you think about After the Hunt. Let us know if you get the point. I don't know. Maybe you do. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/pchh and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, thanks so much for being here.
HOLMES: Oh, of course.
HARRIS: We got enough of the point, I guess.
HOLMES: We did. We did.
HARRIS: [LAUGHS] This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Janae Morris, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. And we'll see you all next time.
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