"Attending Yale University, at least how it manifests in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, seems akin to living in hell. Maybe not the fire and brimstone kind - there are still lush campus apartments with clean fitted kitchens - but the poisoned, oxygen-starved atmosphere and murky, tinted colours make it unmistakable. The hallowed academic institution hasn't gone stale, exactly; it's more like it's diseased."
"There's a bizarre tension between the prissy, tense rooms where smug professors commingle and the way these spaces and people appear on screen. Cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed (Clockers, Belly) shoots everything as slightly murky and off-colour, and even if the lines on faces and the glints in eyes are sharp, something lingers behind their expressions that feels purposefully withholding. There are scenes in After the Hunt that play out like memories, as if they were restaged and animated in an anxious dream."
"PhD candidate Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Hank of sexual assault (the word 'rape' is uttered only once in the film) after one of Alma's parties. Hank goes into charismatic, dismissive damage control, and Alma feels pressured between supporting her student's credible accusation and not yielding on her core ethos of only sticking her neck out for herself and her closest interests."
After the Hunt portrays Yale as a poisoned, oxygen-starved academic environment where experienced but insecure faculty prioritize self-interest over accountability. The visual palette is murky and off-colour, rendering rooms and faces slightly dreamlike and withholding. A PhD candidate accuses a charismatic professor of sexual assault, triggering dismissive damage control and forcing a senior colleague to choose between supporting the student and preserving her personal ethos. The story examines power dynamics, hypocrisy, and the self-serving hierarchy within elite intellectual spaces, showing progress framed as individual merit rather than collective reform.
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