It’s not a night out of the ordinary: Yale philosophy professor Alma (Julia Roberts) is hosting a lavish party at her tastefully decorated apartment with her husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg). There are plenty of faculty and Ph.D. students, including Professor Hank (Andrew Garfield), a close friend of Alma’s, and Alma’s student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri). A night of playful intellectual debate comes to an end, and the guests leave.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The next day, a distressed Maggie waits outside Alma’s apartment with crushing news: Hank walked Maggie home after the party, came into her apartment, and crossed a line. That’s the inciting incident of After the Hunt, directed by Luca Guadagnino (Queer, Challengers) and written by Nora Garrett. The movie’s handling of its storyline of campus power dynamics has sparked plenty of controversy since its August premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and its wide release in cinemas this weekend is sure to reignite the conversation.
After the Hunt seems designed to provoke. It’s clear from the onset, in Guadagnino’s decision to parrot the distinctive font of Woody Allen’s opening titles. This turns out to be mostly just a feint at divisiveness. After the Hunt isn’t especially incendiary in its substance. Despite the controversy that drives its plot, it is more of a well-paced character study than a bona fide #MeToo drama or a scathing indictment of cancel culture or campus life. Still, it’s worth delving into how Garrett and Guadagnino do choose to end their story to see how this work fits in among the many thematically similar projects that have emerged over the past eight years.
What really happened between Hank and Maggie?
This question remains unanswered when the final credits roll. No flashback nor confession reveals precisely what happened between Maggie and Hank. But a scene with Hank and Alma gives us an indication of who is telling the truth. Here, Alma returns to her other apartment, which she uses as a quiet place to get work done and retreat from the pressures of her job. After an extremely tense interaction with Maggie, which found Alma hurling vicious insults until Maggie slapped Alma across the face, Alma enters the apartment to find that she’s not the only one there. She is surprised to discover Hank, whom she hasn’t seen in weeks, passed out in her bed.
The two have a tense, uneasy conversation, and Hank has completely unraveled, shouting to Alma about how his life has been destroyed by Maggie. Alma tells him his life is ruined because he broke the rules. “The only person I ever broke the rules to f-ck was you,” he snaps angrily in response, confirming an affair the movie has been hinting at. Hank corners Alma and starts to kiss her, but after a brief moment she tells him to stop. He doesn’t listen, and she has to shove him off of her. Ashamed, Hank drags himself out of her apartment, never to be seen again. This scene depicting Hank disregarding the fundamentals of consent and continuing to kiss Alma after she’s refused him establishes a pattern that fits Maggie’s claim. It may not be definitive evidence, but it’s all we’re going to get.
What happened in Alma’s past?
Though an incident between Maggie and Hank is what incites the plot of After the Hunt, this is really a film about Alma and her choices. She repeatedly encourages Maggie to keep quiet about what happened to her, discouraging her from speaking out at every opportunity. This creates a massive rift between the two, ultimately causing Maggie’s fellow students to rally against the professor. Alma becomes increasingly irate in carrying out her teaching duties, aggressively arguing with her students. Her romance with her husband is dwindling; her potential tenure, which once seemed like a guarantee, is in grave danger. Everything is going wrong for Alma, and watching Roberts’ remarkable, nuanced performance as she tries to keep her life together is the greatest pleasure to be found in After the Hunt.
After collapsing on campus and waking up in the hospital with Frederik by her side, Alma finally reveals the truth about her past. When she was 15, back in her native Sweden, she had an affair with an adult family friend. When it ended, she told people that he had abused her, and he eventually took his life. “I made up a story that I knew would hurt him the most,” she tells Frederik. Though she was underage, she says now that they were in love, and she has regretted her actions to expose him ever since. Despite Alma’s belief that she’s responsible for the tragic outcome, there’s no mistaking that Alma was a child being taken advantage of by an adult. We can see that she was the victim, as can Frederik, who reinforces this perspective.
In this moment, it becomes clear that After the Hunt is really an investigation into what it’s like to live with pain and trauma, how it festers and lingers days, years, or even decades after a violation occurs.
One last conversation
Five years later, Maggie and Alma meet again at the same Indian restaurant Hank adored. The two exchange platitudes on how things have been for them since they last saw each other so many years ago. “I gave up on the idea of retribution a long time ago,” Maggie says, confirming that Hank never received legal recourse beyond losing his job at Yale, and she hasn’t seen him since.
There’s something different, almost freeing, about the way Maggie and Alma speak to each other. Gone is the sense that Maggie is desperate to please Alma; so too is Alma’s interest in supporting Maggie. Outside the walls of the university, and with so much time passed, these women don’t have to pretend like they care for one another. “I spent so long wishing for you to fail,” Maggie reveals to Alma, who barely reacts. “I didn’t know whether I wanted to be you or be with you,” Maggie also confesses to an unfazed Alma. It’s uncomfortable, and Maggie seems genuinely shocked that Alma is still with Frederik. Alma, meanwhile, is relieved that Maggie is no longer with her partner, Alex, instead engaged to a woman named Mia. Long before their food arrives, Maggie asks for the check, pays, and walks out. The camera lingers over the $20 bill Maggie has left, and the film cuts to black.
Some people get punished for their mistakes, and it certainly appeared that as Alma’s life began to unravel, her refusal to step up and support Maggie would lead to her downfall. But Maggie is surprised, as the audience is, to learn that Alma is thriving: she’s now the dean of Yale. That’s a remarkable trajectory, given that the last time we saw her on campus, she had been suspended for using the department therapist’s prescription pad to fill a prescription without her knowledge, and told she would no longer be considered for tenure.
While After the Hunt is full of scathing dialogue, snarky asides, and buzzwords aplenty, the final conversation between Alma and Maggie may be its most damning indictment of systems of power. During their chat, we learn Hank has a cushy job working as a spin doctor for a Democrat, likely making far more than he did at Yale. Nobody really loses. People are pitted against one another in the quest for the truth and justice. But in the end, the machine that keeps the powerful in power continues chugging along, and those who have been wronged have little recourse. Hank claimed his life was ruined, but it’s obvious he’s doing just fine. Alma fell to rock bottom and was picked back up and placed far higher than she’d been before. Maggie seems to be doing much better, but she’ll never get what she feels is right. She gave up on that years ago.
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