Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. But what if my name is made mud? Mud sticks like faecal matter.
The marvelous Mads Mikkelsen plays a primary school teacher who is so good- empathetic, playful, and caring, – that one of his pupils, a little girl called Klara develops a crush, which he gently cautions her against, and thus scorned, claims he has acted inappropriately.
Caught up in the paranoia of pedophilia, this exemplary educator becomes a pariah, even though the allegations cannot be substantiated by the police.
This is the horror of hysteria; where reputation is ripped, physical assault rendered, rule of law sullied.
Thomas Vinterberg has made an extraordinary motion picture about primal identity theft, a horror movie where the monstrous are mere mortals.
One is instantly reminded of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, where the darkness of innocence engulfs a community, eclipses reason, and eschews common decency.
Proof doesn’t matter, allegation and accusation is enough to ostracise, guilty till proven otherwise, and even when vindicated, vilified.
The pursuit of predatory perpetrators should be paramount in a just society, but just as important is to protect a person’s reputation and his right to refutation. In uncovering an epidemic of paedophilia, a certain paranoia has turned legitimate pursuit into a witch hunt, a Pandora’s Box open to vexatious children, where the innocent are guilty, even when exonerated, and eternally tainted.
Enthralling and appalling, this gritty, powerful film has a resounding repercussion on the fragility of reputation and our propensity to accentuate the negative. The slander by the innocents is just as terrifying as the silence of the lambs.
