Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 09:13 am
Opinion

Time to go on the offensive

THE World Trade Organisation held its 12th Ministerial Meeting in Geneva from June 12 to 15. Little if anything was expected from the meeting except the usual exchanges of conflicting

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Workers’ summit exposes cracks in imperial façade

VALENTÍN, the man next to us in line as we made our way across the international border, asked what we had been doing in Tijuana. We had been at the

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An argument for deheroising democracies

THIS study explains that the notion of a cult hero is incompatible with democracy as a form of government. Heroes surface in all forms of government and thrive in empires,

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Lanka strays far from interim govt promise

Last time the attackers set only the politicians’ houses on fire. Next time they would target affluent and rich families too. They will attack everyone using luxury vehicles and those

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Silence of Israeli apartheid

WITHIN the cacophony of the Middle East and war in Ukraine, Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had drifted into the shadows. But the assassination of Al

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Land ports in connectivity, trade, growth

THE Bangladesh Land port Authority was set up in 2001 with the enactment of the Bangladesh Land Port Act 2001 by the parliament. So, the authorities,  as an organisation, are

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Empire’s fleeting leadership in its yard

THE just concluded Summit of the Americas is nothing but a show of the empire’s fleeting leadership in a region that the empire considers as its backyard. Joe Biden, the

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Why do Taliban want to move Afghan capital?

AS EVIDENCED by information coming from Afghanistan, the situation and socio-economic position in the country is deteriorating. Every second Afghan resident is now suffering from hunger, and, in the near

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In the middle of the cinema sea

THE 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival was held at a time when the people of this world had learned to live in a new normal after the Covid

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Can the royal family cling on much longer?

THE jubilee comes at a great time for Boris Johnson. What better way to get past partygate than with a massive party? No one makes a tougher human shield for

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The megastar plays a philosophy professor shaken by a student’s sexual assault allegation against a colleague in Luca Guadagnino’s new film – and she’s easily the best thing about it. Julia Roberts doesn’t make many films these days. She was in Leave the World Behind in 2023; in 2022, there was her tropical romantic comedy with George Clooney, Ticket to Paradise; and then we have to jump all the way back to 2018 for her previous turn in Ben Is Back. But you can see why she chose to star in After the Hunt, a contentious campus drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers). Roberts is on screen for almost every one of its 139 minutes, and she is the monumental centre around which its chaos and controversy swirl. It’s the kind of heavyweight role that gets awards nominations if it goes to the right person – and Roberts is definitely the right person. Her character is Alma, a philosophy professor at Yale University. Striding regally around its leafy quadrangles in a chic white suit that matches her blonde hair, this combatively intelligent alpha female is adored by everyone who knows her. Her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is resigned to the fact that he loves her more than she loves him, and is willing to make whimsical jokes about the imbalance; Hank (Andrew Garfield), a would-be rebellious friend and colleague, is even more flirtatious with her than he is with everyone else; and her favourite PhD student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), worships her – which could explain why she is Alma’s favourite PhD student. It seems as if the status quo might soon be upset, though, as either Alma or Hank – or perhaps both – is expected to be granted permanent tenure. But then something far more drastic happens. The day after a boozy party in Alma and Frederik’s book-lined flat, Maggie tells Alma that Hank walked her home and then “crossed a line”. Alma is sympathetic – but only up to a point. There is no evidence of assault, so she isn’t sure whether to trust the word of a new friend over an old one, especially at such a critical moment in her career. And maybe, her thinking goes, lines were crossed at the party anyway, considering that teachers and students were hugging each other while knocking back expensive wine. “Roberts’ Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful” It’s refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be. Guadagnino keeps showing off his quirky camera angles and intrusive music choices. The screenplay, by Nora Garrett, squeezes too much philosophical jargon into the dialogue, and too many tangential scenes and subplots into the structure. You might think that the alleged assault would be a big enough deal for any film, but Alma is given mysterious abdominal pains and guilty secrets, and Maggie is overloaded with significance as a queer, black, plagiarism-prone young woman with a non-binary partner and rich parents who are major donors to the university. In theory, viewers of After the Hunt should leave the cinema arguing about its subject matter. In practice, they’re more likely to be asking each other what was going on and what it meant. It’s all a bit much, basically. Garfield, miscast as a denim-clad dude who is, it is implied, roughly the same age as Roberts’ character, shouts and swears and waves his arms with a quantity-over-quality approach to acting. Stuhlbarg’s flouncing and sing-song delivery are presumably meant to be irritating, but perhaps not as irritating as they actually are. At the heart of it all, though, Roberts is a different matter. She understands that less can be more. Her Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful and her pain all the more intense. Her muttering is scarier than Garfield’s yelling, and when she glares at someone, they stay glared at. It’s an expertly controlled performance which demonstrates why Roberts has been a Hollywood icon for so long, and why she could well be in line for her second Oscar, 25 years after Erin Brockovich. After the Hunt would have been better if everyone else involved had had some of that control, too.

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