Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 10:29 am
Opinion

Tribal left’s mirror image of tribal right

Truly liberating oneself from propaganda and transcending the identities that have been largely manufactured is the riskiest of ventures, writes Jonathan Cook OF COURSE, I expect a backlash every time I

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Need Real People to establish Human Rights

Generally, the protection, establishment and exercise of all rights of ‘human’ is considered as ‘human rights’. Human rights are the fundamental rights of human being and issues related to freedom,

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Why the “Summit for Democracy” is bad for democracy and the world

Though announced with great fanfare, the US Summit for Democracy is clouded by concerns that it undermines democracy and creates fault lines that will leave the world worse off. US

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Joint Article by Chinese and Russian Ambassadors: Respecting People’s Democratic Rights

he upcoming American-led online Summit for Democracy will stoke ideological confrontation. Faced with an array of global challenges, countries urgently need to strengthen coordination and cooperation for common progress. The

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Rewriting history in Northern Ireland

The Boris Johnson government, while censoring files, wants to commission an ‘official history’ of the troubles, writes Anne Cadwallader JAWS have dropped across Ireland at the British government’s intention to commission

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CPC’s Official Transcript of Its Century-long Test

History shapes politics. The Diplomat magazine once even put it this way, “in China, history is a religion”, which may not accurate, whereas it is true that  Chinese civilization is

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Steps university authorities can follow in the residential halls after reopening

Covid-19 pandemic is an unpredictable situation which has disrupted our whole education system. University students lost their regular pace of study, especially public university students who are caught in session

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Accelerating digital finance for inclusive development

We have learned by force during the Corona crisis that there is no substitute for inclusive financing to keep the real economy strong. Inclusive financing refers to making money available

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Nepal Offers a Lifetime Experience, That’s Not Enough Once

Global tourism industry is one of the largest industry in the world.  It incorporates many industries, including lodging, transport, attractions, travel companies, and more. In its broadest sense, tourism means

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Gender Violence and Sensitivity

To the general people, ‘gender violence’ means some types of ‘torture’ of patriarchal society towards women. This was almost the case in the eighties, but later on, although the concept

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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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