Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 10:03 am
Opinion

Rehabilitating refugees, reconstructing Bangladesh

Bangladesh was born with virtually nothing in its coffers. The nine-month war of liberation caused not only human deaths but also massive destruction of all but a few of its

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Promise of a Bright Future

Today is March 1, a sacred day for remembering the historic events of 1971. On this day, Pakistan President Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan regrettably postponed the National Assembly session. Awami

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LDC Graduation: A Day to Rejoice

After about fifty years of independence, Bangladesh is successfully going to be graduated from the status of ‘Least Developed Country’ to a developing country. On Friday night, the United Nations

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Silence of Emptiness

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in January of 2020, presumably in China, the world has gone through a very unusual phase in its known history. To approximately 7.8 billion people

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Save indigenous languages

The history of human language is the history of rise and fall. In around 8000 BC, 20,000 languages were in existence on this planet. But currently the number has been

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Timely vaccination: Another success of Sheikh Hasina

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has become a role model among the world leadership by ensuring Covid-19 vaccine for her countrymen when many countries are yet to get the doses for

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Ekushey and Int’l Mother Language Day

Mother language is not a mere mode of communication, but an expression of life, foremost vehicle of culture and nationalistic identity beyond geographical isolation and political boundary. Int’l Mother Language

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Language Movement – a Turning Point in Our History

21st February will be observed throughout the world as the International Mother Language Day. In 1999 UNESCO recognized the day as an International Mother Language Day. The general consensus is

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Myanmar’s Military Coup and Rohingya Repatriation

On the first day of this month, through a coup d’état, Myanmar’s military has taken over the control of the country, ousting the democratically elected government led by Aung San

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Moving beyond Paris, India Steps up Its Climate Ambitions

Five years after the Paris Agreement, India is among the few developing countries that are not only meeting their “green” targets but are aspiring to more ambitious climate goals. At

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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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