Netflix streaming tip: Daniel Nettheim's THE HUNTER--as close to tragedy as movies get

In high definition -- which is how we viewed it via Netflix streaming -- THE HUNTER*  is a particularly beautiful film. What makes it so special, however, is its tragic view of the world in which we currently live. Set in the mountains of Tasmania, the large island off the southeast of Australia, the movie never screams negativity.

Quiet and relatively placid, save for a couple of altercations and one very suspenseful scene, this award-winner in its home country moves along with a odd deliberation provided by its writers (Alice Addison and Wayne Fimeri, from the novel by Julia Leigh) and its director (Daniel Nettheim, shown below, of mostly Aussie TV). Yet it is never for a moment boring. In fact it simply gets better, tighter and more to the point as it moves slowly forward.

Willem Dafoe, above, in one of his best roles (that covers a lot of good territory) plays Martin, some sort of mercenary, in this case one who can track and trap or maybe kill an animal -- the Tasmanian Tiger, thought to be extinct. He's been hired by a large corporation in the biotech industry with an agenda that only slowly becomes clear.

Martin takes up a rather shaky residence with a mother (Frances O'Connor, above, center) and her two children (dad's gone missing in those mountains some time back, and mom is not a little depressed), but this hunter soon warms to them and they to him. Green activists, meanwhile, are trying to shut down logging on the mountain, and the loggers are growing increasingly angry.

Friend of the family, Jack (played by Sam Neill, above), has designs on mom and is clearly annoyed at Martin's intrusion; he may very well have another agenda, as well. This meaty stew is stirred slowly and not at all melodramatically. Even when events occur that would be fodder for Hollywood's big-budget violence-and-explosions factory, these are handled with a smart restraint that keeps us focused on the real issue.

When that issue comes to the fore at the climax, so well has its foundation been laid that the finale hits like a ton of bricks. For anyone who cares about the environment, the saving of endangered species, and the question of how to deal with unchecked corporate power, the movie has much to say, little of it promising. This is why I feel it comes about as close to real tragedy as any film I've seen in a long while.

That is also why the denouement is a tad disappointing. The movie-makers or maybe the producers, I suppose, were attempting to offer us a little uplift. At this point, however, uplift is not particularly believable, given what we've seen and know. Slight spoiler ahead: Better to have left the boy be, and Martin to his fate. The Hunter is available now on DVD and Blu-ray, is streamable and probably available as well via VOD.

*Not to be confused with the movie of the same name that opened at the beginning of 2012.

From Iran, Rafi Pitts' THE HUNTER proves DIY filmmaking for both director & audience

The two movies are from Iran, but you could hardly ask for more different ones than last week's A Separation and this week's THE HUNTER. The first withholds a couple of important things along the way that a viewer might have preferred to know, but the second? Whew. It withholds just about the whole shebang. The film's director, writer and star (who appears in nearly every scene), Rafi Pitts, shown in all the photos below, is on record (in the film's press kit) stating that "keeping things open to interpretation is an important element of my film-making" and further, "I respect the audience by allowing them the choice to think as they would like" and further (on why his main character, Ali, just released from prison, was there in the first place), "Who a person is will decide why he or she thinks Ali was in prison." This, I suggest, makes for a very odd sort of Do-It-Yourself film-making on both sides of the camera.

So, go into The Hunter with rather lower expectations than you would generally place in a movie that you imagine will "fill in the blanks," and you may have a better experience than did I in figuring out, not just what is happening and why, but why we should give a damn about the main character, whose behavior goes from merely not-very-communicative to stoic to utterly clammed-up and finally to anti-social in the extreme. Mr. Pitts, above and below, has a certain charisma and some acting ability, but here he relies too heavily on our willingness to care. (Notice the hugely varied expressions on his face in the shots above and below...)

Granted, life in present-day Iran is no picnic (the picnic's nearly over here, too), but as a filmmaker, Pitts' pacing has a sameness that eventually drags things down. He seems determined to show us a grey, colorless, stark city and grey, colorless, stark lives -- and he succeeds all too well.  (His outdoor shots of nature in all her glory are pretty grey, too.)

Early on, we get some family time, as Ali... hmmm, "cavorts" is far too strong a word, so let's say walks and/or drives with his wife (Mitra Hajjar) and daughter (newcomer Saba Yaghoobi), both shown above, through a car wash and then an amusement park. Overall, there is very little dialog in the film but a lot of automobile use. Neither of these is conducive to learning much about our hero. And when, some time into things, the event happens that changes all, this simply drives our guy further into isolation -- from his surroundings and from us.

The moral, I suppose, is that in a very repressive society, those acts of repression by the state -- as well as those of supposed liberation by the individual -- have as many unintended consequences as they do the intended variety. The Hunter (92 minutes, from Olive Films) -- not an uninteresting movie, but a very slow and circumspect one -- opens this Wednesday, January 4, in New York City at the IFC Center for a one-week run.