"The student is Maggie Resnick, played by the dependably charismatic Ayo Edebiri. She's a struggling doctoral candidate in the philosophy department at Yale, and she puts her request to Alma Imhoff, brought to life by a striking Julia Roberts, over dinner. The pair are sitting in Alma's elegant apartment, a tasteful space warmed by rich wood paneling, amber light sources, and distinctive sconces."
"There is some ambiguity about its meaning. Is Maggie asking Alma to descend from her perch on the mountain of hypotheticals? Does she want to dissolve the boundary between teacher and pupil? Or does she simply want to be seen as a person by a woman whom she's desperate to be like? Whatever it suggests, the question touches a nerve and prompts the viewer to wonder whether it has always existed between the two."
After the Hunt centers on Alma Imhoff, a celebrated Yale philosophy professor, and Maggie Resnick, a struggling doctoral candidate who longs for connection. A tense dinner scene crystallizes their dynamic when Maggie asks, "Can we just stop being smart for, like, one fucking second?" Power, admiration, and social distance infuse their interactions across parties, seminars and intimate encounters. A sexual-assault allegation upends the campus, forcing questions about authority, perception and solidarity. The film portrays institutional privilege, the performative nature of intellect, racial and gendered identity, and the difficulty survivors face when public opinion and prestige collide.
Read at The Nation
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]