After the Hunt
by Katie Luchtenburg
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I, unlike Ponyboy, had more than two things on my mind. My phone was broken, the screen unresponsive, and I had dropped it off with Carlos at the iFixit and vape store at the end of my street before venturing out to South Bank. I am ashamed to admit I felt exposed without it, and I spent the first few minutes after the movie wondering, “How the hell do I get home?”
On the way to the theatre, after spending the previous two days and that morning completely phoneless, I felt a bit twitchy. I had not noticed before how the first thing I do each morning is, almost always, look at my phone. The routine varies, but it usually involves turning off my four snoozed alarms, then spending an unreasonable amount of time on social media before dragging myself to whatever event I had enthusiastically planned but now dreaded.
That day, I could do none of those things. I was seeing Luca Guadagnino’s new film After the Hunt at the Royal Festival Hall and had half-heartedly promised myself that, during the film festival, I would try a dopamine detox. I suppose the universe agreed with me and turned off my phone. I went out with a printed ticket, a tiny pretentious-looking notebook, and my copy of The Grapes of Wrath (still unread and now gathering dust on my bookshelf). On the Tube, while waiting and in transit, I could not help but notice that everyone was on their phones, many with earbuds in. Usually, this observation is aimed at my generation, but it was truly everyone: old people, young people, middle-aged people.
I felt an odd mix of elevated self-importance for being unable to isolate myself through a personal device, and a strange nakedness at having to simply sit in transit. To figure out directions. To not know what time it was.
And yet, there was also ease. I noticed that I wanted to pay attention more, and the more I paid attention, the lighter I felt. I struggle with the idea of owing people myself: my time, my attention, my response. There is guilt in not replying fast enough, a low hum of anxiety when receiving phone calls or texts. There is also avoidance—of feelings, thoughts, boredom, awkward silences with strangers in elevators or queues. It feels wrong, somehow, to be fully present. I feel the need to apologize for it, to hide, to isolate. Still, it felt nice to face the world again.
When I arrived at the Royal Festival Hall and finally sat in a too-close seat that I felt beyond lucky to have, I was overcome by the vastness of the theatre. The people around me were chatting excitedly. The rows of seats stretched endlessly behind me to accommodate 2,000 others. The warm red hues and overhead lights reminded me of stars, of plays, of ritual.
Film, though 137 years old, has always felt like a more contemporary, relaxed art form. Having grown up in the somewhat pretentious world of theatre and vocal arts, I have grown used to casual moviegoing experiences in chains like AMC. Though the act of scanning a ticket and finding your seat can feel ritualistic, I had not truly reflected on it before. But in that elaborate hall, I nearly cried.
It is important to engage with storytelling as much as possible. I am an advocate for fiction; I have often cited studies connecting reading fiction to increased empathy. I love the perspectives offered to me, the thoughts I would never otherwise explore, the unconscious biases that shape our perception of art and only surface when we discuss it. I fucking love movies.
After the Hunt is difficult to summarize, review, or even form a solid opinion on. In typical Guadagnino fashion, the soundscape, score, and musical influences move the entire piece. There were moments, perhaps intentionally, when dense philosophical dialogue competed with the music to be heard. I do not think he cares if we, as an audience, catch every word. His goal seems to be to create an atmosphere, to invite us into the hyper-specific world of Yale’s Ph.D. philosophy department.
At the heart of the film, for me, lies the concept of virtue ethics. A line early in the film still echoes in my mind: something like, “People pretend they believe in these values and morals performatively.” Neither the camera nor the director seems to take a stance; instead, they ask the viewer to. Each time I formed an opinion about a character, new information complicated it.
The film reminded me of Tár, another polarizing film once summarized on Letterboxd as “Women can be predators, too!” I am not sure that is what either director intends. After the Hunt follows Julia Roberts’ character, a wealthy, successful, middle-aged philosophy professor at Yale. The story explores moral dilemmas, past traumas, assault, and the challenge of applying virtue ethics to real life. It raises questions about performative virtue signaling, generational divides, and how our past experiences shape our moral compass.
In an opinion piece about performative virtue signaling in higher education, Forrest Romm and Kevin Waldman ask, “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”[1] A professor at Sarah Lawrence[2] writes similarly:
“They perform one identity on social media while confessing another in my office hours… At Sarah Lawrence College, my deeply progressive campus that has become shorthand for dangerous ideological conformity, students have learned that survival means splitting themselves in two: a public progressive persona that peddles virtue signaling, and a private, questioning self.
This is not peer pressure. It is identity regulation at scale, and we have institutionalized it.
The economist Timur Kuran calls this ‘preference falsification’—when people misrepresent their beliefs under social pressure, creating an illusion of consensus far more brittle than it appears. Universities justify this culture as creating safe spaces. But as Romm and Waldman point out, ‘inclusion that demands dishonesty is not ensuring psychological safety—it is sanctioning self-abandonment.’”
I am being purposefully vague to avoid spoilers, and for that, I am sorry. I am not quite sure what else to say, except that I am glad art exists. I am grateful for those few days without a phone, for being forced to sit in the world, perhaps even a bit performatively. And I am grateful to have lingered with the film afterward, without immediately checking Letterboxd or Reddit or Google to see what others thought.
I think I would recommend seeing After the Hunt.
[1] Forest Romm, “Performative Virtue-Signaling Has Become a Threat to Higher Ed,” The Hill, August 12, 2025, https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5446702-performative-virtue-signaling-has-become-a-threat-to-higher-ed/.
[2] Samuel J. Abrams, “The Price We Pay for Performative Progressivism in Higher Education,” American Enterprise Institute - AEI, August 19, 2025, https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-price-we-pay-for-performative-progressivism-in-higher-education/.
