“The more we kill, the more alive we feel,” insists one of the bloodthirsty protagonists in Hunters on a White Field, a classy Nordic thriller with lightly supernatural elements and a spiky message about the dark side of machismo. Adapted and updated from a 1986 novel by Swedish author Mats Wägeus, it marks the feature debut of Stockholm-born writer-director Sarah Gyllenstierna, a long-time industry veteran who previously worked as an assistant to Spike Lee and others in the Nineties. Following its domestic release in April under the blunter title Jakt, which simply means “Hunting”, this superior exercise in genre-adjacent art-house cinema enjoyed its international debut in Tribeca earlier this month. It makes its wider European premiere this coming week at the second edition of Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta.
The setting is contemporary Sweden, but Hunters on a White Field also has a more timeless fairy-tale feel. It takes place in a remote backwoods cabin where three friends gather for a long weekend of male bonding, soul-searching, rifle-shooting and competitive deer-stalking. The host is Henryk (Jens Hultén), a loose-cannon divorcee whose boozy bonhomie is lightly sprinkled with bitter misogyny and casual racism. He is joined by long-time friend Greger (Magnus Krepper) and his younger co-worker Alex (Ardalan Esmaili), a hunting novice who is clearly out of his depth but anxious to keep up with his two alpha-male companions.
For the older pair, bloodsport has a potent, ritualistic, almost mystical significance. “Through hunting we merge with the dawn of civilisation,” claims Henryk, who collects prehistoric flint weapons, even using them in a mock-duel with Alex that escalates into real bloodshed. Greger, meanwhile, finds an erotic thrill from stalking and killing deer, cradling his prey in his arms as the life drained from them. “We entered into something together,” he sighs wistfully. “That’s how I want to die.”
If Hunters on a White Field was played as realistic drama, Alex would very soon realise he is on vacation with a pair of trigger-happy sociopaths and escape back to the city before his trip descends into Deliverance (1972). But this story takes place more in a heightened twilight zone where acerbic critique of red-meat machismo shades into psychological horror and allegorical fable. The uneasy power dynamic between the three men plays out not just in their competitive desire to slaughter animals for sport, but also in the more everyday psychic battleground of workplace politics, generational tension, and hints of racism disguised as locker-room banter, all elements which Gyllenstierna adds to the original novel.
Right from its opening credits, Hunters on a White Field alludes to malign forces lurking in the woods. Cinematographer Josua Enblom sets up a strikingly visceral aesthetic, with recurring close-ups of pulse-throbbing human flesh, blood bubbling through freshly skinned fur, a deer’s heart being sliced in two, a bizarre worm-like creature that Alex vomits onto his bedroom floor, and other icky sights. But while she seems poised to go full body-horror at any moment, Gyllenstierna mostly avoids the familiar plot mechanics that define genre cinema, staying closer to the more ambivalent terrain of art-house realism. Strong performances by the three leads, who slowly shake off the simplistic victim/villain roles they appear to be assigned in the first act, are another elevating factor.
Eessentially a compact three-handed chamber drama, Hunters on a White Field takes a little too long to deliver on its creepy early promise. The main twist only arrives deep into the narrative, when Mother Nature plays an eerie trick on our three bloodthirsty anti-heroes, forcing them to find a new outlet for their hunting addiction. A female film-maker’s take on a world without women, there is a fairly routine critique of toxic masculinity at play here, but also more exotically weird undercurrents, with hints of inter-species warfare and pagan folk-horror underlined by Ola Fløttum’s sinister rustic score. Giving an old book a timely contemporary remix, with mostly excellent results, Gyllenstierna has made a gripping and intriguing debut.
Director, screenwriter: Sarah Gyllenstierna
Cast: Ardalan Esmaili, Magnus Krepper, Jens Hultén
Cinematographer: Josua Enblom
Editing: Philip Bergström
Music: Ola Fløttum
Producers: Maria L. Guerpillon, Charlotte Most
Production companies: MostAlice Film (Sweden), Film i Väst (Sweden)
World sales: LevelK
Venue: Mediterrane Film Festival, Malta (out of competition)
In Swedish
97 minutes
