Tea at Trianon: After the Hunt (2025)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

After the Hunt (2025)

Perspective changes everything in the new trailer for Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt - The AU Review

I finally was able to see After the Hunt and am not surprised that it received such poor reviews. Not that there is anything wrong with the quality of the film. Rather the film displays the destructive Wokeness present on our college campuses, and so has incurred the censure of the Leftist press. From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Hollywood has finally adapted my book to the big screen. Oh, they changed the title, and I’m not getting any credit. But trust me, After the Hunt, the new film starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, is very much the story I tell in my 2022 book The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.
Before going any further, let me say that I am going to be reviewing key plot points in After the Hunt and giving away major spoilers and the conclusion. If you plan on seeing the movie, you’ve been warned.
After the Hunt is about how false #MeToo accusations can create a mob atmosphere and destroy lives, even driving people to suicide. It’s particularly bad if the setting is academia, where hyper-sensitive prevails even as students and faculty tremor to ruin anyone who doesn’t parrot leftist wokespeak.
After the Hunt stars Julia Roberts as Alma, a Yale philosophy professor who is about to get tenure. She is married to a psychotherapist, Frederik, and is close friends with Hank (Andrew Garfield). Alma’s best student is Maggie (Ayo Edebiri). One night, Maggie and Hank leave a cocktail party together. The next day, Maggie tells Alma that Hank sexually assaulted her. Hank replies that Maggie fabricated the story after he confronted her about plagiarism. This conflict creates hysteria on campus, with all of the characters in danger of losing their careers and their sanity.
I know what you’re thinking. A major Hollywood movie starring Julia Roberts and about #MeToo is not going to come down on the side of men, socially, when the character making the accusation is a minority and a lesbian. And yet - hang on - that’s exactly what happens. Star student and protege Maggie is in fact a plagiarist. Her professors pretend to think she’s brilliant because she’s the daughter of big donors and, as Michelle Goldberg put it in the New York Times, “presumably, because she’s Black and queer.” “You are the worst kind of mediocre student,” Alma tells Maggie. “With every availability to succeed but no talent or desire to do so, yet so many resources, so much of other people’s time is wasted on you.” This dialogue actually made it into a Hollywood movie starring Julia Roberts. (Read more.)