The Mountain

Fair enough that this film is a vehicle for Jeff Goldblum, and a character loosely based on the infamous neurosurgeon who invented the transorbital lobotomy ought to give him plenty to work with. In those days, there were no meds yet, to control patient behavior, and lobotomies were a response to that urgent need. The real-life Dr. Freeman was obsessed with the need for social conformity, and thought that his compliant, lobotomized patients were an improvement on disorderly nature. So, how could Goldblum turn him into someone so bland? His Dr. Fiennes has no insight into his own status as monster. He seems to be a latter-day Don Quixote, meaning well, riding the roads with his '52 Plymouth (instead of a horse named Rocinante) with his faithful Polaroid-Land-Camera carrying sidekick, Andy (instead of Sancho) by his side. Maybe its a statement about the banality of evil. It does not work for me.

At the end of this movie you will feel just just like its ending - cold and unfeeling.

If you want to know what life looks like through a lobotomized person - watch this movie!

That's my best I can write about The Mountain.

Rick Alverson is one of the most overlooked and inventive directors of our time. It's easy to understand why people might not like his films but I'm glued to the screen for every second when I watch one. My god, how beautiful and haunting.

Art should make you uncomfortable and make you think and that's what this film does. This movie is like an art installation that you don't want to watch but feel like you should. It's unsettling, slow, stark and sad but memorable. Not a light or easy watch. You've been warned.

It seemed like this movie was all the celluloid that was on the cutting room floor, neatly assembled because it would have been a waste to simply throw them away.

The photography is delicate and exquisite, and Jeff Goldblum is as magnetic and as quirky as always. But it's not enough, not nearly enough, to carry the movie.