The Mountain: une odysée américaine

I believe the film is an incredible piece. It is, on the surface about a young man who's recently lost his father who goes onto follow a famous lobotomist who had treated his late mother by working as the lobotomoist's photographer.

This film is a walk through hell and it is beautiful.

I'd say this film isn't for everyone, but I hate that because I believe this film should be for everyone. I really like, admire, and respect films like this one. It is slow moving and existential and it completely and totally builds the atmosphere of desperation.

It certainly speaks on the banality of evil and all of our places in it, how we walk alongside next to evil and moral corruption.

The performances are great, Ty Sheridan really shows his talent here. Jeff Goldblum ads an importance to the film.

The end does get a little winding, it could perhaps have been edited a bit better in the last 1/4 of the film. There's two long monologues by an older actor that take the film to some other places than where it was before.

This is similar to films by Michael Haneke and other European existential filmmakers. If you're into that, this film is certainly for you.

It has very touching moments (Like Sheridan's character having a brief physical connection with a patient in her hospital room earlier in the film. It is a brief moment but is touchs your heart so). The film also excels in portraying very alienating moments.

It's truly a special piece and it should be seen but you do need to know what kind of film you will see. It is abstract and it holds no prisoners but it is a hugely important piece.

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.

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.

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.

Of course we could spend countless hours discussing the theme subject, but it is to The Mountain's credit that instead of dumping information and opinions on us it simply daunts with actions and situations. It is more of a mood than a film... A tone poem -harrowing and pristine. Sheridan & Goldblum is perfectly cast.