L'hôtel de l'alpiniste mort

I basically hate sci-fi, but I was still fascinated by the design of lighting and shadows in this film. The high-key, high-contrast exterior of the snowy mountains acts obviously opposite to the low-key, low-contrast interior of the hotel. The lighting of the interior scenes can be described as "dazzling," not dazzling brightness, but dazzling colour and weirdness. The director seemed to deliberately avoid any establishing shots; thus, the audience would still be confused about the internal structure of the hotel until the end of the film.

There are the typical blinds of film noir, but they don't cast the classic shadow of the blinds onto the characters, despite the shadows from other frames and obstacles being abundant in this film. Also, there is a noir-style narration of the protagonist throughout the film. The narration begins in the past tense of memories, while slowly turning into the immersive present tense. After arriving at the hotel, the protagonist enters his room for the first time, and there are several typical splitting reflections of him in mirrors, which craftily foreshadow that he would be the one who will eventually encounter a dilemma, morally.

The film ends with the protagonist questioning himself against the fourth wall - should individuals within the institution and authorities carry out duties diligently, or should they hold their sympathy high for the objects?

The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is constructed like a classic murder mystery. You take an odd group of characters, confine them together in a remote location, one of them shows up dead, and then a detective must unravel what happened. I quite like the way it is presented visually. Somehow they manage to make this hotel feel large and spacious in one scene and then confined and claustrophobic in another. Not to mention the overall strange and other-worldly look of the place. They also did a great job of making it seem like there was someone watching our protagonist, around every single corner. There are a number of minutes where The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is a tad slow, and I felt like the story wasn't progressing. However, I was always drawn back into the movie, because I was waiting to discover the identity of the murderer. Sadly, I think the ending was the worst part for me. It takes a turn that simply didn't work and left me scratching my head. I feel like the intent was to make a bit of social commentary with that ending, but it didn't work effectively based on how the film was set up. I wanted a more grounded and logical conclusion. I doubt I'll be seeking The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel for a second viewing, but it was at least intriguing enough to keep me engaged throughout its runtime.

'Dead Mountaineer's Hotel' still remains basically only Estonian science fiction film in the truest sense. Police inspector arrives into remote mountain hotel to investigate anonymous tip where he discovers that it was false alarm. After the avalanche cuts the hotel, and all it's inhabitants from the outer world, the strange things start to occur. Doppelgangers, terrorists, aliens, androids, and flirtatious sultry women.

Wonderful cinematography of snowy mountains under bright sun against dark interior of the hotel that leaves feeling that it's as cold inside the hotel as it is outside, and intensifies the claustrophobic atmosphere of the hotel. Inspector Glebsky grows more and more desperate and paranoid when he tries to solve the crimes only relying on his common sense, logic and skepticism that lead to unfortunate tragic events leaving audience falter who was the real villain. The name of the hotel 'Dead Mountaineer' is explained briefly (and quite satisfactory), but it also leaves nice eerie mystery floating around - who was that enigmatic 'dead mountaineer' whose dog still sleeps under his bleak portrait hanging on the wall. Sven Grünberg's fantastic synthesizer score adds another layer of mystery and anticipation. The song 'Ball' has a lyrics, but they don't make sense because it's only gibberish - and when we see aliens dance to this song hypnotically it's almost like they understand it (although real reason why the song didn't had any proper words was the Soviet regulation of the time demanding the lyrics of the song to be translated into Russian when released in Russia - Grünberg didn't like the idea of translating his lyrics so he invented the gibberish for the song.).

I like quite a lot the book which movie is based on, one of Strugatski's best (it's a bit too short tho). Strugatski's wrote also movie script, but it's much weaker. Some details are changed, some left out, and the changes just don't make much sense. Any way, even if I don't like movie much, most of the cast is good, and helps visualizing characters when reading the book. Maybe except Mrs. Moses... and du Barnstocre who simply isn't in movie. Glebsky also looks a bit fake at times, partly maybe because of dubbed voice. Also, was it that hard to make something that looks like alien robot power source, so they could actually show it? That and some other scenes look quite cheap...

Second viewing. An important sci-fi film written by the authors of Tarkovsky's "Stalker" with Juri Jarvet, who starred in Tarkovsky's "Solaris" soon after his superb performance in Kozintsev's "King Lear." But in this film, it is actor Uldis Pucitis who is most impressive as the Police inspector. Important film for fans of Jarvet, the Strugatsky brothers' writings and sci-fi films