The Mountain

Greetings again from the darkness. It's happened before and it'll likely happen a few more times. A movie ends and I'm at a loss as to how to explain it. What should I tell potential viewers? Is it even possible to "spoil" a movie that is so purposefully downbeat - one that relishes its inability to be analyzed by conventional methods? Filmmaker Rick Alverson has previously knocked us off-kilter with THE COMEDY (2012) and ENTERTAINMENT (2015), and this time seems intent on ensuring our misery.

Tye Sheridan (MUD, 2012) stars as Andy, a functionally catatonic, sexually-confused Zamboni driver at the local ice rink where his dad Frederick (a quite grumpy Udo Kier) trains figure skaters. When dad drops dead on the ice, an aimless Andy is taken under the wing of an enigmatic Dr. Wallace "Wally" Fiennes (a toned-down Jeff Goldblum). Wally previously treated Andy's mother, which isn't really a good thing since he specializes in lobotomies and electric shock therapy. Andy hits the road with the doctor, carrying his equipment and taking before and after photos with the Polaroid Land Camera. Oh yeah, the setting is 1950's Pacific Northwest.

Goldblum's character is based on a real life doctor, and he runs up against an industry that is transitioning to drug treatments, leaving Wally searching for patients. He clearly believes in his treatments, and that leads to Jack, an eccentric whose daughter Susan (Hannah Gross, "Mindhunter") is in need of Wally's treatment. Jack is played by French acting veteran Denis Lavant, and his tirades and wild speeches blend French and English to the point that we lose the point - if there ever was one.

Goldblum's doctor enjoys a drink and the company of women while on the road, and Sheridan's Andy is so ultra-quiet he often becomes nearly invisible in social settings. If there is a narrative foundation to the film, I do wish Andy's Ouija board device had spelled it out for me. Instead, the haunting music contrasted with the use of "Home on the Range" left me understanding that the few words spoken carry little meaning, and we are meant to be disrupted by feelings. My hopeless feeling mostly left me asking "why?", and a bizarre post film Q&A with co-writer Dustin Guy Defa added little context. Actually, that was likely the perfect ending to this film.

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.

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.

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.

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.