As the twentieth century began, the number of patients admitted to mental health institutions began to skyrocket. The health world’s knowledge of mental illness was only beginning to grow, and methods of effective treatment were almost nonexistent. Between the 1930's and 1950's the method of psychosurgery that severed connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex yielded results and became widely known as the lobotomy.
In Rick Alverson’s transcendental masterpiece The Mountain, Tye Sheridan plays a young man who joins a surgeon as he travels from town to town along America’s west coast, demonstrating the positive effects of lobotomizing mental health patients. Dr. Wallace Fiennes as portrayed by Jeff Goldblum is a character who so easily could fall into the stereotype of the mad scientist. Instead he’s a tragic figure- a man who can’t even see how quickly he’s falling behind the times.
Sheridan plays Andy, a confused and lonesome young man who languishes under his domineering father’s strict watch until his father drops dead. Andy finds himself lost in his newfound freedom and he becomes an easy target for Fiennes’ charms. Here, long before the complicated nature of The Mountain has revealed itself, Alverson had already sold me on the idea that I was in the midst of a masterpiece.
The filmmaking in these early scenes is so refined and so controlled that it achieves formalist perfection. This story is essentially one of self-discovery but his methods of achieving this come from a place of such mystery that it begins to feel almost mean spirited by the time we are invited to watch Fiennes perform one of his procedures.
The Mountain is not a film that will easily find its audience. Indeed, the reviews out of Sundance and the Venice Film Festival have been incredibly divisive. The formal structure and slow pace are more than enough to shut people out of the emotional and confounding world Alverson has created, but the mysteries and beauty he has packed into The Mountain will reward patient viewers for years.
Riley Shingler is a film critic and writer who can be found on Letterboxd and at shinglerfilms.com
