THE MOUNTAIN (2018) – Review

Time to take a detour from the big noisy summer blockbusters and take a trip with an actual person. Well, sort of, since the main character in this film has a different name than the actual famous (or in some circles infamous) medical inventor. But it’s really more of a biography told from an unknown character’s perspective. It’s somewhat like this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner THE GREEN BOOK. The more renown subject there was celebrated classical pianist Dr. Donald Shirley, but we get to learn about him via the more prominent (leading role) of his driver Tony “Lip” Vallelonga. Now they used the actual names. The new film is just a few years before GREEN, and a lot of time is spent cruising in a classic auto. However, the doctor of THE MOUNTAIN doesn’t use his skills (yes, his hands really) to bring joy and happiness. Far, far from it.

The tale begins in the early 1950s as teenager Andy (Tye Sheridan) struggles to deal with his mother’s banishment to a mental health facility. He pleads with his sullen father Frederick (Udo Kier) to visit her, to no avail. Frederick is a skating coach at the local ice rink where Andy drives the Zamboni and shovels slush. A family tragedy puts Andy in contact with one of his mom’s former doctors, Wallace Fiennes (Jeff Goldblum). ‘Wally’ can’t help Andy with any visitation, so he instead offers the young man a job: photographer. The ‘doc’ is traveling across the country, to different mental hospitals, skilled care facilities, and asylums to promote his medical breakthrough, the transorbital lobotomy (basically removing bits of the brain through the eye socket using an ice pick-like device and a hammer). Sam is needed behind the polaroid to document Wally’s triumphs and achievements. After the day’s demonstrations, the duo would head to the local restaurants and bars (even bowling alleys) so the great doctor can pick up accommodating ladies. The depressing rituals take their toll on Andy who soon becomes involved with an eccentric therapist, Jack (Denis Lavant) and his disturbed young daughter Susan (Hannah Gross). Could Andy be headed to the same fate as his mother?

The film biggest asset (and biggest star) is Goldblum in one of his quirkiest performances (and that’s really saying something). In the early scenes, as he befriends Andy, Goldblum plays Wally as a most gentle, sympathetic mentor, a kindly father-figure the teen desperately needs ( the encouragement as he teaches the basics of camera use is endearing). Ever so slowly Goldblum reveals the egotistical monster beneath the academic exterior, one that’s barely kept in check by random drunken sexual encounters. It’s in those seductions that we get more of Goldblum’s “loosey-goosey” oddball charm. He then takes us back to the doc’s “dark side” as a botched “treatment” barely elicits any concern (he barks “Take her away” as though he were sending back an undercooked steak), and later he mixes bewilderment with rage when Wally can’t understand his “method’s” rejections (“I have all these letters thanking me!”). Goldblum brings the only sense of life to this dismal drama. The gifted Mr. Sheridan (so great in MUD and JOE) mainly wanders hallways, mumbling, chain-smoking, and looking at the floor. He never gets a chance to make Andy compelling, despite his acting skills. Ditto for Ms. Gross, who instead stares straight out, late-show zombie-style, uttering nary a peep. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of Lavant as her bombastic papa. Taking over the story’s last act, Lavant emits almost incomprehensible guttural growls, bouncing from English to French (thankfully both subtitled) and later flailing about to twin xylophones. Keir keeps most of his dignity, directing the skaters as though they were an orchestra, then quickly exiting (lucky him).

Director/co-writer Rick Alverson pushes the plot along at a glacier pace, locking the camera down for countless shots of interchangeable hazy white hallways, the silence occasionally broken by distant screams. As we wonder how (or if) Wally’s patients are sedated, the monotony makes us feel as though we’re going under, with only Goldblum’s schtick jolting us awake (perhaps to avoid any litigation, he’s not named after the actual inventor/doc, Walter Freeman). For a flick highlighting such a gruesome procedure, there’s almost no blood (making us concoct the torture going on just below the bottom of the screen). No blood and little life to this pretentious bit of historical hysterics. And what’s the title about, aside from Jack’s pointless tirade about Americans and paintings? Who knows, and the film doesn’t make us care. Only for hardcore Goldblum fanatics, THE MOUNTAIN is an energy-draining uphill trudge that is a true test of stamina for any filmgoer.

Half a Star Out of 4

THE MOUNTAIN opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Tivoli Theatre