Mountainhead movie review
Cast: Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, and Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Star rating: ★★★
The shadow of Succession looms large over the premise of Mountainhead- a hilariously morbid, tragically fierce takedown of the ultra-rich. Eat the rich yes, but it is the rich who want to eat themselves. The action begins at a mansion nestled in the snow-capped mountains, where four notoriously rich tech bros meet over the course of a weekend, while the world begins to fall apart.
Peppered with deliciously cold dialogues and twisty characters, this feels like familiar terrain for director Jesse Armstrong, fresh-off the feverish success of Succession. One can almost say this could be a spin-off from the Emmy-winning HBO show.
The premise
Mountainhead is essentially a chamber piece, where the entire action unfolds within the interiors of this mansion tucked away in the mountains. It is the brainchild of Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), the founder of a successful wellness app, trying to take up his millionaire status a few notches higher. He basically wants to be on the same page as his three billionaire friends whom he has called to stay over the weekend.
One of them is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), who owns the social media app called Traam. He seems to casually refer to acts of mass violence as fake, even as the same app’s AI features have caused global outrage. “This is so hyper-real it can’t be real,” he says. Then there is Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose AI company is a potential threat to Venis. He becomes the moral compass of the group. The papa bear in the group is Randy (Steve Carell), the billionaire investor who gets to shoo away a doctor after receiving some bleak health report. “My view, and it’s essentially Hegelian, is that the whole of history essentially operates on the ‘F***! What? Cool!’ principle,” he believes.
What works
This is just a specimen of the brutally sharp and twisted dialogues that abound in Mountainhead- a film that is wry, unhinged and incredulous, often in the same breath. Armstrong seems to be playing a game here- flirting with an idea with such passive-aggressive distance that it never really takes itself too seriously. The build-up to the central crisis is hilarious and shocking in the way these men try to justify what they are about to do. They are desperate, hungry and absolutely feral; and the film digs into the satire that often trespasses into Lord of the Flies territory. The rich would kill themselves if need arises. The rest of the world can go to smoke.
However, Mountainhead often lacks a sort of momentum and emotional bandwidth because these men are simply too untrustworthy and impossible to witness. The film is almost too cold, too rigid. I could almost feel the absence of a Shiv Roy-like figure in the room, someone who could slightly shake off these men off their blissful ignorance. Nevertheless, the film is elevated to a degree because of the performances of the cast.
Final thoughts
Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman are in fine form, and Cory Michael Smith is extremely effective in finding the comic vulgarity in Venis. But the real standout is Ramy Youssef- who sees through the rest of them a little more, and makes sense of the deception and manipulative behaviour that lies ahead in the game- poker or not.
Mountainhead is a film that is driven by temptations and amoral impulses. It is a shot at the dark end of despair. The tone is extremely precise in its bleakness and doom, given how immediately transfixing these global threats of AI and global crisis have become. There is a moment where a riot in shown in India, and the men watch the scene on Television- with nothing remarkable to note. They are half-convinced of it, and half-bothered in equal measure. But these men have all the power in the world, and we can’t help but be alarmed.
Mountainhead is available to watch on JioHotstar.
