THE MOUNTAIN (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

The Mountain, Strand Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 31, 2023

The Mountain tells the seemingly simple story of a man who abandons his city life for one on a mountain, but that aimless tale eventually leads to something that defies any kind of logic. That might be the point of co-writer/director/star Thomas Salvador's meditation on nature, which becomes a confounding foray into the supernatural. If the goal was to make a movie that seems to lose even its most simplistic purpose for a lot of nonsense, the filmmaker has succeeded.

For everyone else, any perception of some minor accomplishments in this movie will probably boil down to one's appreciation for gorgeous landscapes. Salvador, along with cinematographers Alexis Kavyrchine and Victor Pichon, certainly gives us majestic views of the Alps in Chamonix, France, from below and right on the mountains' level. It's easy enough to understand what draws Salvador's Pierre, a Paris-based engineer who visits the region for work, to the place, but the real struggle is trying to figure out what the filmmaker has to say with this rambling, eventually incoherent tale.

Nature calls to Pierre while he's in the middle of a presentation for a robotic arm, as the view of the mountains through the window of the room distracts him. When everyone else from his company heads back to the city, Pierre announces he's going to stay an extra night, and that night eventually becomes an unspecified but lengthy amount of time (enough for him to get fired and for his family to start worrying), as our protagonist heads up the mountain, makes a campsite, and just spends his days wandering around the peaks.

The walking, the climbing, and the taking in of the splendor of the Alps amount the main point of the narrative. Pierre also strikes up a friendly relationship with resort chef Léa (Louise Bourgoin), a single mother who finds him and his new unsustainable life charming for reasons that are probably more inexplicable than the ultimate course of this story. The two get a handful of scenes together, with most of them displaying how ill-prepared, irresponsible, and not-too-smart Pierre is, so obviously, a romance gradually emerges.

Also emerging from the mountains are strange, lava-like creatures, which glow as they move and apparently are the cause of this glacier melting and eroding over time. Considering how often Salvador shows or mentions the impact of climate change on nature, one can presume there's supposed to be an environmentalist message in here. That, though, only makes the introduction of supernatural creatures, as well as Pierre befriending and gaining powers from them, all the more baffling.

Narratively slim and thematically messy, the sole appeal of The Mountain is in its cinematography, capturing the awe of this part of the world and awful things we are doing to it. Add this movie—although much, much lower than climate change, obviously—to the latter list.

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