In one of my first weeks of high school, my freshman English teacher provided our class with a short passage to introduce a discussion of literary tone. The passage was a straightforward description of a walk through a public park, with details of trees, benches, and such. Then, in the penultimate sentence, the narrator mentioned seeing two men stabbing a third man to death; the passage concluded with another bland line in keeping with the earlier sentences. You can probably guess what my teacher wanted to achieve with his lesson: that a consistent tone in literature can normalize or else dampen the impact of content that might otherwise seem egregiously out of place, in this case a violent act. I’ve thought of this lesson often over the years, most recently when watching The Mountain, the latest feature by American independent Rick Alverson (The Comedy, Entertainment). The film exudes an eerily, consistently placid tone and trades in the subject of violent subjugation. It’s ultimately a frustrating experience, though its central rhetorical device certainly makes an impression.
The mystery of Andy’s internal experience carries The Mountain for its first half, albeit just barely. As he demonstrated in The Comedy, Alverson has a tendency to drive his metaphors into the ground. It soon becomes clear that Andy, in his terminally subdued behavior, represents the perfect foil to Wallace in that he acts like a lobotomy patient without even needing a lobotomy, and for a good half hour or so, the film is simply a series of variations on this insight. Alverson changes things up with the introduction of two new characters: a recently released lobotomy patient named Susan (Hannah Gross) and her caretaker, Jack (Denis Lavant), the first character in the film to exhibit a genuinely explosive personality. These two join Andy and Wallace on their travels; Susan stirs a sense of sexual curiosity in Andy (perhaps for the first time in his life), while Jack spends his nights getting drunk and haranguing anyone in earshot with tirades that barely make sense. The film takes its title from one of Jack’s antic monologues, when he comments on a mass-produced painting in his motel room. “This is not a mountain!” he yells at Andy. “It is a cheap dream!”
Directed by Rick Alverson. In English and subtitled French. 109 min. Fri 9/27-Thu 10/3. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $12.
