The Mountain Directed by Rick Alverson
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The Mountain
Directed by Rick Alverson
Starring: Tye Sheridan, Jeff Goldblum, Hannah Gross, Denis Lavant, Udo Kier, Annemarie Lawless, Eleonore Hendricks, Margot Klein, Amy Stiller, Adam Daveline, James A. Besha, Paul Eenhoorn, Larry Fessenden, Daniela Malave, Lollie Jensen
Year: 2018
Country: USA
Review Author: Roberto Matteucci
"I have the courage to live in the world."
Lobotomy was used in the forties and fifties as a definitive cure for mentally sick patients, with very serious dysfunctions. It is a deeply invasive surgical procedure: cut the nervous connections of the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobes.
The contraindications were disastrous; the neurotic and physical madness disappear because the patient became apathetic, till the destruction of the personality, of the emotions and the loss of memory.
Lobotomy was famous in the United States and spread throughout the world; the inventor, the Portuguese António Egas Moniz, even won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949.
In the mid-fifties, it began to be abandoned and then disappeared.
It quickly eclipsed.
Did it disappear because the neuropsychiatrists understood the sufferings of the patients, or because Rhône-Poulenc, a powerful pharmaceutical company, invented in 1951 chlorpromazine, a medicine used as an antipsychotic?
Insanity is a stimulating topic for cinema because madness is the metaphor of life, of the society, against the annihilation of anarchist individuality.
It is 1975 when Jack Nicholson, a vivacious leader of his insane asylum, will be annihilated forever with a lobotomy. It's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Director Miloš Forman.
It was 1971 when Alex agreed to undergo dystopic treatments similar lobotomy in A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick.
In these examples, it is not the painful lobotomy to stimulate the creativity of the author. The post-psychiatric theory studied madness as a social presupposition. The environment affected the mind and the behaviour; madness is the fruit of society as taught by Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia.
Basaglia considers dominant the influence of a morally corrupt society in contemporary diseases such as schizophrenia, also treated by a lobotomy.
Why doctors must use surgery to care social disease?
Would the obvious empathy for Nicholson have been the same if the setting of the surgical practice had taken place in a cold, introverted, closed and misanthropic environment?
The director Rick Alverson in the film The Mountain, presented at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, describes the lobotomy with a different language and structure.
Dr Walter Freeman visits thousands of clinics in the United States to practice lobotomy. The director tells: "The character is freely based on the historical person of Dr Walter Freeman who invented the lobotomy based on a Portuguese procedure called leukotomy. Freeman made between 3000 and 5000 lobotomies without any surgery licence. The treatment was to cut the frontal lobe of the brain provoking a reducing capacity for emotions and agitation. It was made for homosexuals, for menopausal women, it was done to calm some population segments. This was partly due to the ignorance and partial arrogance of the doctors. Above all were white males who imposed this sort of subjugation and pacification of the population ". (1)
It is the story of a globetrotter doctor, who entered, without any authorization, in hospitals to operate the patients most melancholy, most intolerant: the patients rejected by society.
The director creates the social context around Dr Wallace Fiennes, aka Water Freeman. He lives his existence to the limit, full of pain, despair, loneliness, frustrations. He travels together Andy, an alienated young man, lacking in social contacts and love.
The doctor had operated with lobotomy the Andy's mother too. At the death of his father, Andy is alone, so the doctor invites to follow him.
The film begins in a room, a boy deep in thoughts, almost catatonic. He is Andy. His dad arrives, their eyes meet each other but they do not speak. In this introduction there are the sadness, the human depression dimension of the family, amplified by the claustrophobic framing between the lines of doors as if to shrink their human life.
Around them, there are many normal people; a couple fucks in the locker room and Andy, unconsciously, see them, he is amazed and unable to react.
In the evening his father, drunk on the sofa, watches a television of the fifties in black and white while his son gets depressed in his bed room.
Everything is hopeless, oppressive, with no outside connection.
The relationship between father and son is emphasized when Andy tries a conversation with him:
"Can I tell you my dream?"
"You have already started."
The family synthesizes the alienation of the world.
Is it a director’s exaggeration?
But his dad is different. When he dies his students dance on the skating rink as a tribute.
The film becomes an on the road movie.
But the stylistic theme does not change: Andy drives the doctor's car in a lonely street, no other cars, surrounded by nothing, driving slowly, without any abrupt movements or any moment of agitation.
The doctor replaces the figure of the Andy's father. But in his mind has a doubt: "Did you do it to my mother too?"
The doctor behaves with cynicism and indifference. His life is no better.
His impassivity reaches acme in exhibitionism: he always takes pictures with the patients after the surgeries, like a selfie. The doctor is alone, has no one. He find consoling in those sad and gloomy photographs.
Even arrives the moment that Andy surpasses the doctor when he finds love.
His lover is a girl close in a sanatorium by her father. The parent called the doctor to lobotomize her. But Andy and the girl meet and love each other.
The boy finally fucks with the woman, finds the sense of love, and perhaps the affinity with his mother. The envy of the doctor is fatal for the couple when he discovers their sexual gesture.
"Do you hear voices?" In a sad white aseptic closet, Andy talks to the doctor. Shortly before Andy had had a fit of anger because he wanted to be together with his love. There is just a solution: he wants to be lobotomized too.
Rick Alverson always maintains the same linguistic style throughout the film. It is not easy to have continuously depressed, sluggish, lethargic images. He moves the camera slowly, and the characters acts are colourless, expressionlessly. He films behind their shoulders, choosing still camera. Actors are always smaller between the lines of doors. Director likes shooting the psychiatric hospitals through the depth of surreal corridors, travelled with gloom.
He exalts the minimalism of the scenes using an exasperating monochrome white, with other passive colours, all soften on white, but perfectly distinct.
The message is clear and detailed, the director is aware of it and uses all the intellectual ways available.
This discouragement causes a contagious effect, everyone is influenced by this metaphysical situation. The logic disappears, everything remains weak for the too much depressive attitudes. The story goes out the characters, they become immobilized. The doctor is too over the top, too fraught with guilt. Andy is introspective but fails to point out the story except when he lives his deep but impossible love. His desire to achieve it is like a Shinjū, a mutual love suicide.
There are so many Freudian themes but not exactly specified. Besides there is no condemnation of the indiscriminate use of the lobotomy. The historicization of the phenomenon is lacking; the alternatives of the time were no better: the psychiatric hospitals were horrendous prisons and the use of the first psychiatric drugs had the same effects as the lobotomy.
There are no exaltations of colours and so the characters appear rightly cold. All images maintain a visual frigidity, like music, in reality, a hiss, a repetitive tone.
(1) http://xl.repubblica.it/articoli/the-mountain-viaggio-tra-follia-ed-estrema-lucidita/81310/ translated by author
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#Lobotomy #AntonioEgasMoniz #NobelPrize #FrancoBasaglia #WalterFreeman
#JackNicholson #OneFlewOverTheCuckooSNest #MilosForman
#AClockworkOrange #StanleyKubrick
#75VeniceFilmFestival #VeniceFilmFestival
