Rick Alverson • USA • 2018 • A lobotomist recruits a friendless photographer on a tour of asylums
Andy is withdrawn. Seemingly friendless, he is scarred by the institutionalization of his mother, finding little affection from his father, a figure-skating instructor. Dr. Wallace Fiennes, a lobotomist, sees potential in Andy, and recruits him to serve as his photographer on a tour of asylums across the country. Here, Andy will meet patients before and after their procedures, capturing their images as they sit lifeless at the edge of hospital beds. When Andy forms a connection with Susan, an institutionalized young woman, cracks begin to form in Dr. Fiennes’s pristine professional veneer.
Bathed in maudlin, desaturated hues and a tranquilized atmosphere of dread, The Mountain offers a sinister portrait of 1950s America. Rick Alverson’s fifth film premiered at Sundance, SXSW, Rotterdam and Venice, where it won a Special Mention.
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