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MOVIE REVIEW: Mountain

Garth Cremona (RIP)

Mountain is a multimedia experience where sights and sounds combine into a vertigo inducing sensation of the highest peaks around the world.  Narrated by Willem Dafoe and with the music from the Australian Chamber Orchestra along with some of the most stunning photography of mountains around the world this should really be the be all and end all of the Mountain documentary world.

Have to be honest here, there were several points during the screening of this film where I nearly fell asleep, the head tilt, the heavy eyes, and just as my head hits the top of the chair in front of me I snap back to reality.  It’s not professional of me.  I get about three hours sleep per day and never should any of those minutes be used during a screening, but there is something about those musical tones and the sleepy narrative of Willem’s voice reading someone’s script that just sent Gar to snoozing land.  This happened three or four times during the short running time of the film.

The music in the film is beautiful and cannot be faulted.  Dafoe is great but almost hypnotic at the narration and I’m sure if I meet him and he snaps his fingers I’ll think I’m a chicken or something.  The photography of the film the shots of the mountains are beautiful.  When there are action scenes with the extreme sportspeople who believe that they have to push themselves to the max they are amazingly entertaining.  Although they are more entertaining when they hurt themselves.  There are scenes with Free Climbers who go up these peaks without ropes or safety gear, basically idiots, and the camera work will make you googly-eyed with the vision of their height.  I mean, I get injured getting out of a chair, and these guys do this stuff.

One of my favourite parts of the film was showing the conveyor belt of ‘tourists’ who go to Everest to experience that sensation.  The person who wrote the narration points out that these people, who are still placing themselves in danger, are nothing like the adventurers of the past who risked real danger, as they stand in line for five seconds at the top of the mountain.  It’s funny as you can almost hear the contempt that the script and narrator have for their false adventure.

I would have loved a little more from the sportspeople, getting to know what drives them, and their injuries from the previous assaults on mountains.  I tell my Nieces constantly that Skiing is not a holiday and there are a lot of pieces of this film that reinforce this belief.

Stunning soundtrack and photography but the narration script is sometimes a little too up its own behind for my liking.  Describing the mountains in a perfect sentence and then adding in a word like ‘sublime’ as though the writer is being paid by the word.  Yet there are times that a more descriptive format would have been nice.

I cannot imagine watching this film again.  The different parts of the documentary all feel like they should be highly marked and yet when you put them together it just doesn’t work for me.  For those of you interested in winter sports or pushing yourselves to the max, you might find something interesting in the whole picture.  For the average couch potato whose extreme sport is having a bath without having the emergency services on speed dial though there is little to feel excited about.  Personal preference will be more important for those attending this rather than the sum of the parts.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Director: Jennifer Peedom
Writers: Robert Macfarlane, Jennifer Peedom
Star: Willem Dafoe

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Garth Cremona (RIP)
Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com
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