Actor Jeff Goldblum stars in the new film by Richmond director Rick Alverson, "The Mountain." (Photo courtesy Kino Lorber)
Richmond-based filmmaker Rick Alverson makes scary movies. But they aren’t of the slasher or monster kind. With efforts like “The Comedy” and “Entertainment,” Alverson presents disturbing depictions of amoral acts and psychological trauma. For all this, his recent “The Mountain” may be Alverson’s most romantic film yet.
It’s set in late 1950s America, when the nation was supposedly at its height, but something was terribly wrong. People wanted to be happy all the time, or they wanted relatives who seemed troubled or sad to get with the program of enforced social agreement. One accepted solution involved driving ice picks into their eye sockets.
“The Mountain” glows and is gorgeous, even as it depicts the terrible practices of lobotomist Wallace Fiennes, played by actor Jeff Goldblum with a cool affability that on occasion fractures into craziness.
There is an appropriate clinical distance and silence in the formal composition of the scenes — the film’s coldness reminds me of Stanley Kubrick and “The Shining,” with its shots of the long corridors of asylums, the overhead views of the big round-fendered cars moving through the immense, lush forests of upstate New York and the Pacific Northwest. The labyrinth in this case is psychological and cultural; the sense of claustrophobia is not derived from hotel rooms or hedges but from ritual, superstition and harmful pseudo-science. And there are fraught parental relationships and an even a loco French therapist (Denis Lavant), and a feisty — at first — daughter, Susan (Hannah Gross).
Traveling with the bad doctor as a roadie and photographer is Andy (Tye Sheridan), whose father (Udo Kier) recently died and whose mother, a former patient of “Dr. Wally,” is institutionalized.
“The Mountain” turns into a strange un-buddy picture as the two go on tour as “Dr. Wally” and his Medical Grade Ice Pick Transorbital Lobotomy Road Show. They stop at hospitals, asylums and sanatoriums, where Fiennes provides what he believes is the solution for quieting patients who are resistant to conventional treatment such as electroshock therapy. Wallace’s bedside manner involves coolly interrogating patients and then puncturing their brains.
The story’s broad outline is based on the life and work of neurologist Dr. Walter Freeman, subject of a recent documentary.
“We used the architecture of Freeman’s career,” Alverson explains, “then dispensed with the particulars. It isn’t a biography, but it’s a kind of analysis of that particularly American entrepreneurial quality and how the intelligence doesn’t contend with ramifications.”
He and Goldblum discussed at length the approach to the Fiennes character. “Jeff’s done a ton of homework,” Alverson recalls. “He’s engaged and intensely curious. We dug in, and it evolved during the shooting. We wanted to almost weaponize his charisma.”
For Alverson, a major element of the film is delving into the spirit of hucksterism as it is manifested in the American male. An idea or concept is pushed as far as it’ll go, largely through repetition, without considering the ramifications. This consequently leads to a huge denial, delusion and even death.
The nurses and doctors stand around the table while the violence is committed against drugged patients. Alverson reflects, “I felt particularly with representing these institutions and all the horror, that they take on these qualities of an artificial wax museum.”
People watch impassively as science-approved horrors proceed while the mad outside dance and sing. One wonders about the nature of madness — and of that pursuit of happiness.
“You see today how people stand on the sidelines and look on appalled at events but aren’t moved to change anything,” Alverson says. “The media provides the lubricant to keep things rolling right along.”
The Richmond premiere of “The Mountain” screens at 7:15 p.m. at the Byrd Theatre on Sunday, Sept. 8. Tickets are $5. A Q&A follows with Rick Alverson, moderated by Oliver Speck, associate professor of film studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. An after-party follows next door at New York Deli.
