The world hasn’t yet recovered from the blockbuster series Succession. Meanwhile, the show’s creator Jesse Armstrong has moved on to films, making his directing debut with a grim satire about tech billionaires.
Mountainhead, which is out on JioHotstar, is a tract for the times. Written and directed by Armstrong, Mountainhead has characters who breathe a rarefied air that lets them believe that they can run the planet. Spoiler alert: they actually do.
Four very rich men visibly modelled on Silicon Valley luminaries gather at a mountainside retreat for what is meant to be an “intellectual salon”. The house is owned by lifestyle app founder Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), who is worth only $521 million, not as much as his “best buds” Venis (Cory Michael Smith), Randall (Steve Carell) and Jeff (Ramy Youssef).
It’s a “no deals, no meals, no high heels” occasion, Hugo says, one of the many hollow statements made over two days. The world beyond the mansion is spiralling out of control, thanks to artificial intelligence-powered disinformation flowing from Venis’s social media site Traam. As riots rage and countries are pushed to the brink, Venis smirks, while Hugo and Randall debate the possible benefits.
Only Jeff appears to be concerned about the real-world consequences of deepfakery. Or is Jeff’s dissenting views, which lead to him being labelled a traitor, a reflection of the quartet’s tendency to roast each other whenever they assemble?
Words fly thick and fast, with enough insults to fill a book. Extraordinarily entitled, self-obsessed and rude as a result, the men speak their hearts out on bothersome government regulations and the inability of mortals to understand what they have created. The film’s title is a play on Ayn Rand’s libertarian bible The Fountainhead, which is namechecked by Jeff at one point.
Despite the carefully controlled temperature on the inside, the thin air on the outside seeps into the house, setting off chaos. The veneer of friendship barely conceals competitiveness between the men, for whom comparing net worth is serious business.
The confined setting plays to Jesse Armstrong’s strengths. The 109-minute film’s critique of amoral Silicon Valley culture, while a bit overstretched, is carried out through strongly etched characters and superbly judged performances.
Ramy Youssef is brilliant as the casually dressed, politically aware Jeff, who appears to have wandered in from a jog. Cory Michael Smith nails the smooth-faced and soulless social media site owner whose resemblance to a certain someone is chilling.
The savage exchanges are initially hilarious, but the humour is soon overtaken by tragedy, and then fear. That too is intentional in a movie in which grandiose pronouncements have the ring of shocking truth about the world inhabited by billions but controlled by the billionaires.
Also start the week with these films:
‘Black Dog’ is a poignant tale of feral dogs and stray humans
‘Groundhog Day’ is about a time loop we don’t want to escape
In ‘One of Them Days’, two women go to hilarious lengths to pay the rent
