Explore life on the edge... of your seat Mountain (E)
70 mins You don’t have to be a mountaineer or extreme adventurer to lose yourself (and occasionally your stomach) in a film like Mountain.
This documentary is simple to its core in its premise and construction, yet hugely affecting.
Film-maker Jennifer Peedom (Sherpa) melds footage of impressive and often terrifying natural beauty with a specially composed orchestral score (played by the Australian Chamber Orchestra) and a voiceover from Willem Dafoe.
In good news, Dafoe’s dulcet tones don’t evoke his less savoury screen characters and you comfortably lose yourself in the moment, but unfortunately his script (with words by travel writer Robert Macfarlane) provides the film’s slightly weak link, full of truisms and cliches which sometimes touch on poetry but mostly feel self-evident. But don’t let the words put you off. This is a film in which the pictures and the music speak volumes.
While there is many an aerial shot of snow-capped peaks and vast landscapes, the camera also takes us into remote communities who exist harmoniously among the peaks, before things get incredibly exciting in the extreme sports category.
Mountain is exceptional in its ability to transport you into the point-of-view of a high-wire walker or bike-rider, ride you off the edge of a cliff and allow you to experience the exhilaration (and incredulity) without leaving your seat.
All this is set to a striking soundtrack of familiar pop-classics (Vivaldi, Chopin, Beethoven) along with the more sublime offerings from Arvo Part, intermingling with an original score composed by the film’s musical director Richard Tognetti.
It’s a magnificent mix of sound and picture, and a truly awesome portrait of elemental power undeniably best caught on the silver screen.
– Sarah Watt