Elba, Winslet conquer ‘Mountain’
A-list stars froze in Canada to make the disaster drama
There’s method acting — and then there’s literally freezing on a snowy mountaintop for weeks on end.
Such was the fate of Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, who signed on to The Mountain Between Us (in theaters Oct. 20), the tale of two strangers who survive a plane crash and must trek through hundreds of miles of freezing wilderness to be rescued.
Shooting in Canada on the border of Alberta and British Columbia, temperatures were so cold, “you can’t talk,” says director Hany Abu-Assad ( Omar). “When you close (your eyes), because there’s water, you can’t open them sometimes.”
In The Mountain Between Us, based on the 2011 novel by Charles Martin, Elba plays Ben Bass, an in-demand surgeon whose flight is canceled, opposite Winslet as Alex Martin, a brideto-be photojournalist afraid of missing her wedding. Despite weather warnings, the two strangers charter a jet from Idaho — and are left with only each other when the plane goes down.
But it’s tricky to shoot on a mountaintop. The cast and crew had to helicopter to the peak each day with their supplies.
“Every day we had the call sheet with five different scenarios in every possible weather,” says the director, who drove 40 minutes each morning to the film’s “base camp,” where he and pro- ducers would determine if the weather was clear enough to take choppers up the mountain.
His stars proved hardy. Elba is tough, Abu-Assad says. “You can believe he survived this wild- ness,” he says. Winslet insisted on really plunging into ice cold water at base camp to film her character falling through thin ice.
“The studio, the producers were very scared that something was going to happen” during that scene, says Abu-Assad, avoiding the word “hypothermia.”
But perhaps Winslet didn’t see more than one take coming. How many did Abu-Assad ask for? “Three,” he chuckles. “The first time, it wasn’t good, so I went to Kate and everybody was like, ‘No, you can’t do that!’ (But) I asked her, ‘Listen, can we try one more time?’ ”
The Oscar-winning actress was game — for two more takes, actually. “She said, ‘ We do what we have to do,’ ” he says. “Kate is very professional.”
What attracted the Oscarnominated Dutch-Palestinian director to the disaster drama? For a long time, “I really didn’t see an epic love story against the background of survival,” he says.
“I think optimism and hope is crucial to survive,” he adds. “And to go on with your life even if you’ve had a lot of bad luck. So if you give (in) to the bad luck, you will die. (But) if you fight the bad luck, you have a better chance to survive and make your life better. This is very simple wisdom, yes? But still very crucial especially in these kind of days, when everybody feels entitled to their good luck.”