The Mountain

Set in rural America in the 1950s, Alverson's film takes us on a journey into a Hopperian world, as cold as a hospital ward and as sad as a motel room abandoned in a hurry. Lobotomies performed by Dr. Fiennes (Goldblum), grim psychiatrists, violent demonstrations of power and melancholy acts of copulation: The Mountain is a fundamental critique of patriarchal masculinity and emotionally inaccessible fathers, where every manifestation of feelings is treated like a disease. But Alverson's film is so much more: it's also a portrait of America caught in the gaze of charismatic charlatans, a story about guru figures. This is the sort of figure played on-screen by Goldblum, but so is the skating coach (Udo Kier) and the quack (the scenes with Denis Lavant have the power of electroconvulsive therapy). The director proves, however, that even in this love-deprived world, tenderness can bloom. The Mountain was screened as part of the Venice Festival competition, and its screenplay was co-written by one of the guests of the American Film Festival, Dustin Guy Defa. The festival regularly screens the works of Rick Alverson, one of America's most interesting independent filmmakers.