MOUNTAIN — Review by Susan Wloszczyna
Mountain is a thing unto itself. It isn’t so much a documentary as it is a mesmerizingly immersive tone poem. It intentionally frees the mind — aided by a mood-enhancing chamber music score and an essay-like narration provided by Willem Dafoe — from having to absorb facts and figures or names and places. Instead, the viewer is given license to simply be in the moment while enjoying an up-close and personal perch to safely contemplate mankind’s need to conquer these soaring monoliths. Continue reading…
Prepare to be awestruck by the often vertigo-inducing visuals from around the globe as captured by high-altitude specialist Renan Ozturk. Using drones, Go-Pros and helicopters, he and director Jen Peedom (whose Sherpa in 2015 covered similar terrain as it focused the native guides that lead climbers up Mount Everest and happened to capture a real-life tragic event) shot 2,000 hours of footage in 22 countries, including Antarctica, India, Tibet, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.
But, as the generic title indicates, the images shift locales without a hint of where we are going next, save for the mother of all summits, Nepal’s Everest. Each mountain may be different and yet their effect is the same, whether overflowing with lava or encased in ice. As we witness humans who voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way as they struggle up a seemingly unending vertical expanses of rock or fall out of a helicopter before landing on skis and sailing down miles and miles of snow-covered slopes, it underlines the fact that there is something bigger out there than all of us. And these sky-piercing towers of power will stand as a symbol of nature’s majesty long after we are gone.
