Thursday 28 December 2017

Mountain the Movie

Mountain is an exploration of the human relationship with mountains, with beautiful cinematography set to a soundtrack of orchestral music played by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The text is written by well known naturewriter Robert MacFarlane and narrated by Willem Defoe.

I loved the beautiful scenery in the film but felt that it was flawed in a number of ways. The narrative was very simplistic, there were too many scenes of vertigo inducing extreme mountain sports (rock climbing, paragliding, extrme ski-ing) and not enough wildlife.

It looked like a film to extol the beauty of nature so why so few shots of wildlife and so much of an obsession with extreme mountaineering? And, if at it purports to be, it's supposed a film about the human relationship with mountains why, when showing scenes of people queueing to ascend Everest was there not even a mention of the mountains of rubbish left on the mountain every year?

It's a film to watch and enjoy and not analyse too deeply and certainly don't expect anything of great insight.

Mountain is showing at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Sunday 31 December.

1 comment:

RG said...

I'm guessing some will like it quite well - the hard core mountaineers and risky skiiers!