EXCLUSIVE interview with Director Rick Alverson - "The Mountain"

Courtesy Kino Lorber

"The Mountain" is a film directed by Rick Alverson that takes place in 1950s America. This is the plot that takes place in the film: "Since his mother's confinement to an institution, Andy has lived in the shadow of his stoic father. A family acquaintance, Dr. Wallace Fiennes, employs the introverted young man as a photographer to document an asylum tour advocating for his increasingly controversial lobotomy procedure. As the tour progresses and Andy witnesses the doctor's career and life unravel, he begins to identify with the institutions' patients. Arriving at a California mountain town, a growing center of the New Age movement, they encounter an unconventional French healer who requests a lobotomy for his own daughter, Susan." The film stars Jeff Goldblum, Tye Sheridan and Hannah Gross. It opens in NY and LA on July 26.

I was eager and excited to talk to the director about the visuals in the film, the mood, the topic of mental illness, the history behind lobotomy and most of all about him.

Rick Alverson

Why did you decide to work on “The Mountain” film? What shook you to the core about this film that you said - yes I want to direct it? 
The subject matter interests me. These things evolve and they are difficult to get made. It's a reactive and reflexive sort of thing that evolves and changes especially the subject matter and the architecture as a historic character and leaving all of the narrative work and taking away most of the information and creating a fiction out of that. My own history. It's an evolving experiment.

What childhood or teenage memories do you remember that played part in your vision of the film? 
When Andy walks in a room covered with pornography with a hermaphrodite as a platonic ideal. It is a recreation event that happened to me as a child. There are foundational elements like that. I was interested in the ghost between interior life, exterior life and the social life that took that a step further - the ghost between the audience and the experience of the film. I talk about how this goal is so conveniently a bridge between this protagonist and his worldview. We use them as avatars and explore the world. I wonder if it's problematic or secretive and we go and have these exceptions when the world is full of limitations. We engineered him to be an instruction.

There were quite a lot of artistic forms in the film, such as the way the ice skaters danced, the mountain, the french healer's vision of art, among others. What was the intent with the art forms and artistic filming that you were trying to achieve and convey?
I am trying to bring and highlight the fact that films and narratives are used as convenient  mechanisms and the messages are curious of our social conundrum. We are such a contender of society. The problems of social media were reliable links during the 2016 elections. That happens in the cinema. The formal and artificial of this movie  is meant to engage us with a two dimensional event of watching a fantasy and I want to ask questions more than anything.

Tell me about working with Jeff Goldblum and Tye Sheridan. How did you approach them for the part and what did you tell them to do beforehand in order to dive into their characters?
They are both incredibly generous people and actors and they wanted to be engaged in the project. There is a certain amount of curiosity that is necessary to do a film like this. We talked a lot about the approach and I am a very physical director using blocking and tonality. I am not as interested in the content but more the way that it is said.

We see more and more stories written nowadays about mental illness. Unfortunately, we don’t see enough films about mental illness. Why do you think that is and as a director what was the hardest part about doing a mental illness film like this? 
The biggest challenge was the representation of that. It is obscene to dramatize for the enjoyment of the audience the environment and experience of mental illness. For that to move over to dramatic intoxication to an audience is something for us to consume as absence and disservice in this state. I move in the opposite direction. The institutions look like wax museums. Those places were hell halls back in the century. When dealing with that subject matter it is out of respect for that place and thing. There is an element of the experience in watching the film. I am happy when people say I feel like I have been lobotomized. It is more of an experience than being a witness.

Why did you choose to have a French character with a mental illness? Did you have to do a lot of research about lobotomy beforehand?
I am hesitant to explain why. A lot of things go into the ultimate threshold and decision to put or not that contributed. I think that the arrival of Jack in the film is consonant with the altering events with lobotomy of the protagonist and the protagonist's change. I think too often in the audience being engaged in a coherent meaningful way or being in a relationship with the protagonist as someone on the street is not a convenient consumption of truth.

What is the relationship between mental illness and love that we see in the film?
I think of the film as a love story and a desperate muted numb connection between these two individuals. There is no arrival in something that is petaled and reinforced for our amusement, which was conditioned in passivity by Hollywood cinema for along time. My favorite films don't have arrival or finality and they are consistent with our experience as human beings. It is really important to have films in what is left in the contemporary wisdom of this problematic certainty. 

You also co-wrote the script for "The Mountain." What was the hardest part in writing the script and what else are you working on and your message to everyone reading this? 
Me and Jeff did a lot of research on lobotomy and Fiennes' procedure. It is relative of people who have the procedure but ultimately it is not a historic recreation or pretending to be a reenactment of those events but its a two dimensional picture of using that subject matter. I am working on a project on a 12 Century next. Message? I hope we can be open.

                             Tye Sheridan and Jeff Goldblum in a scene / Courtesy Kino Lorber

RICK ALVERSON (born June 25, 1971, Spokane, Washington) is an American filmmaker and musician living in Richmond, Virginia. His feature films include THE MOUNTAIN (2018), ENTERTAINMENT (2015) and THE COMEDY (2012). His work has screened at Sundance Film Festival, Locarno, New Directors / New Films, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and BAFICI among other festivals. He has directed videos for Oneohtrix Point Never, Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olson, among others.