Mountain (2018)

It is perfect for a screen saver, just make sure it is muted.Fantastic footage, breathtaking scenes and empty story. Music can be pretty annoying as well.

I spent most of this movie trying to figure out whether it was an ad for an SUV or an ad for an investment bank. (Spoiler: it's an ad for The North Face and Red Bull.)The great Willem Dafoe does his best to make the narration (spiritual-fitness-bro poetry with tons of alliteration: "forged by force and fire, not waves of water but waves of stone, the mountains sing their siren song, making reward of risk and myths from men of madness") seem less laughably stupid, but he's not a miracle worker.To compare this to a BBC Nature program is frankly insulting to the BBC; I'm a huge admirer of shows like Life and Planet Earth, which demystify the natural world and seek to explain its processes, its systems. This movie, on the other hand, is just an hour of embarrassing ad copy set to a cheesy score over footage of X-Games athletes doing (quite impressive) bike and snowboard stunts.What an unbelievable waste of resources this movie represents.

I just really enjoyed the experience of watching this movie. I thank this film for showing me the beauty I have not yet experienced.I saw that a lot of people hated the narration and the music and said it sounded like cacophony, but for me they both worked really great. In fact I especially liked the slightly twisted and heavy feeling the opening music gave. It lightened something up inside of me with its magic and led me through this unforgettable journey.

Just awful, despite some (I repeat) some beautiful and exciting footage. There is just so much wrong with it, I can hardly begin. Particularly, it shows very little real understanding of mountains per se, or any understanding of climbing and mountaineering. It's all just seen as an 'arena' for extreme sports. And there's a huge confusion here. The huge increase in the number of people skiing and even a bit in mountaineering has nothing to do with a greater desire for adventure but is all the result of it becoming a lot SAFER and easier for the man in the street to enjoy. And yet all this is muddled up with examples of that very small minority of people who, as ever, are taking part in extreme sports ... that's always been, and always will remain, a virtually separate thing. The commentary is so muddled and so shallow that it almost defies belief at times (e.g. when he starts talking about skiing as a form of 'mountain worship') and the Pathetic Fallacy looms very large indeed throughout. However, if you're a fan of Beethoven, as I am, you can simply shut your eyes and enjoy the music when huge chunks of the Violin and Emperor Concertos are played ... but what on earth have they to do with the Khumbu Icefall etc? And what for that matter has Vivaldi to do with Tibetan Buddhism? The relentless music track throughout is best described as crude and/or crass.