Atlas Would Have Shrugged at 'Mountainhead'
The world got a pleasant surprise back in January when it was announced that Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession, had locked in his new project. And it sounded like it would very much be in a similar vein: wealthy people in a time of crisis. Only this time, it would be a film. And it was being fast-tracked to debut on HBO/Max/HBO Max. Everyone was in. When the first trailer for Mountainhead hit in April, not only were there some major Succession vibes, but it was clear why it was being so fast-tracked as the focus was on a special breed of billionaire: the tech bro. Double in.
Unfortunately, Mountainhead is a mess.
Having watched it this past weekend, I'm sad to report that nearly none of it works. And the main problem is a sort of obvious one: what Armstrong and team are attempting to lampoon is actually much easier to do than how they attempted to do it. That is to say, the movie would have been a far more scathing critique of tech, and in particular, the titans of tech, if they had just played it almost entirely straight. Instead, they go the opposite direction: way over the top, going beyond simple satire, into the realm of farce. At various points, it almost feels more like a slap-stick comedy or like a surreal game of Clue.1 And the end result is a commentary that almost feels lazy – or yes, rushed.
It starts out well enough, as the premise is quite good. Four longtime friends getting together at a mountain retreat owned by one of them for a weekend away from it all. Of course, none of them actually intends to be away from anything, as there's simply too much to do when you rule and run the world – perhaps literally, as the plot unwinds. The dynamic between the four is set up well, with one of the friends the clear "loser" of the group because he lacks the 'B' in the 'Billionaire' title that the rest of them have achieved. And even amongst that group, there's some fun jockeying and dynamics about who has the biggest bank account at any given moment. And there's one clear alpha dog in the form of the friend who is the richest person in the world – and clearly related, is the most morally compromised.
It's this latter point where you first start to see the cracks in the writing here. And it's related to the timeliness of the story, because "Venis" is clearly meant to be a hybrid of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – but mostly Musk. And the producers seemingly could not have asked for better timing with the ongoing fall-out between Musk and the President of the United States. In the real world. And this also sort of happens in the story. But the real world version is far more layered and actually, as such, ridiculous, than the more blunt-force movie version.
The same basic problem plagues the other characters as well. But that would all probably be fine – it's a two-hour movie, you only have so much time and you have to do some level of caricature – if they had just again, played it more straight.
Confession: I've actually never seen the show Silicon Valley. While I know a number of people who helped create it – including, in an indirect way, my wife2 – it always felt like one of those things that would hit far too close to home. I was living that world, why would I want to watch it? For fun? But I also know that it was well done and a large part of that is because of who they had working on it, behind-the-scenes. It's a satire that doesn't play it straight but plays it in a way that sets an appropriate comical tone. Or so I've heard.3
And I've heard from many of those same people that they feel Mountainhead missed this boat. But it's interesting, now that I'm removed from the heart of Silicon Valley and have people I know who actually have nothing to do with that world, they actually seem to have liked the movie quite a bit more than I did. And I think I understand why: if all you read are the headlines about tech, such as the billionaires all bending the knee to President Trump, you probably think they're just sort of comically compromised egomaniacs. And there is some level of truth to that, of course! But again, it's also a more nuanced situation where reality is actually far more damning than what is portrayed and attempted to be conveyed here by three of the friends plotting to murder the third, but almost in a Three Stooges-like approach.
In a way, it feels like everything Succession got right, Mountainhead got wrong. And again, I chalk that up to the fact that it was a movie, so it naturally had far less time, literally, for character development, but also because it was clearly rushed. It almost felt as if Armstrong had been reading stories with a bunch of the tech bro lingo and couldn't resist to center the second and third acts largely around that, escalating it to the point of absurdity in the hope of drilling in a commentary about just how ridiculous this all is – I mean, just listen to how they talk!
It does end up being absurd, but not in the way that would have driven a point home. Armstrong should have kept the basic premise but dialed everything back about 80% and let the real world absurdity do the rest.
1 As is, it almost feels like it would have been better as a play not a movie?
2 The actress who played the Monica Hall character spoke to my wife in preparation for the role.
3 One day I will set aside some time to watch it, especially now that I'm outside the "bubble".