Mountainhead

“Mountainhead” begins with the world’s richest person, Venis (pronounced Venice, like the Doge, now that I think about it) Parish (Cory Michael Smith), in the back of an SUV as he announces the launch of his new artificial intelligence app via his ultra-successful social media platform. Alas, in making the announcement, he misspells everyone’s favorite four-letter word beginning with F by inadvertently adding an extra U. This causes him more chagrin than the fact that the AI app is ominously untested. Watching all this unfold is his assistant Berry (Ali Kinkade) in the seat next to him. In the few words she speaks, she’s a simple sycophant, but Kinkade’s eyes reveal something more. She seems to be side-eyeing Venis even when she’s looking right at him, alarmed by his actions but not surprised, and almost trying to subliminally will him to grasp the implications of what he’s typing. That she doesn’t speak up might spell trouble for viewers who require their characters to be virtuous citizens, but in a movie deliberately devoid of humanity, Kinkade’s facial expressions prove the lone exception. She’s a passenger in what may as well be a self-driving car headed for a cliff, helpless to stop it.

Venis is on his way to a summit of three tech billionaires and one mere millionaire. They deem themselves the Brewsters, a reference that writer/director Jesse Armstrong leaves unexplained, but I nevertheless chose to assume related to “Brewster’s Millions.” That’s the 1985 Richard Pryor comedy unloved by critics that I could see becoming a recurring favorite of four bros sharing a Silicon Valley live-work loft. The remote mountain retreat where they gather, named after the A*n R*nd novel, which is not subtle but, my God, who ever accused A*n R*nd of being subtle, is owned by Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman). He’s dubbed Soup Kitchen because he’s the millionaire striving for those mystical ten digits while Randall Garrett is the gang’s paternal figure, referred to as Papa Bear. He’s a little Steve Jobs-like but because he’s played by Steve Carrell, it is Steve Jobs filtered through Michael Scott, such a muddy line between diviner and dimwit. The fourth member of the group is Jeff Abredazi (Ramy Youssef), his own AI company in opposition to Venis’s. So is his attitude. Venis is the kind of guy who sees a heart stopping tableau of nature and declares his desire to fornicate with it, determined to devour everything. Jeff evinces an air of effective altruism though Youssef is shrewd enough to innately unmask the limits of that ethos in his turn.

As they come together, the world outside is coming undone as Venis’s unchecked AI unleashes a flood of disinformation; banks go on runs, countries collapse, people die, though seen exclusively through their phones, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s fake. And though the fact-checking capabilities of Jeff’s own AI might provide an answer, the professed “intellectual salon” instead debates utilizing the unrest for a technocratic coup. Of what, exactly? America? Argentina? The whole world? That’s beside the point, as is any of this being possible in the first place, as are the potential consequences. The outside world might as well be theoretical and the rest of humankind might as well be dots, as Orson Welles deemed pesky human beings in “The Third Man.” “If I offered you twenty thousand dollars for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money?” The Brewsters would probably just negotiate a higher fee.

They game out their coup via “Mountainhead’s” Armstrong’s evocative dialogue. This unique language is an out to lunch and wholly believable mishmash of technobabble, introductory philosophy masquerading as PHD-level, and wellness flim-flam wrapped up in a kind of party animal, frat house-ese delivered by all four actors with a pertinent screwball repartee. Randall might be seeking a “transhumanist” solution for the cancer eating away his body, but this dialogue already makes him and them feel that way – self-perceived gods squabbling for control of the world on a distant mountaintop. Unfortunately, Armstrong has more flair for screwball verbiage than he does for screwball filmmaking, and so the conclusion in which the Brewsters turn on one of their own, never satisfactorily puts the whole enterprise over the top. Or maybe that’s just reality intruding. Screwball comedy is all about exaggeration and how can you exaggerate what’s going on out there these days? 

Much has been made of “Mountainhead’s” accelerated filming and production schedule, more by design than necessity, evoking Armstrong’s desire that his movie be inextricable from the present moment. That’s a strength, freeing it from needing to impose a solution, just a mirror, a sort of moving satirical print, say, akin to one mocking King Geroge in the 1770s. But it’s also a weakness. By responding to the present moment and nothing beyond, Armstrong has no idea how to end the movie; it just sort of sputters out. What’s worse, the limits of his own satirical creations are exposed by the real people he’s satirizing. It was sheer coincidence, but I watched “Mountainhead” the day the beef between America’s two most preeminent vainglorious dolts spilled out into public. Discovering that feud right after finishing this movie sent me right through the looking glass, wondering which way was up, feeling helpless.