Is it possible to make a compelling film without a single likeable character? It’s a proposition that Jesse Armstrong, acclaimed creator of TV shows like Peep Show and Succession, tests in his feature-length directorial debut, Mountainhead. A portrait of four of the richest – and worst – men on the planet; it is also a psychological experiment in how far you can extend gallows humour.
Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) – known to his friends as Soup Kitchen, or just Soups, due to his status as “the poorest billionaire in the game” – has built a giant modernist lair, called Mountainhead, in the foothills of the Rockies. It’s a folly, but it’s his turn to host poker night and he’s out to impress. His guests include Randall (Steve Carell), the group’s pretentious “papa bear”, whose mind is obsessing over transhumanism after a terminal cancer diagnosis. There’s also Jeff (Ramy Youssef), an AI genius who is playing up his cynicism to fit in, and Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the world’s richest man, who is about as well-adjusted as real-world holders of that title. Their weekend away from the rat race of oligarchy is described, alternatively, as a “razz fest” and an “intellectual salon”.
But while they pick at the turbot (obeying a strict maxim: “no deals, no meals, no high heels”), the world is falling apart. Venis’s platform, Tram, has released a new tool that allows users to create highly realistic deepfakes. It has precipitated the rapid collapse of civilization, as rioters take to the streets and world leaders are assassinated. At Mountainhead, insulated from all this, the group simply experience the ratatat of breaking news push notifications. “Should I cancel the DJ out of respect?” Soups asks. Instead, the group indulge in a fantasy of communally solving the problem that they have created. As the fascistic temperature within Mountainhead rises, the interpersonal rivalries – held together despite thinly repressed jealousies – begin to fray.
Armstrong has always been good at appearing to predict the near future while, actually, illuminating the present. The fact that the release of Mountainhead coincides with scenes in which the incumbent President, meeting his South African counterpart in the Oval Office, played crude but incendiary viral videos as a diplomatic tool, will only raise its salience. The apocalyptic scenario feels increasingly plausible. Just log on to what was once Twitter (actually, don’t but take my word for it) and you’ll be greeted by a flood of AI video content, with users marvelling at the medium’s progression. The battle to discern what’s fake and what’s real is very much on.
What Mountainhead skewers is the tragedy of the men (and they are, overwhelmingly, men) that we are leaving this ethical debate to. “If we end the nation state,” Soups announces, as their saviour complex spirals, “now we’re making memories.” In some ways, it’s not a radical departure for Armstrong: Succession was, after all, a series about the super-rich behaving in largely reprehensible ways. But over the course of four seasons, chinks of pathos slipped through the dark comedy. With Mountainhead a blackness rapidly descends. “The UN is up his ass for stoking a f***ing race war,” Jeff observes drily of his dining companions. For some, it will be too bleak.
But the quality of the writing and that quartet of central performances – Cory Michael Smith must now be going head-to-head with Patrick Schwarzenegger to play Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho remake – sustain the tension. The film is building towards a frenzied climax (not quite the “tactical cum shedding” that Venis indulges in, every two hours) that will induce gasps and laughter. Armstrong has always had a good eye for dynamics that create a simmering camaraderie – from Mark and Jeremy in Peep Show, to the Roy siblings of Succession – and this crew of preening tycoons is another fine addition. Among them, Schwartzman’s hapless Soups is given the best lines, but all the performances are entirely credible and entirely terrifying.
It takes a decent chunk of its 109-minute runtime to warm-up, and there will be some for whom it is too merciless, but Mountainhead is an exquisite modern satire. Most alarmingly, it might not even be satire at all, such is the current fusion of power, capital and the manosphere. Whether this is a stark warning for the future or just a yowl for the present is all that remains to be seen.
Dir: Jesse Armstrong. Starring: Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef. 109 minutes
‘Mountainhead’ streams from 31 May on HBO and Max in the US, and from 1 June on Sky and Now in the UK
