Firstly of “Mountainhead,” written and directed by Jesse Armstrong of “Succession” fame and premiering Saturday on HBO, three multibillionaire tech bros make their means by non-public aircraft, helicopter and SUV caravan to affix a fourth in an enormous modernist home on an remoted, snowy mountaintop for a weekend of poker and medicines — “no deals, no meals, no high heels.” One would possibly want for an avalanche, have been there something larger to fall on them.
Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the world’s richest man — think about Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg put in a blender, as maybe you’ve — instructions a social media web site with, anticipate it, 4 billion subscribers, and has simply launched new “content tools” that permit for tremendous high-res “unfalsifiable deep fakes.” In consequence, the sectarian world goes up in flames. Jeff (Ramy Youssef), a rival who had poached members of Venis’ group, has an AI algorithm able to filtering out the dangerous data which Venis, closing the digital barn door after the cow is out, desires to accumulate; however Jeff, for causes of revenue, energy and/or ego, shouldn’t be going to let it go.
Randall (Steve Carell), their gray-haired guru — they name him “Papa Bear,” although Jeff additionally dubs him “Dark Money Gandalf” — controls a number of worldwide infrastructure, together with army. Preoccupied along with his mortality — advised by his newest oncologist that his most cancers is incurable, he responds, “You are not a very intelligent person” — he’s hoping to add his consciousness to the grid, a risk Venis assures him is barely 5 years off so long as he can get his fingers on Jeff’s AI. The comparatively inoffensive Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), whose home it’s, hopes to increase the meditation app he created, into a life-style tremendous app — providing “posture correction, therapy and a brand new color” — along with his pals’ funding of “a b-nut,” i.e., a billion {dollars}. They name him “Souper,” for “soup kitchen,” as a result of he’s price solely $521 million. He’s the runt of the litter, and the comedy aid.
Jason Schwartzman performs Hugo, solely price half 1,000,000, who’s the comedic aid in “Mountainhead.”
(Macall Polay / HBO)
For no given purpose, they name themselves the Brewsters — maybe simply to allow them to crow “cock-a-doodle-brew.” They’re filled with themselves — “The great thing about me,” says Randall, “is that I know everyone and do everything” — and mainly insecure.
They rewrite their basic nihilism into the idea that their enterprise is nice for mankind, regardless of the precise human price. “You’re always going to get some people dead,” Randall says. “Nothing means anything,” Venis says, “and everything’s funny and cool.” (However he does miss his mom and, in a very creepy interlude, his child is introduced up the mountain for an uncomfortable minute.) In the one scene to take them out of the home, the 4 journey to the crest of a mountain, the place Hugo writes every man’s web price in lipstick on his chest, they don hierarchical headgear and shout, “Mountain god accelerator legacy manifestation!” into the valley beneath, every including a want. It’s, seemingly, one thing they’ve finished earlier than.
Randall name-checks philosophers — Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, Plato, Marcus Aurelius — he misunderstands to his benefit and drops references to the Catiline Conspiracy and the Battle of Actium to make base actions sound essential and dignified. He calls the president a “simpleton” — one assumes Armstrong is reflecting on the present one — however for all their energy, cash and affect, all of them lack knowledge. And if current years have taught us something, it’s that this stuff will not be mutually unique.
Venis thinks the violence engulfing the globe, which can’t contact him, might show cathartic; Randall is “excited about these atrocities.” They focus on taking on “failing nations” to “show them how it’s done.” (In maybe the movie’s funniest line, Hugo, who has been engaged on his home, muses, “I don’t know if I want to run Argentina on my own — not on the back of a major construction project.”) They commerce in gobbledygook phrases like “AI dooming and decelerationist alarmism,” “compound distillation effect” and “bootstrap to a corporate monarchy, cyber-state it to the singularity, eat the chaos,” which for all I do know is simply Armstrong quoting issues folks of this kind have really mentioned. It appears doable.
As the one one with a humorousness and a semblance of perspective, Jeff is essentially the most sympathetic of this poisonous crew. He tracks the worsening world state of affairs with some empathetic concern, however although he holds the important thing to finish the insanity, he doesn’t appear in a rush to show it. (Largely he’s involved along with his girlfriend, who’s in Mexico, not a lot due to the unrest, however as a result of he fears she’s having intercourse.) Nonetheless, he stands just a little aside, to his peril.
The primary half of the movie proceeds primarily as a play for 4 characters. Other than Hugo’s asking for “help with the cold cuts” or inquiring whether or not everybody’s cool with reusing plates, there’s a scarcely a line by which folks speak like folks; it’s all theatrical declaration. To some extent it matches the coldness of the quartet — they hug and hoot and sometimes categorical a droplet of emotion, however the friendship on which they insist is aggressive, transactional and illusory. They aren’t good firm, however for these of us lower than impressed by the entire “move fast and break things” factor, or not prepared to bow down earlier than ChatGPT and OpenAI or the precise tech billionaires deforming the world, there’s some enjoyable in watching them collapse. In some methods, “Mountainhead” (rhymes with “Fountainhead”) feels as a lot a public service as an leisure. So thanks for that, Jesse Armstrong.
When, within the farcical, action-oriented second half, some try to execute a … plot, they bumble and argue and push one another to the entrance. It’s an previous type of film comedy, and works just about as supposed.
