Following up “Succession” is a daunting feat — so much so that it’s best to consider the HBO film “Mountainhead” as additional of a palate-cleanser than a subsequent act. Written and directed by “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, “Mountainhead” might share a milieu (the ultra-rich) and a comic book e-book rhythm (fast, verbose, profane) with the lavishly acclaimed drama, however it’s so much a lot much less daring by design. Armstrong wrote the script in a matter of weeks, and most of the movement is confined, playlike, to the namesake alpine retreat. As if to ship a message to the viewers, “Mountainhead” even takes that least prestigious of varieties: the made-for-TV movie, airing on the ultimate day of this 12 months’s Emmy eligibility window — like a pupil handing of their homework correct on the deadline.
If one receives that message and items expectations accordingly, then “Mountainhead” has so much to produce. Positive, its 109 minutes may be a strategy for Armstrong to exorcise the ultimate traces of “Succession” from his system. (“Succession” mainstays Mark Mylod, Will Tracy, Lucy Prebble and others are all credited as govt producers.) Nonetheless “Mountainhead” has its private focus: the dangerous affect of know-how and the man-children who administration it, as if the Roys of “Succession” have been modified by a quartet of Lukas Matssons. Alexander Skarsgård’s self-made entrepreneur was largely utilized in distinction to the grownup Roy children’s inherited, unearned wealth; in “Mountainhead,” the work itself takes coronary heart stage, even when its penalties are out of sight and out of ideas for its characters.
“Mountainhead” posits the existence of a sort of billionaire fraternity referred to as the Brewsters, who’ve descended upon Utah for his or her semi-regular poker evening time. On the eve of this bro maintain, Venis (Cory Michael Smith, of “Saturday Evening time” and “Might December”), the Zuckerberg-like CEO of social media agency Traam, has launched a model new, deepfake-enabling perform that’s lit a worldwide bonfire of misinformation. Venis jokes that he must reply by posting “fuuck,” with two U’s; his hangers-on sycophantically snort, while the model new perform stokes sectarian violence by eroding prospects’ means to tell true from false.
Jeff (Ramy Youssef) is the inventor of an AI know-how that represents “the therapy for info-cancer” to Traam’s “4chan on fuckin’ acid.” (The small print listed below are hazy at best; it’s the symbolism that’s important.) Nonetheless even supposing Jeff is the Brewster most burdened with a conscience, he’s nonetheless a lot much less concerned with Venis’ ethical overreach than his shading Jeff for an absence of “founder energy” on a high-profile podcast. Nearer to residence, Jeff’s billions can’t buy the fidelity of his girlfriend Hester (Hadley Robinson), who’s taken off for an orgy-adjacent gathering in Mexico. “Just because of us have intercourse at a celebration doesn’t indicate it’s a intercourse event,” she not-really-reassures him. Rounding out the foursome are financier Randall (Steve Carell), who’s in denial about his terminal most cancers prognosis, and host Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), who’s derisively generally called Souper, as in soup kitchen — on account of his comparatively paltry nine-figure fortune makes him “the poorest billionaire throughout the sport.”
You may need already picked up on some echoes throughout the prior paragraphs of synopsis. Souper’s self-pity mimics Tom Wambsgans’ analysis of a $5 million fortune as “the poorest rich explicit individual in America” and “the world’s tallest dwarf”; Jeff’s jealousy of Hester remembers Connor Roy’s (worthwhile) makes an try to buy the loyalty of his paid-escort-turned-wife Willa. Comparisons to “Succession” may be inevitable solely a pair years after its finale, nonetheless “Mountainhead” moreover earns them.
Nonetheless “Mountainhead” seems outward along with once more. I’ll confess to screening the movie not prolonged after ending “Careless People,” former Fb govt Sarah Wynn-Williams’s tell-all regarding the inside workings of that agency throughout the 2010s. Venis’ entire indifference in the direction of the chaos he’s triggered, and his repudiation of obligation for it, is completely in step with how Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and their colleagues responded to potential come-to-Jesus moments similar to the 2016 election or the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. Likewise, Randall’s obsession with going “post-human” to dwell out eternity in our on-line world comes from the an identical denial of demise that leads figures like Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson to hunt extreme, usually ghoulish strategy of extending their life. Money should buy so much; why not immortality?
In several phrases, I’m compelled by Armstrong’s analysis of plutocrats’ broken psychology, notably when their riches come from “disruption” and “innovation.” I’m a lot much less compelled by the idea these people are capable of intimate friendship — to not point out that they’d be buddies with each other. It’s amusing to take a look at these males engage in homosocial rituals like scrawling their internet worths on their bare chests; there’s even a ceremony for when one Brewster surpasses the other within the one metric that seems to matter to them. For the same causes, it’s moreover unconvincing after they profess to care about one another. Armstrong wished a goal to get these of us within the an identical room, nonetheless trustworthy affection isn’t a plausible one.
As a film barely than a set, “Mountainhead” doesn’t have the time to cultivate the psychological nuance or interpersonal dynamics that made the Roys so indelible. (This partly explains the much more established solid, who can be found with gravitas barely than slowly assemble their roles proper right into a calling card.) As an alternative, “Mountainhead” goes all-in on farce, steering Venis’ callousness, Jeff’s objections, Hugo’s insecurity and Randall’s desperation to their inevitable combustion stage. Of the 4, Randall comes closest to some kind of pathos alongside along with his frantic denial of the inevitable, nonetheless when he offhandedly labels Earth a “sturdy starter planet,” it’s the Muskian grandiosity that bears the comic load.
Armstrong seems to intuit the inherent strengths (velocity, focus) and weaknesses (emotion, depth) of his current medium. The ambition of “Mountainhead” is manner lower than diagnosing the underlying dysfunction of the privileged few who run the world, settling for putting their dysfunction on caustically hilarious present. Nonetheless with biting references to moral philosophy, “Ayn Bland” and, in an notably bleak second, Jamal Khashoggi, “Mountainhead” has the sharpness and erudition to hit its nearer objective.
“Mountainhead” is in the mean time streaming on Max and may air on HBO on Might thirty first at 8 p.m. ET.
