By Michael Marano
The performances in “Mountains” are stunning and Monica Sorelle’s confident direction heralds a new and impressive talent.
MountainsDirected by Monica Sorelle. Haitian Creole, English and Spanish with English subtitles. Premieres at the Coolidge Corner Theater on August 30. Screening at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston on September 12.
Atibon Nazaire in a scene from Mountains.
Ken Loach says this The old oak (Art protection Critics) will be his last film, so there is a real need to fill the politically progressive cinematic void he leaves behind. In a way, Monica Sorelle’s debut film, Mountainsenters Loach’s territory. The narrative tackles social issues: gentrification, immigration, wealth inequality, the working class, race, and what urban geographer David Harvey calls “accumulation by dispossession” (basically, rich arseholes stealing your city and your sense of community).
Monica Sorelles Mountains enters Loach’s turf. But … unfortunately her first attempt is not quite enough.
This is a kitchen sink drama (shot mostly in Creole with subtitles) about a Haitian-American guy named Xavier (played by Atibon Nazaire) whose job it is to demolish houses and small businesses in Miami’s Little Haiti; these properties are cleared to make way for luxury condos and high-end mansions. He’s living the American dream – by destroying the urban infrastructure that gives him access to the American dream. This is a guy who is sawing off the branch he’s sitting on. The shots of Xavier in half-demolished and/or abandoned urban death zones convey this idea beautifully.
Xavier dreams of getting a bigger piece of the pie – for himself and his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier), a seamstress who should have her own sewing room, and for his son Junior (Chris Renois), a college dropout who wants to make it as a stand-up comedian. He has his eye on a bigger and nicer house in the neighborhood, but his job is part of the economic system that makes the house he wants increasingly unaffordable. His ambition is a Chinese finger trap. The more he tries, the less he succeeds in escaping the confines of his situation. Unfortunately, this is also the case in the film itself.
On one hand, the shots of Xavier’s, his friend’s and his family’s homes, as well as the aforementioned demolition sites, are very tangible (you can taste the dust and splintered wood burning in the Florida heat). But this dose of everyday reality is not used effectively as a backdrop for a fully realized drama. The film spins storylines and subplots, but they fizzle out. Yes, real life doesn’t tie up loose ends neatly. But Mountains does not convey a sense of completion. Each episode revolves around itself, and for a film that is about how a community (and perhaps even a way of life) dies out, the endings must feel like endings. Mountains tries to offer its audience a “slice of life.” But it offers “slices of life,” and these are simply not as satisfying as they should be.
Despite these shortcomings Mountains has many virtues. The performances are excellent across the board. As Xavier, Nazaire is a big, bear-like, lovable goofball. Yet Nazaire uses calm and silence to portray the character to devastating effect: he communicates volumes with a wordless look or by tilting his head forward a tenth of a degree (especially when faced with not-so-minor aggression from colleagues or hearing news of the unrest in his home country of Haiti). You can taste good the pride Anozier’s Esperance takes in her cooking, her sewing, and her home. And when Anozier brings that sense of pride, that down-to-earthness, to a rather brilliantly written moment of code-switching, the effect is devastating. Renois is chasing his own version of the American dream as Junior, but Dad doesn’t agree with his son’s version. Renois deftly walks an emotional tightrope while living with his skeptical parents while working on his comedy.
Xavier and his family are double refugees. They escaped the oppression of the unrest in Haiti, but now have to deal with the repressive and gentrifying affluence in the US. The real estate agents and developers in Miami are colonizers. This feeling that one’s own struggles never end is the thematic backbone of Mountainswhose title comes from the Haitian proverb “Behind mountains lie more mountains.” Unfortunately, due to its many incomplete and unsatisfying storylines (except perhaps at the end), the film never manages to climb the first mountain. Nevertheless, the performances in Mountains are astonishing, and Sorelle’s assured direction heralds a new and impressive talent. The next mountain she climbs will likely be extraordinary.
Author, personal trainer, editor and writing coach Michael Marano (www.BluePencilMike.com) has been writing about films for 34 years.
