The Mountain Between Us

Seen at the Roxy Cinema in Nowra, NSW

Cecil says: A moving trip to the cinema for us as this was our last visit to the wonderful Roxy Cinema in Nowra before our move away from New South Wales. The film was gripping, but not as moving as the feeling of this being our last trip to Nowra.

The plot boils down to Kate Winslet and Idris Elba getting stuck at a US airport because of an impending storm, but Alex (Winslet) having the guile to get the two of them onto a private plane to get to their destination. Trouble is the guy who’s flying the plane has a heart attack and the plane comes down on a snowy mountain peak, and the two survivors (Winslet and Elba) plus pilot’s dog, spend most of the rest of the film trying to get down from the mountain in one piece.

The dog has only a minor role, though it does get into scrapes itself as it comes face to face with a cougar and seems to get itself lost at inconvenient times – and then reappears out of the blue in a way that made me wonder if something got lost on the cutting room floor. I’m not even sure really what the dog adds to the plot, or why the script writer felt it was needed.

Surely there was enough to get your teeth into dealing just with the Winslet/Elba relationship as it developed, though I’m not sure the chemistry between the two protagonists really worked on the screen. Was that a casting issue? Or just that the film didn’t really get inside what exactly made these two bond. Sure, helping each other survive will often bring two humans closer than anything else can, but I just didn’t believe in the ‘love’ that developed between these two.

The idea of getting down a mountain alive has been done before (there was the film years ago about the survivors of the Chilean plane crash in the Andes) and this film did a nice job of raising some of the dilemmas you’d face if it happened to you. And most of it felt believable.

But I couldn’t help thinking, when they reached the house half way down, there would have been a clearer track to get to the house. Otherwise how would the people who built it in the first place have got the materials up there? So any dramas and near-death experiences from that moment on felt a little bit far-fetched.

The film was engaging, though, and gave us enough ammunition for a good post-film post-mortem.

***

Bea says: Yes, I agree mostly with Cecil on this one – a willing suspension of disbelief was certainly required.  However, I don’t mind the survivor genre, as I quite like to think about what I would do in the situation.  In this film, Kate Winslet’s character took a lot of risks, and Idris Elba’s was too cautious, which I think was supposed to provide the chemistry between them (it didn’t).

I did think that perhaps the characters might have looked a bit more – unwashed – in the sex scene, and that they also might have looked colder and more uncomfortable as the cabin had holes in the roof and poor heating, and they had not eaten for a while…. perhaps I’m getting old, but I don’t think I’d have looked as glamorous as Winslet did in the same situation.  But I did try to suspend that disbelief as disaster followed disaster as they descended the mountain. 

What this film did better, for about the last ten minutes, was examine how hard it is to fit back into normal life and society after a life-changing experience like surviving a plane crash in a remote location, and although the ending was a bit romantic and twee, it satisfied me.  Winslet and Elba both did what they could with this film, and were able to make it watchable.

**.5

The Dressmaker

Seen at the beautiful old movie theatre in Roseville on Sydney's North Shore

Cecil says: Great opening shot, looking down on a coach heading straight up a dry road alongside the striated lines of dry fields. You can tell a film’s going to be good when it catches the attention so immediately. And don’t miss Kate Winslet’s fantastic opening line about a minute in…

I loved this film, which we saw in the wonderful old Roseville Cinema on Sydney’s North Shore. I want to see it again, it was that good and had so many layers to it. One person we went with thought it reminded her of Unforgiven, but for me it was more Strictly Ballroom, with its period piece setting and its tragi-comic story.

The audience was 95% women, which rather surprised me. Sure the costumes were mostly aimed at making the women in small country town Australia look glamorous, and dress-making was a major theme of the film, but there was so much more to it than that.

I loved some of the icons of 1950s Australia. The Golden Fleece petrol sign was still a feature on Australian roads when I was a little kid here in 1967 so that was a nice memory jolt for me (when did Golden Fleece disappear?); the ‘elixirs’ people used to consume were still around too when I was small, though they were on their last legs in the way Almanacs and hand wringers were.

Kate Winslet is brilliant in the main role. The ever-present Hugo Weaving looked to be enjoying himself as the cross-dressing copper, though maybe taken a little bit OTT by Jocelyn Moorhouse, who wrote the screenplay and directed.

Sarah Snook was wonderfully disguised as Gertrude Pratt at first and it took me a few scenes to realise she was the same actress as the one playing Anna in the excellent ABC drama on TV at the moment The Beautiful Lie.

Schools are probably just as cruel places today to be different from the crowd as they were back then, and the film does a good job with black & white to take us back to Tilly’s school days 25 years earlier. But the film shows how school playground cruelty extends out into the community too, so the people of Dungatar are an evil bunch, upon whom Tilly slowly takes out her revenge.

****.5

Bea says:  

I went in expecting a gentle period drama, and was very surprised to find myself watching a quirky, rather dark, fairytale-style story of revenge, sorrow, laughs, and laying the past to rest. 

Kate Winslett as Tilly (with an excellent Australian accent) returns to the home town in the country she left years before under a cloud, moving back in with her elderly, feisty mother (fantastic to see Judy Davis in fine form again), who at first appears to be demented but as the film develops shows herself to be in full possession of her faculties.  

As the story unravels in layers we meet the characters of the town, and find out what really happened to send Tilly away all those years ago.  A romance is kindled, but ends tragically, and Tilly's return acts as something of a catalyst in the lives of many of the women and men of the town with all sorts of unexpected consequences.  Once all the ghosts are laid to rest, Tilly leaves again in spectacular fashion.  

This is a great Australian film in the tradition of Baz Luhrmann and all those quirky, slightly dark tales (like Cecil I was reminded of Strictly Ballroom and Muriel's Wedding) - and like Luhrmann and those films, it won't be for everyone (there were definitely mixed views in our group!.  It was perhaps in danger of  being too lurid at times, and the town definitely looked like a set to me, which rather detracted from entering into the suspension of belief.  Still if you like dark and interesting, it's a great watch.

***1/2