Is “Mountainhead” the satire that will settle the score with the “tech bros”?
Released on June 1st via streaming, “Mountainhead” is Jesse Armstrong's directorial debut. The creator of “Succession” takes on tech oligarchs this time around. At a time when many of them gravitate toward President Trump, his satire was eagerly awaited by the American press.
The jargon of tech's bigwigs is a language all its own. In Mountainhead, released June 1st on Max, the ultra-rich are barely comprehensible—but the viewer still perfectly guesses their sinister intentions.
A quartet of characters are at the heart of the feature film. Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the richest man in the world, has just released a video-generating tool ( perfect deepfakes ). Randall (Steve Carell) is the patriarch of the group, for whom a few ill-digested quotes from various philosophers serve as wisdom. Jeff (Ramy Youssef), another artificial intelligence magnate, has created a tool to filter the real from the fake online.
Finally, Hugo (Jason Schwartzman) is mocked for the small scale of his meditation app. He is nicknamed "souperman" or simply "soup" by the other three: despite all his efforts, his fortune remains estimated at $521 million, while his friends are all multi-billionaires.
Yet he is the host of the tech bros' mountain getaway, who find themselves in a luxurious chalet in Utah called “Mountainhead” – in reference to a novel by the ultra-liberal Ayn Rand . “The weekend turns out to be relaxing at first
Courrier International
