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10/19/2017 12:01 AMRated PG-13
If any two actors can hold an audience’s attention by spending most of a film on a snowy mountain inside a plane’s wreckage, talking and surviving on melted ice and cookies, it certainly is Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. The two have notable experience playing characters in dire circumstances, such as Winslet plunging into the freezing waters during Titanic (she gets another chance here), and Elba working on the gritty back streets of London in TV’s Luther. Their chemistry together The Mountain Between Us, based on the novel by Charles Martin, doesn’t resemble some of their other film roles (Winslet in The Reader, Elba in The Dark Tower), but rather they easily connect on screen, appearing comfortable in one another’s company.
In other words, they are in tune and in tandem, supported by a starkly magnificent landscape, and a lovable Labrador retriever—belonging to the deceased pilot, played by Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys, TV’s Masters of Sex)—who accompanies them on their journey and provides a sweet diversion from their dilemma. As Alex Martin, a photojournalist headed for her own wedding before the crash, Winslet plays an impulsive woman who relies on instinct to make decisions. Ben Bass, a neurosurgeon, has the resources within his cache to survive. He can improvise with objects from the crash and has survival techniques in place, it seems, for any unexpected trauma ahead. He also helps Alex make more thoughtful choices while she helps him unlock his troubled past.
Their reliance upon each other as suddenly the only people in their world creates a recipe for intimacy, which takes time and some life-threatening obstacles to develop. The getting there includes the challenges of light-blinding, wind-whipped mountains, a hungry cougar, hidden crevasses, and, of course, the transformation both undergo.
“The heart is nothing but a muscle,” Ben tells Alex at one point.
He will change that notion soon enough. Because of Winslet and Elba’s mutual ability to never overplay their lines, even the predictable becomes palatable, and the expected in their evolution toward interdependence seems fresh, uncomplicated, and necessary.
The dog, as dogs usually do, brings a lightness to the deadly mood. When Alex tries to strike out on her own and calls for the dog to follow, she says, “Let’s go. He’s probably going to eat you anyway.” Then, later, Ben asks the dog, “You wouldn’t eat me, would you?” It’s as if director, Hany Abu-Assad (The Idol, Omar), knew that the audience would worry about whether the dog’s life would eventually be in jeopardy, but dispels that horror with humor.
Some viewers may feel that spending a lengthy time in close quarters with two struggling survivors would feel static, but at least they aren’t trapped for 127 hours like James Franco in his 2010 film. The Mountain often plays like a theater production, especially a full act of interior shots in the plane’s cabin, but Winslet and Elba maintain the intensity needed for such a piece. And, their tenacity (plus the dog) prevents them from sinking into despondency.
Without giving up the ending, the last moment streaks by in a flash, without completing the action. It seems meant to lend an unfinished quality to their story, keeping them in motion, or simply reinforcing how trauma forever changes a person.
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