Jesse Armstrong has returned with what feels like a horribly addictive feature-length spin-off episode from the extended Succession Cinematic Universe – though without Succession cast members. It is set in a luxurious Utah megalodge which winds up resembling theDr Strangelovewar room, mixed with the apartment from Hitchcock’s Rope. Mountainhead is a super-satirical chamber piece about the deranged, cynical and facetious mindset of the uber-wealthy, the kind of people who think about ancient Rome every day, though not about Nero and his violin. It may not have the dramatic richness of Armstrong’s TV meisterwerk while the pure testosterone of this all-male main cast (minus anyShiv figure) is oppressive – though that is kind of the point. The pure density of weapons-grade zingers in the script is a marvel.
Our heroes are four unspeakable American tech plutocrats, a billionaire boys club with one mere centi-millionaire who isn’t up to “bill” status; this beta-male cuck of their peer group is nicknamed “Soup Kitchen” because of his poverty, and he is their eager host. They are exactly the kind of people with whom legacy media aristocrat Logan Roy (played inSuccessionby Brian Cox) would once grit his teeth and take meetings, vainly hoping for investment. These masters of the universe are getting together for an alpha bros’ hang-slash-poker-weekend, razzing and bantering with each other with deadly seriousness about their respective wealth levels, at this mega-lodge that is called Mountainhead. As one guest asks: “Is that like The Fountainhead? Your interior designer is Ayn Bland …?”
They are: Venis, played by Cory Michael Smith, a preening Elon Musk figure who has just dropped a whole new set of AI-creation tools to his social media platform which is allowing anyone to create explosively divisive deepfakes, and so the guys’ phones are now pinging with news of imminent global war.Steve Carellplays grey-haired Randall, the ageing member of the group, an OG investor and a sort of Peter Thiel type who is repressing thoughts about his cancer diagnosis, calling his doctor “stupid” and brooding about uploading his consciousness to the net as a posthuman. Ramy Youssef plays Jeff, the relative liberal of the group; he is a very un-Bezos Jeff, like a Biden-era Mark Zuckerberg with a touch of Nick Clegg. Jeff’s team have developed a filter allowing users to distinguish real content from fake which Venis wants to buy, maybe because it’s profitable, or maybe to suppress it. Jeff keeps acidly mocking his comrades in ways that will remind you of Shiv or maybe Roman. And Jason Schwarztman is Soup Kitchen, or Soups, who yearns pathetically to bring out a new meditation app.
As chaos spreads out there in the super-poor world, the guys – who in any case despise nation states with their tiresome regulatory interventions – discuss the need to “coup out” South American countries or even the US. Things get even darker from there. Throughout it all, the impossibly sophisticated backchat continues, like background radiation, with the guys competitively insisting on how hilarious it all is: “Nothing means anything – and everything’s funny!” Yet Venis earnestly insists his platform can save the world: “Once one Palestinian kid sees some really bananas content from one Israeli kid – it’s all over!” The guys are driven mostly by macho recklessness; they loathe “AI-doomism and decelerationist alarmism”.
So what happens when the chaos they’ve unleashed on the world’s systems actually impacts on them personally in their Mountainhead hideaway? Well, it’s a flaw in the film. At one point, Soups turns the tap on and no water comes out. How is this crisis going to work out? A little perfunctorily, as it happens. More than any comedy or even film I’ve seen recently, this is movie driven by the line-by-line need for fierce, nasty, funny punched-up stuff in the dialogue, and narrative arcs and character development aren’t the point. But as with Succession, this does a really good job of persuading you that, yes, this is what our overlords are really like.
Mountainhead is on HBO and Max from 31 May, and on Sky Cinema and NOW from 1 June.