The Mountain Between Us delivers action, adventure, and breathtaking visuals. It also tries to deliver a love story and some drama.
Complete strangers, Alex and Ben, find themselves in extreme circumstances after a plane crash leaves them stranded on a mountain. Alex (Kate Winslet) is an adventurous and resourceful photo journalist. Ben (Idris Elba) is a pragmatic neurosurgeon. The pair has to learn to trust each other in order to survive the treacherous mountainous terrain and severe weather conditions.
Alex and Ben are very literally thrown into their adventure very early in the film. This happens in an incredibly choreographed crash scene, which is a masterfully claustrophobic dance between camera and actors, and which also includes a dog! Alex and Ben are in continuous danger from this point on with the pace of their perils fueling steady suspense.
Although the tragedy birthed romance fails to impress, the cinematography, especially of the survival journey, was skillfully directed by the award-winning Mandy Walker. Regardless of having previous experience shooting in exceptional weather and terrain; Australia (2008), Tracks (2013) and Jane Got a Gun (2015) are set in dry dessert climates, Walker told Indiewire that she faced and welcomed the new challenges of shooting in freezing temperatures and high altitudes. Once again, her wide scenic landscapes captured the locations beautifully. She captured the contradictions of the awe inspiring and yet deadly snow-covered mountains.
My disappointment with this film lies not in its execution. With two-time Oscar nominated director, Hany Abu-Assad, and skilled actors and director of photography, it is beautifully shot and performed. Instead, I find myself growing incessantly disturbed by certain a lack of responsibility with which romantic relationships are written. And, if responsibility can’t be taken for the portrayal of love, then it should at least be taken for the art of story telling.
Winslet and Elba are not only physically beautiful together, they deliver great on-screen chemistry, although they could have been given much more to work with in terms of character and relationship development. Their characters are established very early on in the film, Alex “follows her gut”; Ben thinks things through and “plays it safe.” This creates some tension between the two. After this, the rest of their interactions offer little revelation.
The bond that develops between these two characters is quite unfortunately treated without nuance. Where the circumstance could have pushed these characters to their edge and to deep self-questioning, discovery, and growth; it is only used to posit their relationship as another example of low-dimensional Hollywood romance. Alex and Ben start as strangers, by the end of their time together, they have depended on each other for survival and crossed some boundaries, but they still don’t know much about each other. How could they possibly know that they want to love one another? Managing to not die together does not necessarily mean that you will manage to actually live your life together.
