Mountainhead dropped at exactly the right time. Can the movie help us make sense of this moment?

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5 days ago

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HBO's Mountainhead is the latest satire to come from Jesse Armstrong, the creator behind Succession. And once again, billionaires take centre stage.
The film, now available to stream in Canada on Crave, follows a group of rich tech industry tycoons as they get together for a weekend retreat at a secluded estate. Meanwhile, beyond their walls there is a rolling international crisis that is only gaining steam.
Today on Commotion, culture critics Vinson Cunningham and Mike Isaac join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about how this new film offers insight into the very public feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, as well as the ongoing protests in Los Angeles.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: First of all, for anyone who's not seen the film Mountainhead, you should know that watching the entire thing feels like watching a nightmare; it just keeps getting worse and worse. For anyone who has not seen it, Vinson, tell us a little bit more about the premise and how it can maybe help us understand the relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Vinson: Yeah. It's directed by Jesse Armstrong, who created Succession, so obviously has an interest in this milieu. It's four billionaires in a house — a very expensive-looking, also disgusting-looking fortress — where they have, basically, a kind of bro retreat. They compare their net worth. They kind of talk about the fate of the world.
But the problem is that one of them, his name is Venis.… This may remind you of someone we've been talking about: he is in charge of a huge social network, and he has just released changes that essentially unleash AI, and all of its potential for dishonesty etc., onto the world of politics. And the world is kind of on fire. There's all kinds of political unrest because of this new technology that he has unleashed, kind of flippantly, on his social platform. And so these billionaires watching the world burn display all the hubris that you might imagine — "Should we do a coup? Should we take over? I think I could call the president." Their hubris is on 100 per cent as the world kind of melts around them. And we see every possible foible, flaw, evidence of sociopathy that you could imagine.
Elamin: Mike, this moment is, in a way, I think exactly what Jesse Armstrong intended this movie for, right? Because he pitched this movie to HBO in November, after Trump was elected. He wrote it in January and February, just as all these billionaires were behind Donald Trump as he gave his inauguration speech. And then he shot it in March and April, and it came out two weeks ago. You don't really get a movie on this kind of timeline very often, and you don't get something that is supposed to be this direct of a commentary. What does it add to your understanding of this moment?
Mike: I didn't even know that he did it on such a compressed timeline. That is really interesting to me. I think it's almost too perfect, because this stuff happens so quickly, it's hard to even parody it sometimes. Because the way that these guys act a lot of the time is sort of like Armando Iannucci saying, "I can't do Veep now because the current presidency is, like, too Veep," you know?... Which I agree with. I think it's very hard to do parody well right now. The way that tech is shifting so quickly, the way that these absurd moments become reality, and the way that a lot of these billionaires relate to the world can be really hard to do well in fiction and in media. I think Jesse did a pretty good job. It's almost explicitly too over the top and dark in a way that works.
One thing I will say is with the TV show Silicon Valley from HBO 10 years ago, these guys were kind of in on the joke out here. They laughed along with it because they're like, "Oh, it's ridiculous. They're parodying me," and a lot of the tech CEOs went and talked directly to the writers. I don't feel like they're in on the joke anymore. I feel like this is not one that's really going to resonate with them in the same way.