Jeff Goldblum stars as a charismatic lobotomist on an oddball roadtrip across 1950s America in The Mountain, the latest work of madness and magic from cinematic iconoclast Rick Alverson.

Somewhere in middle America, a lost young man by the name of Andy (Tye Sheridan) yearns for escape. Ignored by his figure-skating father (Udo Kier) and long abandoned by his mother, Andy’s constrained universe is blown open by the arrival of Dr Fiennes (Jeff Goldblum), who hires Andy to be his assistant. The two form an unlikely duo as Dr Fiennes shops his services from asylum to asylum, but when they fall into the orbit of Jack (Denis Lavant), a French mystic with delusions of grandeur, the stage is set for wholesale breakdown.

Writer/director Rick Alverson has never shied away from strangeness, but in The Mountain he may have delivered his weirdest yet warmest film to date. A work of jet-black humour and unexpected beauty, The Mountain offers an unforgettable vision of American cultural collapse, where the search for meaning breeds insanity and true sanity is just a lobotomy away.

“A beautiful, challenging, and altogether singular portrait of America’s fractured identity… a somber and lyrical achievement.” – IndieWire