THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL - Here is a movie that seems the perfect analogue of its soundtrack, a trippy mirage provided by one Sven Grunberg. We're in the snow-capped mountains, where a police inspector is called to a remote hotel - murders have been happening, it seems. Or maybe not, but then again... etc. It's difficult to watch a movie that at one point involves a dying robot / alien who resembles a less bald Howard Devoto and feel like you can be clear about anything, really. What is clear, or rather what is striking, is the visual style, a shifting, shimmering neon-noir that out-Manns Mann by several years (it was made in 1979 but feels so out of time) and transforms its setting into something that recalls a shadowy pop-art aquarium. This film is big on enigma; those mountains in the distance remind me of the crags of 'Picnic At Hanging Rock', earthen rocks that somehow pulsate with eerie life. You can struggle to make sense of what from one angle is an Agatha Christie chamber piece warped into the contours of freaky Euro sci-fi, but in the end it is not so unyielding, it does give up something of its secrets; at its heart is a social commentary about the dangers of totalitarianism, and can you expect anything less from a film that so obviously marches to the beat of its own drum?
 |