Mountains
Monica Sorelle’s “Mountains” arrives on VOD at a time when the Republican nominees for President and Vice President are doubling down on vulgar lies about a Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio. You’d be better off spending your time contemplating the thoughtful storytelling in Sorelle’s film than the hateful words of hateful men. This is a film about the immigrant experience, as well as the struggle some parents find themselves in to build a life they want. “Mountains” hit me in my emotions, and is worth checking out.
Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) and Esperance (Sheila Anozier) are Haitian immigrants living in Little Haiti in Miami. Xavier works as a demolition worker, and dreams of a bigger house for he, his wife, and their adult son, Junior (Chris Renois), who still lives with them, but seems to have his own life going on. We watch Xavier as he works with a friend on a crew that may not value them as people; we watch as he tries to get his wife to go along with the idea of moving to a bigger home for them; and we see him struggle to connect with Junior, who seems to be wasting his life away. All the while, the area around him is changing, and the dreams he had seem to be slipping away.
What resonates the most for me in “Mountains” is the family dynamics in Xavier’s family, and the performances by Nazaire, Anozier and Renois. As someone who was an adult son who didn’t leave home until I got married in 2015, the relationship with Xavier and Junior was very familiar to me. My dad often saw me as someone with no direction in my life, especially considering my college degree did not translate to financial gain, I wasn’t secure enough financially to move out of the house, and I seemed to be wasting my life at a job with not much of a future. Some of that changed when he saw the friendships I’d cultivated at Regal during my hospitalization in 2007, but even then, I would not have blamed him for having those feelings afterwards, as well. We only follow Junior once in the film, and it’s when we see that his life may not be as hopeless as his father thinks, but where we can also see why he may not be comfortable sharing that with his father. It’s a wonderful one-off moment in the film that adds depth to everything around it.
Sorelle’s film focuses mostly on Xavier and his family, but we also get a sense of the community as a whole. If you don’t have the shared cultural experiences we see resonate with this community here, I don’t think one can quite understand the importance of that community to everyone in it. We see a celebration take place at night, and a young girl’s communion that brings out everyone in the neighborhood, and while I can certainly recognize having moments similar to this in my life, I also recognize that they were fleeting as life took us in different directions. For me, those types of gatherings were few and far between, however meaningful in the moment. For Xavier’s community, there’s something more being shared, and I enjoyed seeing that on screen.
“Mountains” is a film about looking off in the distance, and trying to make your way through life’s ups and downs, and moving towards something better for those most important to you. Sometimes, those hopes will always feel just out of reach, as society doesn’t really care about your hopes. This is something Xavier realizes in the end, and it’s one of the most painful endings to a movie this year.
