Monica Sorelle’s feature debut, Mountains, is refreshingly simple. It follows demolition worker Xavier (Abiton Nazaire), a Haitian immigrant living in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami. He’s under the thumb of an unfeeling boss, tearing down the homes he could easily call neighbors, but between demolitions, filmed with a quiet matter-of-factness that befits the act’s somber implications, Xavier lives an equally quiet life with his wife, Esperance (Sheila Anozier), and his son, Junior (Chris Renois). Their story isn’t unfamiliar: a first-generation immigrant family trying to carve out a place for themselves in a world that feels increasingly unwelcoming. Xavier’s Little Haiti neighborhood is quickly becoming a hotspot for gentrification, and soon, his and Esperance’s quest for a small slice of the pie of progress is uncertain. It’s ironic, then, at least at the beginning of the film, that Xavier doesn’t seem fully conscious of his contributions to his own marginalization.
When Xavier tells Esperance that he wants to buy a larger house for the family, they’re suddenly placed squarely in competition with the encroaching white, millennial population looking for their own cheaper opportunities. This isn’t to say that Sorelle paints these figures as monsters; her feeling for the socio-economic crisis at play in this story is too assured and generous to take such an easy narrative road. But it’s a shame that the irony at play here, of Xavier having a hand in his own oppression, however indirect or passive, can’t go much further than what we can plainly see from the film’s start (though the inclusion of an assistant realtor of Haitian descent at an open house is a smart bit of knife-twisting).
This might be due to the fact that intrusions by gentrifiers are peripheral, at most, like when Xavier and Esperance attend an open house. Sometimes, they feel like intruders, like in a scene at the very end of the film, but mostly, we see them as specters on the margins of the frame. In these moments, you feel the uneasy weight of economic precarity breeze through Xavier and Esperances’ lives, quickly so that it doesn’t topple them, but with enough force that they can’t miss it. There’s something to be said about the autonomous nature of this community, of it being able to stand on its own feet and not have to be overly contextualized by an active, visible “other.” On one hand, this is arguably Mountain’s biggest strength. Sorelle’s perspective favors ambiguities and complexities that mirror an immigrant experience balanced precariously on the border of ambition and resignation, of fighting for more, or being happy with, even proud of, what you already have.
But on the other hand, one wishes there was a bit of bite in this story, a bluntness that would cut through the quiet, though intelligently calibrated, profundity of the family’s central conflict. There’s some welcome tension in the relationship between Xavier and Junior, though its schematic dimensions, of Xavier’s adherence to tradition and pursuit of economic security clashing with Junior’s free-spirited lifestyle, leave a little to be desired. As an aspiring stand-up comedian — and an excellent one, at that; the miseries of most cinematic representations of stand-up comedy are, mercifully, nowhere to be found in Mountains — Junior’s choices, including dropping out of college, represent a casual dismissal of Xavier’s and Esperance’s sacrifice that Xavier finds hard to accept. Sorelle’s sensitive direction ensures that this conflict never boils over into overwrought histrionics, but there is something more emotionally piercing missing.
Inevitably, Xavier goes through a personal awakening as to what his demolition work means to his community. The imminent closing of a historic local church is a big part of this, and the community-wide celebration of its legacy in the neighborhood (crucially, even death is seen as an excuse, perhaps a demand, to celebrate life) spurs Xavier’s own eventual protest at work, when he arrives at a new demolition site, only to find out that he has to demolish the very house he had wanted to buy for his family. This final bit of irony is smartly cut down by a stream of celebratory Haitians dancing in the street in front of the ill-fated house. If one can’t reverse the tides of “progress” alone, perhaps it’s best to ride the sympathetic wave of people trying to survive it together.
DIRECTOR: Monica Sorelle; CAST: Karina Bonnefil, Yaniel Castillo, Serafin Falcon, Tibon Nazaire; DISTRIBUTOR: Music Box Films; IN THEATERS: August 16; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 35 min.
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