On the surface, Dutch filmmaker Jan-Willem van Ewijk’s Alpha. falls into the trap set out by most contemporary European festival circuit films. It’s a movie about alienation and grief, emphasized through towering cinematography and a strained central relationship. After the death of his mother, Rein (Reinout Scholten van Aschat) relocates to a small village in the Alps. He spends his days on the snowy peaks, barreling downward on the slopes in an almost constant flow into the abyss. His life is simple and quiet, until his father Gijs (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) shows up unannounced.
Negative space dominates the film’s compositions. Asymmetrical framing emphasizes alienation and distance between characters while an extremely distant camera often reduces them to ants eclipsed by the majestic Alps. Using the jagged lines of the mountains as a guide, the film leans into the power of nature to overwhelm and dominate. Though we understand the landscape as one controlled by and in service of humanity, it remains wild and uncontrollable. It inspires awe in the truest sense; a source of reverence and fear.
There’s a delicacy to Rein that makes him especially vulnerable to his extroverted and overwhelming father. Before his life is disrupted, we see hints of his fragility: a confrontation on a ski slope with an English-speaking foreigner immediately devolves into a dick-measuring contest that leaves Rein festering and incapable. Authority withers in his voice even as he tries to man up. We get the sense that this passivity was perhaps inherited from his mother, whose death still weighs on him heavily. And though she’s mostly discussed in passing, it’s clear through Rein’s interactions with his father that Rein was always closer to her; that he was shaped by her influence more than his other parent.
As a film about masculinity in crisis, Alpha. struggles to distinguish itself from films like Force Majeure, which handled the question with more imagination and humor. The competition between father and son orchestrated by the patriarch is marked by scenes of light coercion and unexpected violations of boundaries. As a show of ownership, Gijs often grabs at his adult son — wrestling him nude in the small bathroom, or hugging him violently in front of young women. While the movie, particularly in its first half, indulges in comedy and symbology, those instances often feel too obvious. And though it touches on elements of truth, it all feels overly familiar.
The film’s final act, though, takes the shape more of a survival film, as an avalanche leaves the father and son stranded. Alpha.‘s rather tame (though undeniably beautiful) compositions give way to more movement, and a staggering visceral experience of the elements. The mountains that once reached for the sky now seem claustrophobic in their expansiveness, and the environment that felt so liberating for Rein becomes increasingly oppressive and unwelcoming. Though these ideas feel rather self-evident given the location, cinematography by Douwe Hennink manages to tease out images that are still surprising and breathtaking.
And so, though just barely setting itself apart from the typical European festival film, Alpha. nonetheless succeeds in part due to its monumental images and the strength of its complex central performances. The battle between father and son might be a well-documented one, but both leads here bring an authenticity that helps sell the core familial tension. van Ewijk’s film savvily captures the ways that grief doesn’t always make us stronger or better, but can at least force us to assert our liveliness through violence and control.
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