The Mountain - الجبل

Trailer of "The Mountain"

The latest movie by Ghassan Salhab, The Mountain, follows the style of The Last Man with the minimum use of conversations and reduce the cast to almost one actor with all the difficulties that ensue when producing under such decision. The movie tells the story of a man who decides to isolate himself to concentrate on wirting in some hotel room in a remote mountain region. The isolation is nearly complete with TV, phones and other means of communication cut-off, but also the window closed down, hence loosing the sense of day and night. Fadi Abi Samra who plays the leading role impersonates the isolated man situation in a very convincing way. Ghassan Salhab manages another time to escape from the cliché themes originating from movies in our region to draw fictional scenes that can be set anywhere (despite some elements that would relate to Lebanon such as radio news stories). Some ideas in the movie can be seen echoed in other features like A Lost Man which tells the story of a man who decided to run away from his country, or The One Man Village a documentary where a single man lives alone isolated  in a far away village. Salhab was able to shed the light on this issue in a new angle, tickling the memory of the viewer of similar moments of loneliness, and the corresponding audio and visual sensations that follows. This film is not a general public movie, nonetheless, it will provide a new interesting experience to the viewer.