Magic Mountains (2020)

Directed by: Urszula Antoniak | 81 minutes | crime, drama | Actors: Marcin Dorocinski, Hannah Hoekstra, Maria Maj, Thomas Ryckewaert

Successful writer and part-time misanthrope Lex can’t bear the fact that his muse Hannah has left him. One more time he asks his ex and former climbing buddy to go on an adventure in the Tatra Mountains. As Lex, Thomas Ryckewaert playing the vinegar piss, says to her: you left me, this time I want to leave you. If this doesn’t sound ominous enough, a third person comes into play, mountain guide Voytek (Marcin Dorocinski). Before the three even take a step into the mountains, you know that Lex and Hannah’s poisoned relationship makes an already reckless venture all the more dangerous. The compact telefilm ‘Magic Mountains’ is a relationship drama and thriller in one that drags itself soured to the mountaintop.

The Polish-Dutch director Urszula Antoniak has achieved her greatest success to date with ‘Nothing Personal’ (2009), four Golden Calves and various international prizes. This Dutch-Irish production tells the story of a grieving young woman who moves to Ireland without a plan and moves in with a hermit. This fact results in an extremely sultry whole that you can never quite put your finger on. This fascination for tension and contrasts between people in desolate places who attract each other despite everything, is characteristic of Antoniak’s work. The fatalistic ‘Magic Mountains’ also thrives on confrontations at the cutting edge. Hannah and Lex seem equal in wit and a thirst for adventure, but at the same time this puts a bomb under their relationship that has actually already exploded. Now it’s mainly about collecting shards and surviving in the mountains.

As for the sometimes stifling tension between spouses, Antoniak could shake hands with American-Russian director Julia Loktev. In Loktev’s ‘The Loneliest Planet’ (2011), a young couple travels through an inhospitable part of Georgia, without a guide, and encounters a situation that irrevocably changes the relations between the two. Loktev’s film takes the time to absorb this incident during the journey and barely leaves the ensuing sweltering atmosphere. Although Antoniak occasionally manages to approach this kind of tension in ‘Magic Mountains’ cleverly, it is little ambiguous from the start how things stand. Or can this story mainly be traced back to a fantasy of an ambitious writer?

You wonder why Hannah is going with the obsessive and vengeful Lex at all, especially if it’s your ex. What was their relationship like before it broke up? Isn’t that possibly a more explosive film? One that Loktev did a favor with by talking about “the middle” of a relationship. Not only the shared strengths but also each other’s weaknesses have not yet been decided. So, despite a few highly acted scenes and ambiguous point of views, the extremely measured ‘Magic Mountains’ fails to come close to the blistering magic of Antoniak’s earlier work.