3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): The Mountain Between Us

2017, Hany Abu-Hassad (The Courier) -- Netflix

I have had this in The Hopper since 2017, having always had a fondness and dislike (yes, cognitive dissonance) for "trapped in the mountains" movies since I saw Survive! as a kid in a drive-in in the 70s. But I knew this was about a man and a woman, initially strangers, trapped together after a plane crash. And knowing the way Hollywood movies go, putting a man and a woman alone on a mountain together means romance, and I was hesitant about that. I should have stuck with my gut feeling.

Ben (Idris Elba, The Wire), a neurosurgeon, and Alex (Kate Winslet, Contagion), a photojournalist, are flying out of Idaho; he for an emergency surgery in Baltimore and she to her wedding in NYC. A snowstorm cancels all the flights but she has an idea -- a charted small plane with a capable pilot who can reach Denver, outside the storm's reach, before it gets really bad, and then they can grab connecting flights. Except, he has a stroke and dies as they fly over the mountains in Utah. The plane crashes; the pilot's dog survives. So do Ben and Alex.

Alex  is injured and their food is running out; most of the pilot's stash of food was stored in the tail which was torn off as they crashed. Ben wants to wait it out, wait for rescue, but Alex is adamant nobody is looking for them as the pilot didn't file a flight plan. Sure, people will miss them but where would they begin? 

Eventually his optimism gives way to a desperate need to get somewhere with food. But where? These are rocky snowcaps, but she believes if they can get below the snowline, then they can find something. After a handful of arguments, they finally head out.

The focus of the movie, and as it should be considering the leads, is the interactions between the two. These are two charismatic, capable actors and its believable when they go through so many emotions, eventually clinging to each other, grasping at hope despite the odds. 

What I should have guessed was coming, I did not, and after doing some BTS reading, seeing its based on a novel by a light-romance kind of pseudo-Nicholas Sparks kind of author, I see why it ended up where it did. They fall for each other. But that kind of desperate attraction always annoyed me. Well, not always -- there was a time in my youth when the idea of white-knighting a girl, rescuing her from danger and falling into each other's arms appealed to me. Now, knowing better, knowing the troubling aspects of such hookups, I find the trope annoying. Sure, you can be drawn together out of need, out of adrenalin, out of a connection born of desperation. But, once you are back to reality, once you are back in your lives, what will you have?  Sure, these are two powerful, independent, attractive people but... when what drew them together is resolved, can there be anything more?

The movie believes there can be, and it believes it so much, it ends with a walking-away-looking-back-running-into-each-other's-arms moment. Oh, there is a certain type that will gobble this up with wild abandon, and I don't judge them, but its not for me.

Oh, the dog survives, so there is that.