The Mountain is a 2018 film directed and co-written by Rick Alverson, starring Jeff Goldblum and Tye Sheridan. Goldblum’s character, Dr. Wallace Fiennes, is based on the real-life controversial lobotomist, Walter Freeman, MD, and Sheridan’s character, Andy, is Fiennes’ photographer-assistant who accompanies him on a cross-country working tour of asylums. Andy is tasked with taking before-and-after photographs and typing documentation.
Sidebar: Walter Jackson Freeman II was a physician specializing in prefrontal lobotomy who invented “transorbital lobotomy” (icepick-like rod pounded into the brain through the eye sockets). Before whacking the rod (orbitoclast) into eye sockets and brain, he used electroconvulsive therapy instead of anesthesia to render the patient unconscious. Transection of the frontal lobes breaks their connection with the thalamus and eliminates the possibility of receiving stimuli from it, reducing a person to an idiot. Freeman’s procedures were used mainly on hysterical women and troublesome children but also on heterosexual men (for psychosurgical castration) and on homosexuals (to restore or instill moral sanity) mainly from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, but lobotomies in general were conducted long before and also after those years. About one hundred of Freeman’s patients reportedly died of cerebral hemorrhage. Today, lobotomy-like effects are enabled by pharmaceuticals (Chlorpromazine is mentioned in the movie) although lobectomies are sometimes still performed.
As the story unfolds, Andy uses a Polaroid camera to record Dr. Fiennes’ work performing electroshock treatments and lobotomies. Patients in the film are mainly women considered emotionally unstable, including “misbehaving” wives and others not conforming to traditional patterns of socially-desired behaviors. As stated on the DVD carrier: “As the tour progresses and Andy witnesses the doctor’s career and life unravel, he begins to identify with the institutions’ patients. Arriving at a California mountain town, a growing center of the New Age movement, they encounter an unconventional French healer who requests a lobotomy for his own [sexually aggressive] daughter [Susan].” Although the story is referred to as an “exploration of the American dream in the 20th century”—which is debatable—any assumption that it is intended to convey a message is discouraged or denied by the makers. Yet there is a message, a powerful message, embedded in this near-biopic when viewed in the context of our NoetiTaoist™ philosophy. That message, which does not reflect adversely on the American Dream, is discussed below, but first a pertinent extract from the October 2022 post: “Omniversal Control System Revealed”:
“The NoetiTaoist™ philosophy (described in some detail elsewhere in the blog), development of which followed the scientific Noetitek™ breakthroughs that shaped it, holds that everything, the All, emerged from Nothing in accordance with a set of nine ideas/ concepts/principles compelled by SEA’s (Source Energy Awareness’) Desire for total Liberation via unbounded Imagination within a realm set to exist forever and without boundary. Omniverse was designed to serve as SEA’s escape from the horror of eternal perfection. Commensurately, everything in Omniverse is intentionally fragmented, imperfect, out-of-balance, asymmetrical, seemingly broken, and fueled universally by drama at all levels by a kind of Mission Impossible macro program installed in all of SEA’s creatures, compelling them unconsciously to try and put a metaphorical Humpty Dumpty back together again, a “romantic” questing that means something a little different to each species, tribe, and individual.”
The film, loaded with symbols and metaphors and an allusion to the connectivity of the Collective Consciousness, is deeper and more elaborate than can be appreciated in a single viewing. There is sufficient provocation to inspire an entire book (e.g., Philosophy and The Mountain perhaps) on the perceived origin and evolution of humanity and social structure; the efforts of a certain breed of unbalanced medical, governmental, and religious narcissists to manipulate and control that process; and the harsh effects on individual men and women. PluribusOne™’s focus in this post is on the fact that neither the film’s makers nor its critics have identified and voiced the unintended big message: that humans (and every other lifeform) are manifested in Omniverse for one indelible purpose, which is to pursue whatever is enticing/exciting and promises to feel good, and to hold on to that satisfying experience for as long as possible whenever such personal quest can be achieved. Nothing can last forever in the mortal realm of Time and Space, of course, but it is entirely natural and healthy for one to pursue Utopian visions and Holy Grails despite the fact that—due to rule-makings in higher dimensions of Consciousness—not all longings will be manifested in a given universe.
For example, I just read a social media article wherein someone said that if guns were made illegal for absolutely everyone to own, then all gun-related violence would automatically end overnight. In some world far, far away it is imaginable that this ridiculous idea could play-out somehow, but in this world—for many reasons—such a solution is not achievable, or even desirable. However, the idea of a world where all guns suddenly disappear is worthy of a science-fiction novel that explores the possible effects and consequences. If the Moon were made of cheese we could colonize it and no one would ever be without food. If I were a foot taller, I could have been a champion basketball player. If only…
In The Mountain we see clinical successes in Dr. Fiennes’ effort to stop misbehavior by destroying that part of the brain which allows human nature to experience certain desires, as he turns people, mostly women, (many of whom exhibit rational thinking and normal feelings and concerns beforehand) into mindless puppets—and there are others who die on the operating table. Most of the patients, believing that they are mentally ill and can be cured by medical professionals, reluctantly yet willingly submit to the procedures, although some are treated only after being dragged kicking and screaming until forcibly sedated and finally zombified. When Andy himself loses his cool after having repeatedly endured witnessing the murdering of many minds, he too is sedated and interrogated by Fiennes who concludes that Andy (like Andy’s mother before him) is mentally deranged because his thoughts are lustful and he considers his dreams to be real. Meanwhile, the doctor and many other so-called sane people Andy has seen or interacted with on the tour—in and outside of hospital settings—have exhibited neurotic and psychotic behaviors.
The uppermost truth, as recognized in NoetiTaoism™, is that everything is illusory, that our dreams occur within a larger Dream that we generally accept as Reality. This is an inconvenient truth not deniable by physicists. Ever shaping our reality, we are wired into Omniverse’s ultimate action-adventure rollercoaster funhouse thrill-ride wherein we fervently seek to gain or restore or create (depending on how we perceive the mission) a perfect state of being, living, and having, through pursuit of some version or other of the archetypal Grail Quest, a romantic belief-driven journey fraught with mystery and danger, propelled by a vision of achievement including anticipating attendant imagined joy and glory. In The Mountain, the major grail-symbol is Mount Shasta, California, a New Age Mecca embodying myth and mystery, Utopian visions, and promises of perfection via Ascended Masters and magical happenings. Andy is drawn to it, as was Susan’s father, and apparently Susan.
The big message of the movie, from the NoetiTaoist™ perspective, is that nothing, not even brain-damaging electroshock treatments and surgical lobotomies can defeat the human drive to pursue the Quest. In the end viewers see the lobotomized couple—Andy and Susan—taking her father’s car and driving towards Mount Shasta, but we do not see them reach the mountain, which is the right way to end the movie (although disappointing, most likely, to those who miss the hidden meaning). Because the indelible process of being propelled towards the goal, pursuing the vision, the dream, is of supreme importance; whether they ever actually make it or die in a snowbank trying is not important in the all-ness of Space-Time-Mind. Some viewers will see the couple only as idiots, but the genuine idiots are those who insist on seeing life in the world negatively: as “an interminable chain of anxious longing” some author once said. NoetiTaoism™ reveals the truth that: Everything is a blessing. Appreciate the ride.
PluribusOne™ 