Synopsis
On the Annapurna Massif, Tukten, a young Nepali man setting off for a new life as a laborer in Dubai, encounters an older Australian woman who causes him to change course and discover his homeland in a new light.
The Mountains Are a Dream That Call to Me
2020 Directed by Cedric Cheung-Lau
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Popular reviews
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My experience with this film has been parallel to the character's time with the mountains: strikingly beautiful as when I first saw it, and something I'll surely be returning to again.
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Sundance Film Festival 2020 film #16:
Beautiful but so very much not for me. Fell asleep and missed most of it, so no rating. I do recommend it if you’re a fan of Apichatpong Weerasethakul though.
(Q&A with director, producers, and cinematographers.)
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Was transfixed for the entire runtime. Love the sparse distribution of sound and narrative, every camera movement and still shot feeling deliberate but not overly revealing. It's deeply in touch with the landscape of Nepal that affects the characters in subtle but noticeable ways.
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If a mountain-climbing adventure like Everest or Vertical Limit removed its bombastic thrill-seeking setpieces and was instead directed with the patient, reverent eye of Apichatpong Weerasethakul one may conjure up something like The Mountains Are a Dream That Call to Me. Cedric Cheung-Lau, who established his career on the lighting teams of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Mend, Little Men, and more notable indies, makes his feature directorial debut with this peaceful, meditative journey through the Annapurna Mountain range in Nepal. Compact in narrative scale, but as epic as one can imagine in terms of capturing the awe of the gorgeous environment our small set of characters traverse, the film is a meditative testament to appreciating one’s surroundings in all their glory.
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Beautiful and meditative in a way I’ve never seen before. A masterclass on landscape cinematography in the spirit of Ansel Adams and Yasujirō Ozu. I say this sitting in the worst seat in the theater that put a kink in my neck.
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This is a film that sort of coexists with you while you watch. It's not one that demands your attention. Unlike the titular mountains, the film doesn't draw attention so much as kindly ask to breathe the same air.
And for that, it's not a film for everyone. But it doesn't have to be. It is part meditation, part travelogue, part existentialist drama. Two strangers meets and diverge but in that slightest prick from their expected path, they are left changed. The subtlety of this shift may turn off some, but by stripping everything away, each detail becomes monumental.
It reminds me a bit of Ben Russell's Let Each One Go Where He May. When I saw that film, Russell…
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