‘Mountainhead’ stars weigh in on that ambiguous ending

This article contains spoilers for Mountainhead.

“That should have been the tagline,” quips Jason Schwartzman of his new film. “Mountainhead: It’s been a long weekend.”

A long weekend indeed. The new film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, which premiered on HBO Saturday night, stars Schwartzman, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, and Cory Michael Smith as four billionaires who gather for a weekend getaway in a mountaintop chalet.

However, prior to their weekend, Smith’s Venis launches a new iteration of an AI app he’s developed that plunges the world into chaos, courtesy of its capability to produce highly realistic deepfake videos. The guys debate whether they should suspend the app or use this opportunity to initiate a plan to take over the planet and launch a “post-human” era.

Throughout their conversations, Jeff (Youssef) tries to act as a twisted voice of reason, ultimately deciding not to make a deal with Venis and instead play ball with the U.S. government. But Randall (Carell) needs the technology to advance to survive his latest bout with cancer, so he suggests that the other three kill Jeff to keep their plot in motion.

After a few bungled murder attempts, Jeff agrees to a complex deal that will empower and enrich the three others in order to save his life. But as he gets in a car to go, Venis knocks on Jeff’s window, and the two laugh over the previous night, with Jeff promising he plans to wheedle out of everything he agreed to.

“The more that they tear each other apart, the closer that they get,” remarks Youssef of the surprising camaraderie. “Because at a certain point, they start to be the only two that are playing this particular game.”

He adds, “They’re rivals, but they are also the only ones who play by these rules and are facing these stakes. They’re always bound [together], and I don’t think that they’re actually emotionally capable of a relationship that could be any deeper than this.”

The duo agrees they’ll probably team up to oust Randall from their deal, but they also note that this is just how this group of supposed friends interacts. “This battle that we see play out in the house amongst these four guys will probably never end,” reflects Youssef. “It is just the way they’re always going to relate to each other.”

Youssef also cautions the audience against seeing Jeff as the good guy here, despite his seeming conscience in comparison to the others. “He might be the most dangerous of them,” he says. “Because there’s a quality to these types of men where I do think that they actually have legitimately medically diagnosable issues with empathy. And Jeff doesn’t have that.”

Youssef adds, “He is really aware, and he still chooses the unaware action. So, he could be the most damning character in the whole thing.”

As for the other two, their endings are quite different. Randall returns to his car and stares plaintively out the window as they drive off. Is he contemplating his own mortality? Considering his perhaps hollow victory?

“I honestly would leave that to the audience to determine where he is at the end,” Carell says. “I have my own ideas about where he is emotionally at the very end. It’s been a long weekend. A lot has transpired.”

Hugo (Schwartzman), known as Souper by his friends, seems perhaps the most at peace. He finally joins the billionaires’ club courtesy of this deal, and he is left alone in his mountain mansion to listen to his meditation app while breathing in fresh air on the deck. The last shot is of him laughing.

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However, Schwartzman reveals that this was not the original intended ending. “We shot it originally where my character did not smile,” he says. “Jesse kept saying, ‘Just look out, think of the weight and think about what you’ve done.’ It was very heavy.

“Then he said, ‘Let’s do one more thing just to try and then we’re done,'” Schwartzman continues. “‘Just try one where you’re smiling.’ The exact opposite thing. And yet, it was the same thing. That’s an example of why Jesse is so brilliant. What we have at the end of this movie is a very haunting image and feeling. And it was the exact opposite of what we were originally trying to do. And yet, it felt exactly in line with it.”

Mountainhead is streaming now on Max.