The Mountain Between Us

♫ Let me tell ya 'bout my [new] beeeest friend, ♫ the American cinematic masterpiece entitled The Mountain Between Us. This movie, starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba, has a 43% on Rotten Tomatoes currently; now is the perfect time for you to learn the important lesson that sometimes Rotten Tomatoes is DEAD WRONG. This film is 110% of what a movie should be. Oscar material. Certified perfect.

The above paragraph is the last time I will refer to The Mountain Between Us by its official, studio-given name. For this piece, I will instead be calling it by its rightful, me-given name: Sexy Hatchet.

Let me 'splain: The novel Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, is a period of trauma disguised as a reading assignment that many young people experience between fourth and sixth grade. In it, a 13-year-old named Brian is the single passenger flying over Northern Canada in a small plane (which I will always remember and never set foot in a Cessna). Brian is going to visit his father, who is a monster. We know Brian's father is a monster because he is the kind of man who puts his 13-year-old son on a small plane over Northern Canada with a pilot who is a serious risk for heart disease.

YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING.

Brian's pilot has a heart attack, because of course he does, and Brian is forced to survive by himself in the Canadian wilderness for what I remember as 39 years but what Wikipedia tells me was one summer. There's a part where Brian almost starves to death because of refracted light. There's a part where Brian has to invent fire. There's a part where Brian swims into the lake and sees the decomposing corpse of the heart-attacked pilot being eaten by fish. We read this book when we were eleven. I wasn't allowed to see Castaway, but I was required to read Hatchet. 

HOWEVER. last Thursday night, I got confirmation of what I have always suspected: if Brian had been Kate Winslet, and also had Idris Elba along, and maybe a dog, Hatchet would have been my favorite book of all time. It would have been... Sexy Hatchet.

I am going to run down the experience of watching Sexy Hatchet for you—at least what I can remember, the story beats that I'm pretty sure weren't an Idris-induced fever dream—so, uh, spoilers ahead. That's all that is ahead.

You open on Kate Winslet frustrated in an airport. This is what's amazing about Kate Winslet. She is an Academy Award-winning actress. She has more talent in her smallest finger than most actors have in their whole body. She's absolutely beautiful. She saved a 90-year-old woman from a house fire in real life, and recalled it in the most charming and relatable way possible. This is the essence of Kate Winslet: that she is beautiful, talented, and charming, but also would totally be your friend if you met her. She is perfect, but attainably so. When Sexy Hatchet opens on Kate Winslet frustrated in an airport, the first thing you think is "wow, great hat!" The second thing you think is "I've been frustrated in an airport! Wow, Kate really is just like me." She's not. She's perfect. But it feels like she's just like you.

SPEAKING
OF
PERFECT. 

The other character (because let's be real, there's only two characters in this movie) is heard before he is seen. For some attractive people, this is a loss. Aww, only his voice? But his face is so good! 

But this is no Ordinary Attractive Person.

This is Idris Elba, and his voice sounds the way a campfire on a chilly fall evening feels. He's like an audio wood-burning pizza oven, the sound of the sun setting over a blue Grecian ocean. You hear this voice, saying he's a doctor, that he has to get on a flight tonight because he's performing surgery on a child tomorrow, and for some reason you're hoping that it's your child he's operating on.

Then you see him.

The beauty of Idris Elba cannot be described by the English language, or by any language. It cannot be written down in words or inscribed in hieroglyphs. It can only be truly summed up by one image: 

In the movie Pacific Rim, another cinematic masterpiece and my actual favorite movie after You've Got Mail, a small child has seen her home city destroyed and her family killed by a giant monster. She is wandering through the streets in a little blue coat, carrying one red shoe in her hand and crying. The monster looms nearby. The little girl (whose name is Mako) shrieks and huddles in an alleyway, preparing for death. Suddenly, a thump. A crash. The giant monster has been defeated. Mako emerges from the alley. Who is her savior? 

A giant robot steps forward into the sunlight.

That is the feeling of seeing Idris Elba every time you see him. Backlit by glory. He's steady and solid, but also gorgeous and thrilling. You love him to the core of your being, but you cannot explain exactly why. You trust him, but you're afraid of how much you trust him. It's a miracle that he exists, but you can't imagine that there would be any goodness in a world where he didn't. 

It's not just that he's attractive. He is. So attractive. But he also brings something wonderful to every performance. On The Office, he was dry humor perfection. In Pacific Rim, he mixes levity and gravitas with an impossible deftness. On Luther, he's a frightening anti-hero who you can't help but root for. Idris gives the smallest affectations weight, the most innocuous lines meaning. His talent is unmatched. This, of course, makes him even more attractive.

Anyway, the first time you see Idris Elba in Sexy Hatchet, arguing with an airport employee, you think, "You dumb airport employee!! Give the man whatever he wants!" 

Luckily, Kate Winslet has the same thought.

"Excuse me, sir, but I noticed that we are having the same problem," Kate Winslet says. 

"Wot?" Idris replies, and for the first time you realize that he is going to be British in this movie, God bless us every one. 

Kate has a plan, because she is a woman with plans, and that plan is to charter a small plane over snow-covered, mountainous wilderness to get them both to where they need to go. "NO!" you exclaim, having read Hatchet as a preteen. But "yes," you secretly whisper, because you know that without a survival story, they will not fall in love, and that is why you are here.

Off-Brand Jeff Bridges is their pilot, and Dog is his co-pilot. It's just a dog, a nameless dog. You wonder worriedly if they will suggest eating Dog once the plane crashes, but you are not there yet. You decide to cross that Worry Bridge when you come to it. 

"Did you file your flight plan?" Kate asks OBJB.

"Nah, it's still light outside," OBJB responds, as though that makes any sense. You're no pilot, but you think that maybe even Maverick from Top Gun files his flight plans, and his theme song is "Highway to the Danger Zone." This, you think, is the real Danger Zone.

On the plane, Kate attempts small talk with Idris. She tells him she's a photographer, that she's just gotten back from shooting neo-Nazis. This reminds you that the world outside this movie theater is terrible. "Not now," you say to the world. "Not now." 

Small talk is going poorly. He is disengaged. She, on the other hand, is engaged. To a man. In fact, she has to get back to wherever because tomorrow is her wedding. "Is this," you wonder, "the mountain between them?" In this movie, the answer to that question is always yes. He appears to be married too, but he's so closed off! Emotionally cold! Foreshadowing.

OBJB is making small talk. OBJB is repeating words, struggling with sentences. Idris is concerned. Suddenly, the plane takes a nose dive. "He's having a stroke!" Idris exclaims, and you try hard to focus on the gravity of the situation rather than on how good Idris looks when he's handling a grave situation. 

The plane goes down. The tail section cracks off, and Kate's great hat flies off with it. Goodbye, hat. When Idris awakens, Kate is still unconscious, with a gash pretty high up on her leg. There's a little bit of him respectfully patching her up while she's unconscious. Her eyes flutter open ("her eyelashes are underrated among Hollywood eyelashes," you think), and she asks what happened. Idris tells her that the pilot died, the dog is still alive, and he just has a few cracked ribs. No big deal.

Also, she broke her leg at some point. I don't remember when it was. Maybe it was here? Anyway, she does some very impressive hobbling during this film. You spend 30% of Sexy Hatchet trying not to feel guilty that yesterday you stubbed your toe and fell to the floor, wondering if you should just end it all now.

At one point, Kate and Idris are in the plane and Kate decides she wants to go outside. As she's hobbling off to go outside, she looks over her shoulder at Idris and breezily quips, "Want coffee?" This is your best friend's favorite part. There is nothing about this woman that is not CHARMING.

They stay in the plane for a while. Idris wants to stay here forever and wait to be found. But Kate, bless her, just wants to move. She's taking her destiny into her own hands. Gumption. Since she has pretty limited mobility, Idris placates her by offering to climb up a ridge to see if he can see a road. At some point, we establish that they have a flare gun.

While he's gone, Kate hears footsteps. "Idris?" she calls, but saying his movie name, which doesn't matter. The dog barks. It's not Idris. It's a mountain lion. The mountain lion inches towards the immobilized Kate. She reaches for the flare gun. Your very practical best friend leans over and says, "oh no, she's gonna waste a flare!" You wonder if perhaps your best friend is too practical, because you don't consider shooting a giant predator to be a waste of flare. You decide to cross that bridge later as well, since you'll probably be together if you're stranded anyway, and you have no problem flaring a mountain lion in the face.

Kate flares a mountain lion in the face. Idris gets back and says there's no road and no signal on his phone, then cooks the mountain lion meat for sustenance. You breathe a sigh of relief. They're going to eat the lion. They're not going to eat the dog. This will not be that kind of survival movie.

Kate and Idris spend the next few days arguing. She wants to move. He wants to stay. "The mountain between them," you whisper. Finally, Kate hobbles off on her own with the dog. Idris wakes up and immediately goes after her. Because he's miraculous.

There are a few days of moving through the mountains. Some notable events from those days:

• Kate listens to Idris's little doctor tape recorder (are these real?), and hears a message from his wife that says, "I'm sorry to be leaving you like this." The recorded former Mrs. Idris establishes what we already know: he's got a few control issues. But also this means he's sin-gle! You do a little shimmy.

• Kate refuses to cross a frozen lake. You feel the ghost of Young Leo hovering over her, steering her away from situations in which she might slip into frigid waters. Bless you, Jack Dawson. Bless you always.

• Idris and Kate sleep in a cave. Idris checks her leg bandage. "It's holding up well," he says, as though surprised that he's the world's most perfect doctor. "It's a good thing you're a doctor," Kate quips, "or I'd think you were just doing this to see my fancy underwear." He smiles back with his eyes, and parries, "they're not that fancy." You want them to kiss. NOW.

• You turn to your best friend, struck with a random moment of brilliance, and guess, "Wife didn't leave him. She died. Terminal illness." "Good call," she agrees. The mountain between them.

• Idris asks Kate to take a picture of him. She tells him about a child soldier whose picture she took and then the child died. Kate refuses to take Idris's picture. She's not superstitious. But she is a little stitious.

• Kate and Idris lay in a snowdrift and Kate asks him what he was listening to on his headphones in the airport. He plays a little bit of classical music on his dying signal-less phone as they hold each other. "For warmth." Suuuuure.

They're growing closer. Idris is opening up. Kate is charming him into trusting her. Then, two big things happen at once. The first is that Idris finds an abandoned house that Kate saw earlier in the movie. The second is that Kate falls through ice into freezing water. Idris runs back, pulls her out, and brings her into the house. She's unconscious—again—for a while. Finally, her eyelashes flutter (again). Idris grabs her hand, smiles like a sunrise. He feeds her soup. You fan yourself. It's all too much.

After a few more days in the house, something happens it doesn't matter what you can tell it's building up to the thing you've been hoping for and they're in a house so it's practical now and their faces are close to each other and suddenly THERE IT IS. SHE DOES IT. KATE KISSES IDRIS ON THE MOUTH.

They look into each other's eyes. Is Idris okay with it? There's no air in this movie theater. The mountain between them looms.

Then shatters. 

Kate and Idris proceed to put the "Sexy" in Sexy Hatchet. 

During this montage, you vow to always ask hot strangers to charter small planes with you, whatever the cost. It just seems... worth it.

You would be perfectly happy with the movie ending now. They are in love. All is right with the world. But you understand that for most audiences to be happy, Kate and Idris still gotta get off the mountain or die trying. Plus, you don't think this dog has eaten anything the whole movie. Is the dog an angel? Yes, you decide. All dogs are. 

Kate finally decides to take a picture of the sleeping Idris's face. It is a good picture of him. You consider making it your phone background when you get out of this movie. He tells her that he was married, but it didn't end the way she thinks it did. His wife died of a brain tumor that he couldn't fix. Far be it for you to celebrate such a thing, but since it does mean that you were right, you raise your arms up in the air in a sort of brief "touchdown" motion. You hope that no one is sitting behind you.

Kate decides that Idris needs to go on without her. She'll just slow him down, she insists. He reluctantly agrees. You know that the dog survives, because a brilliant Twitter ad campaign told you so. But it seems too much to hope that both Kate and Idris will make it out alive. So this is it, you worry. This is where they get split up—the mountain between them—and one of them dies.

Idris walks away through the snowdrifts.

Kate lies in the cabin. 

But THEN.

A light flashes across Idris's eyes. 

He will never let there be a mountain between them again. 

He runs back to the cabin.

You pass out for a moment. It's too much. When you come to, they're in each other's arms. He won't leave her.

At this point in the movie, you have said the following things:

• I'm dying. Am I alive? I'm dying.

• This movie is a tort.

• I am levitating with joy.

• I hate this movie.

• This is literally my favorite movie of all time.

But you do have a little bee under your bonnet. It's kind of a bummer that Kate has been incapacitated the whole time, and Idris has been saving her over and over again. She's got enough agency that she's not really a damsel in distress, but she's not that far off. You sense that this has been bothering your best friend too. "Oh well," you think. "This movie can't have everything."

Finally, they see a logging factory or whatever. A logging lot? A log flume? I don't know what a flume is (and no, that sentence is not permission for you to tell me. If I need to know, I'll google it). They see a big lot with trucks and logs on it.

You realize, for the first time, that they're both gonna make it. This, of course, is the most dangerous realization you can ever make in a movie, because it causes something bad to happen. Almost as soon as you think they're home free, Idris steps in a bear trap. You swear aloud. 

But your best friend turns to you with a light in her eyes. "No, this is good," she says. "It means she's gonna have to go!" The roof of the movie theater opens up and sunlight streams in. They're gonna subvert the damsel in distress trope. Idris has been saving Kate the whole time, but here, when it matters most, she is going to save him. 

"This is my favorite movie of all time," you exhale.

Sure enough, Kate hobbles to the loggery (sure) and gets help. The screen goes black. You think that maybe one of them could still die, and at this point, you're more worried about Idris. But the fade up is on an eye opening... his eye.

They made it. 

You can't believe they made it. You're euphoric. So is Idris. He stumbles to Kate's room. She's so excited to see him. "You saved my life," they say to each other. You think maybe this is where you just die of happiness. 

But this is not your first rodeo. 

"Fiance's in the corner," you whisper to your best friend. A toilet flushes, and you realize you were not quite correct. Kate's fiance was not in the corner, but in the bathroom. He emerges and he is Dermot Mulroney, whom you incorrectly call Dylan McDermott. You love you some Derm, but he is no Idris. The Derm embraces Kate, Idris dejectedly retreats to his own hospital room, and the movie's over.

HAHAHAHA NO, DUMMY! IT'S NOT! You still have a near-Return-of-the-King level bit of falling action to experience!

There are shots of Kate and Idris trying to resume their old lives. They're both sleeping on their respective floors, because after their shared trauma, a bed is too soft. Idris adopted the dog. Kate feels lonely in rooms full of people. Idris's hands were too damaged by the ordeal for him to do surgery anymore, but he has learned to work with people. He opened up. Kate taught him.

"I hate this movie," you say. Again.

Kate calls Idris. He doesn't answer.

The mountain between them.

Dermot and Kate are in their kitchen, but she is somewhere far away. The Derm says some very sweet things to her about how he made the decision that he was always going to love her. Yeeeahh... that's not really the problem here, buddy.

Finally, finally, Idris calls Kate back. They meet for lunch. He's wearing a light blue button-down. God he looks good in light blue. They are catching up. He asks about her wedding. She says she didn't get married. He is visibly relieved. So are you.

She asks why he didn't answer her calls. He says, "I thought you wehre mahrried." Something about that sentence—the inherent nobility of it or the accent or both—is the most gorgeous thing you've ever heard. Later, as you type it up for some reason, you will hear that sentence again in his voice and sigh. Kate and Idris tell the waitress to leave them alone in tandem. It's never okay to be rude to waitstaff, but you feel like maybe this lunch is the one tiny exception. The lunch table feels like a gulf. No, a mountain. The mountain between them.

They're both single. You know they're in love. Are they going to get together?

Kate shakes her head sadly. She looks out the window. "Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories. We've already missed the spring." 

Idris catches her eye. "We'd be fools to let happiness pass us by."

Okay so maybe that's dialogue from a better movie but it doesn't matter. Kate says no, and Idris doesn't fight for her. Just like when they were first on the mountain (the real one, for once, not the one between them), she makes a decision and he is too closed off to fight it. They leave the restaurant, and she begs him to give the dog a name. He agrees. Both walk away.

"I hate this movie."

But we watch them as they walk. Kate thinks about how he saved her life over and over, how he opened up to her, how good he looks in light blue. Idris thinks about how she rescued both of them, how she never gave up on him, her fluttering eyelashes. 

"Come on," you beg.

They pause.

"Come on."

They turn.

"COME ON."

They start walking.

"Yes."

Then running.

"YES."

Kate runs past the restaurant. Idris turns the corner. And just as they fall into each other's arms...

BLACKOUT.

"This is my favorite movie OF ALL TIME."

...

Hello. It's me, your friend Emily. Law student, watcher of films, emotional being. Listen. The world is bad. The news is a cycle of garbage being shoved into our eyes and mouths 24 hours a day every day with no end in sight. Every day is a horror show of politics, natural disasters, and predatory creeps in the media.

But once in a decade, you get a film starring two of your unproblematic favorites that is romantic, heightened, a little ridiculous, and completely enthralling. Last decade, I got The Lake House. This decade, I got The Mountain Between Us.

Thank you, Sexy Hatchet. In 2017, you were just what the emotionally closed off but incredibly gorgeous doctor ordered.