Chris Knipp
08-14-2025, 07:19 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20nzjj.jpg
VICKY KRIEPS, DACRE MONTGOMERY IN WENT UP THE HILL
SAMUEL VAN GRINSVEN: WENT UP THE HILL (2024)
TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEaqyO-F69s&t=65s)
Shaking off the ghosts
This is an austerely beautiful film, well acted by its leads, Vicky Krieps (of Phantom Thread) as Jill, a new widow of her wife Elizabeth, and Dacre Montgomery (Of "Stranger Things") as Jack, Elizabeth's son. Everything will take place at the residence of Elizabeth and Jill, a glamorously minimal and expensive modernist house at the foot of dramatic New Zealand mountains, bordering on an icy lake.
What goes wrong? Many things, arguably starting with the pointless cuteness of the nursery rhyme title linking the two characters, very out of place when we see how solumn the proceedings are going to be. Jack and Jill turn out not to know each other. In fact, Jill did not even know of Jack's existence. How is that possible, since she called him to invite him?
The answer is that Elizabeth, a powerful, dangerous individual evidently, is dead but isn't gone. So this is a ghost story - of sorts. It avoids most of the usual conventions of such stories. But it wants us to believe that the spirit of Elizabeth can alternately invade Jill, when she wants to talk to Jack, and Jack, when she wants to talk to Jill. This will go on a lot. And then comes the scene most remarked upon, when Elizabeth invades the body of her own gay son to have sex with her bereaved wife. This may sound absurd, but it all remains very solemn - and not at all fun. Jack's boyfriend Ben (Arlo Green), whom he calls a few times, doesn't seem happy that he's chosen to go off by himself to participate in this strange scene.
Critics differ on how to take this film. Two of the main trade journals, Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/went-up-the-hill-review-vicky-krieps-dacre-montgomery-1235988848/) (Caryln James) and Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/went-up-the-hill-thessaloniki-review/5198868.article?adredir=1) (Amber Wilkinson) published very favorable reviews at its premiere. But Nick Schrager of The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/went-up-the-hill-a-ghost-story-with-craziest-sex-scene-of-the-year/?ref=author) wrote a review to explain why the film just doesn't work, mainly its pretensions, which he finds "copious," and the thinness of its screenplay. Schrager grants, as do I, that dp Tyson Perkins' images are beautiful. The faces of the actors look like velvety sculptures of giant heads on this dramatic landscape with its steely, glowing mountains. Haunting sound design and what another review calls the "ethereal and goosebump-inducing" score by composer Hanan Townshend add to the film's elegant and moody effect.
But this seems more like a setting than a place. Who are these people? What have they been doing? We've heard that Elizabeth was an artist. What kind of work did she do? We are learning along with Jack - and Jill. She finds out that Jack never knew his mother because he was taken out of nursery school due to his behavior and the physical signs of the harm that was being done to him at home. This was arranged by Elizabeth's sister Helen (Sarah Peirse), and the siblings did not get along. Apparently little Jack's mother abused him. Later we learn that Jill accepted physical punishment because it kept Elizabeth from harming herself. And Early on it's reported to Jack that his mother has died by drowning herself in the icy lake. After Jack's removal from nursery school, he had never seen her again. He now wants to find out if she fought against his being taken away from her, and is not happy to learn she didn't.
Heavy stuff to deal with. But here it's presented in a context that lacks three-dimensionality, because everything is flatly foisted upon us and is literally monochromatic. After a while it may seem that all the empty space is filled up with the manipulations of this higher sort of ghost story, as the ghost inhabits first one body, then the other, and carries out the surprising, some would say outrageous, lovemaking.
The problem for the living here is to figure out how to get rid of the invasive ghost. Toward the end the action moves out onto the icy lake. Jack and Jill, and especially Jack, get pretty cold. The message is clear enough. Somebody like this, whether an invasive spirit or just a memory, you'd like to get rid of but you perhaps never quite do. Those who find this an impressive treatment of the theme of a dangerous, bullying lover or compulsively abusive parent (or weird, haunting memories) may find Went Up the Hill deeply meaningful and healing. Those who are put off by the ominousness and the pompous superficiality and want more specific detail about the people and the places, will not.
Went Up the Hill 100 mins., premiered at Toronto Sept. 5, 2024, also showing at Adelaide, Thessaloniki, Torino, and some other festivals. US theatrical release Aug. 15, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/went-up-the-hill/) rating 59%.
VICKY KRIEPS, DACRE MONTGOMERY IN WENT UP THE HILL
SAMUEL VAN GRINSVEN: WENT UP THE HILL (2024)
TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEaqyO-F69s&t=65s)
Shaking off the ghosts
This is an austerely beautiful film, well acted by its leads, Vicky Krieps (of Phantom Thread) as Jill, a new widow of her wife Elizabeth, and Dacre Montgomery (Of "Stranger Things") as Jack, Elizabeth's son. Everything will take place at the residence of Elizabeth and Jill, a glamorously minimal and expensive modernist house at the foot of dramatic New Zealand mountains, bordering on an icy lake.
What goes wrong? Many things, arguably starting with the pointless cuteness of the nursery rhyme title linking the two characters, very out of place when we see how solumn the proceedings are going to be. Jack and Jill turn out not to know each other. In fact, Jill did not even know of Jack's existence. How is that possible, since she called him to invite him?
The answer is that Elizabeth, a powerful, dangerous individual evidently, is dead but isn't gone. So this is a ghost story - of sorts. It avoids most of the usual conventions of such stories. But it wants us to believe that the spirit of Elizabeth can alternately invade Jill, when she wants to talk to Jack, and Jack, when she wants to talk to Jill. This will go on a lot. And then comes the scene most remarked upon, when Elizabeth invades the body of her own gay son to have sex with her bereaved wife. This may sound absurd, but it all remains very solemn - and not at all fun. Jack's boyfriend Ben (Arlo Green), whom he calls a few times, doesn't seem happy that he's chosen to go off by himself to participate in this strange scene.
Critics differ on how to take this film. Two of the main trade journals, Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/went-up-the-hill-review-vicky-krieps-dacre-montgomery-1235988848/) (Caryln James) and Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/went-up-the-hill-thessaloniki-review/5198868.article?adredir=1) (Amber Wilkinson) published very favorable reviews at its premiere. But Nick Schrager of The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/went-up-the-hill-a-ghost-story-with-craziest-sex-scene-of-the-year/?ref=author) wrote a review to explain why the film just doesn't work, mainly its pretensions, which he finds "copious," and the thinness of its screenplay. Schrager grants, as do I, that dp Tyson Perkins' images are beautiful. The faces of the actors look like velvety sculptures of giant heads on this dramatic landscape with its steely, glowing mountains. Haunting sound design and what another review calls the "ethereal and goosebump-inducing" score by composer Hanan Townshend add to the film's elegant and moody effect.
But this seems more like a setting than a place. Who are these people? What have they been doing? We've heard that Elizabeth was an artist. What kind of work did she do? We are learning along with Jack - and Jill. She finds out that Jack never knew his mother because he was taken out of nursery school due to his behavior and the physical signs of the harm that was being done to him at home. This was arranged by Elizabeth's sister Helen (Sarah Peirse), and the siblings did not get along. Apparently little Jack's mother abused him. Later we learn that Jill accepted physical punishment because it kept Elizabeth from harming herself. And Early on it's reported to Jack that his mother has died by drowning herself in the icy lake. After Jack's removal from nursery school, he had never seen her again. He now wants to find out if she fought against his being taken away from her, and is not happy to learn she didn't.
Heavy stuff to deal with. But here it's presented in a context that lacks three-dimensionality, because everything is flatly foisted upon us and is literally monochromatic. After a while it may seem that all the empty space is filled up with the manipulations of this higher sort of ghost story, as the ghost inhabits first one body, then the other, and carries out the surprising, some would say outrageous, lovemaking.
The problem for the living here is to figure out how to get rid of the invasive ghost. Toward the end the action moves out onto the icy lake. Jack and Jill, and especially Jack, get pretty cold. The message is clear enough. Somebody like this, whether an invasive spirit or just a memory, you'd like to get rid of but you perhaps never quite do. Those who find this an impressive treatment of the theme of a dangerous, bullying lover or compulsively abusive parent (or weird, haunting memories) may find Went Up the Hill deeply meaningful and healing. Those who are put off by the ominousness and the pompous superficiality and want more specific detail about the people and the places, will not.
Went Up the Hill 100 mins., premiered at Toronto Sept. 5, 2024, also showing at Adelaide, Thessaloniki, Torino, and some other festivals. US theatrical release Aug. 15, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/went-up-the-hill/) rating 59%.