THE MOUNTAIN: An Interview With Director Thomas Salvador

Thomas Salvador:

Yes. I really feel as a director, that’s what I have wanted to do since I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, and I directed many short films and two feature films. And so I write my films like many directors are doing in France, especially in auto film, and indie films. So the director used to write by themselves and sometimes with another co-director. And I act in my films because I think it’s a more obvious way and simple way for me to explore what I want to express in my films. 

Glen Dower:

I see what you mean. Yeah. You cast yourself because you know how you want the character to be played.

Thomas Salvador:

Yes.

Glen Dower:

You cut out the ‘middleman’.

Thomas Salvador:

Yes. And also because in every film I have done, there’s a physical part which is important and it’s not the only reason of course, but I’m sure it’ll be very hard to find an actor who will accept to do what I do for doing that movie, which means spending fifty days in high mountains, minus twenty degrees Celsius with the storms. And I’m sure an actor will say in Paris with coffee, ‘I love your script’ and after two weeks of shooting say ‘You’re crazy!’

‘Let’s do green screen!’ That makes a lot of sense. So like you say, 50 days of filming in those conditions, was there a point where you thought this was a bad idea, let’s just turn back and head back on, or do you feel this was your project, ‘let’s do this’?

Thomas Salvador:

Yeah, and it went nice. It was a crazy adventure. Very difficult, and exhausting, but we had a kind of magical bond in the crew, which was a very small crew. It was a small crew. Oh sure. And we started the shooting during the COVID-19 confinement. So we had an amazing experience being up high without the mask, feeling free. So it was a wonderful human experience.

Glen Dower:

As close to heaven as you can get. Let’s talk about the story itself. We meet Pierre, of course. We meet him in his kitchen and he seems to have a nice apartment, with all the modern conveniences, but I just get the element of sterile, and maybe he’s in a rut somehow with his career. So, would you say his journey is a metaphor for a midlife crisis and the decision he makes on the mountain? We don’t want to give too much away, spoiler-wise, but do you feel his journey and the mountain is a metaphor for a midlife crisis of sorts?

Thomas Salvador:

For me, it could be, it seems, but it’s not because he’s not the same at the end. So I did not want the trajectory like a parenthesis, he did his crazy thing and went back to his former life and I wanted him to be deeply changed. He found something in him he didn’t know. So, it seems like a midlife crisis, but for me, it’s not as he feels he needs something else. He seems he needs to see the world differently to reappropriate his own connection to time to find his own tempo. He doesn’t know why, but he knows he has to do that.

Glen Dower:

It was definitely a journey for him and an arc. Let’s talk about the crew. You had two different cinematographers, Alexis Kavyrchine and Victor Pichon, and they’re credited as the High Mountain cinematographers. That’s such a cool title. What was it like going between two cinematographers? Was it on purpose? That you get two sides of Pierre’s life? Or, was it just Alexi who had skills in one area and Victor had skills in another area?

Thomas Salvador:

Alexi is a great Director of Photography and I did my previous feature film with him. He won a lot of awards and he is a star in France, so he shot most of the largest part of the film, but he’s not a rock climber or mountaineer. So for the very technical and rock climbing parts, I couldn’t have brought him in, because we had a kind of small budget and I did not want to use helicopters and big stuff. And so Victor was the assistant camera operator for the whole shoot, but he was the only alpinist in the crew with me. So he became D o P (Director of Photography) for three weeks, doing the glacier, climbing the rocks, the dangerous and high mountain shooting.

Glen Dower:

There are moments when the film almost has a documentary feel. You were climbing for real, you were really up the mountain. Yes. How did you direct and how did you direct the photography and catch this? Or was it very much, oh, there’s a beautiful view here, let’s have that as a background. Did you have anything storyboarded?

Thomas Salvador:

We had absolutely no storyboard because first of all, when we started the shooting, there were six meters of snow on the locations of the collapse. The mountain was collapsing. And I went to these places thirty years ago when I was doing mountaineering. So every day we were discovering the location, waiting for the snow or waiting for the melting of the snow. There was a lot of improvisation following the script. But when we were climbing, I decided to do one shot there because of the light, because of the practical way to put the camera, a kind of documentary process. And I also wanted that to make the audience, the public, feel like it’s a mountain. Nothing is cheated. It’s for real. The fog, the rain, the snow, the crevasse. So yes, we were a very small crew, five or six people, and sometimes two, with mountain guides for sure, from the astronauts. And because we’re not crazy, we didn’t want to finish the film in the big cover. And I wanted the audience to feel the diversity of the mountains. I was dreaming that in the film we will have fog, clouds, snow, rain, heat, danger, and serenity…and mountains.

Glen Dower:

There are few moments of peril in the film. Were there any moments of real peril where you were in danger while filming?

Thomas Salvador:

I did not want the film to be an action film. Like many mountain films.

Glen Dower:

You weren’t making the Cliffhanger sequel.

Thomas Salvador:

Ha, no. I did not want the mountain to be a simple location for human feet or drama. I wanted the mountain to be part of the story and be almost alive.

Glen Dower:

It’s a character in the story as well.

Thomas Salvador:

Without spoiling everything, that’s a fantastic call. You can say that. Fantastic call.

Glen Dower:

Yes indeed.

Thomas Salvador:

In the film, it came to me very fast when I was writing the script that the mountain would be part of the character’s trajectory.

Glen Dower: