Hello and welcome to Critics at Large. Today we’re diving into Jesse Armstrong’s new film, Mountainhead, a ripped-from-the-headlines send-up of tech billionaires that feels like a natural extension of Succession. Critics Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz agree that Armstrong is “making the ultra-wealthy look fallible, unglamorous, and often flat-out amoral.” Mountainhead draws directly on figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, skewering their public personas and private absurdities. The story asks us to consider the role of the über-rich in American culture, tracing a lineage from Upton Sinclair’s Oil! to Edith Wharton’s high society dramas. As billionaires loom larger in our daily lives, their caricatures risk becoming too cartoonish to mock—“simply because the culture is so enraptured with wealth,” Schwartz warns. Can satire still work when its targets themselves think they’re living a blockbuster? Stick around as we explore that question and recommend other great watches and reads—from There Will Be Blood to Buffett, Musk, and Trump—right after this break.
Link to Article