“Hukkunud Alpinisti” Hotell

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This review includes spoilers.

DIRECTED BY: Grigori Kromanov

FEATURING: Uldis Pūcītis, Jüri Järvet, Lembit Peterson, Mikk Mikiver, Tiit Härm, Nijole Ozelyte

PLOT: Called to an Alpine inn and trapped by an avalanche, a police inspector uncovers a bizarre mix of murder, organized crime, paid assassination, and an unexpected twist that leaves the him in way over his head. 

COMMENTS: Ronald Knox’s Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction are a handy guide to playing fair with the reader. They are not always scrupulously followed, and shouldn’t be considered  inviolable; some of Agatha Christie’s most popular novels make mincemeat of the rules. But they’re valuable as a guide to what might happen when coloring outside the lines. We turn to this list today because Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel takes a weed whacker to Commandment #2: “All supernatural or prenatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.” The result is a mystery that only the most wildly lucky viewer could possibly solve, so reliant is it upon a massive genre swerve. And it’s all exactly as the creators intended.

Brothers Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky (who also wrote the source material for Stalker) adapted their own book, a formal experiment in pulling a switcheroo on the reader. They envisioned a classic locked-room mystery, one in which a smart detective has to choose between a number of suspects at an isolated location, all of whom arouse suspicion in their own way. Think Murder on the Orient Express. Now imagine that the culprit in that classic whodunit was an invisible octopod who entered the train through a transdimensional rift, and you’ll start to get a sense of the sharpness of the left turn in Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel. Because that’s our solution here. It’s aliens. It’s a thoroughly unexpected twist that makes it a failure as a mystery—and a success as something else entirely.

Long before the truth behind the strange goings-on at this remote mountain inn are revealed, there are the strange goings-on themselves. The hotel is decorated in striking 70s modern décor courtesy of set designer Tõnu Virve, with post-space age lines and lots of mirrored surfaces. (The setting is perfectly matched by Sven Grünberg’s groovy synth-based score.) The source of the lodge’s name is peculiarly mundane: a guest disappeared while out climbing and that was that. The unfortunate sportsman left behind his dog, who now works delivering guests’ luggage when he’s not sitting watch beneath a giant portrait of his lost master. And then there are the guests, a motley crew with odd backgrounds and uncertain futures, including a scientist who climbs the walls of the hotel, a beautiful Lothario who seems incapable of making a bad shot on the billiard table, and an older man who curls up on the snow-covered balcony to escape his many allergies.

In every possible respect, our hero does not fit in with these people or in these surroundings. Glebsky, the by-the-book detective, is utterly incapable of drawing outside the lines, and when it appears that there has been a murder, his unswerving dedication to finding a culprit and meting out justice is unshakable. The movie repeatedly tests him: he is asked questions about fanciful theories of the origins of human intelligence, which he sidesteps because they are outside of a cop’s purview. He cannot change his approach to games to meet an unexpectedly strong foe or adjust his dance style to accommodate a freewheeling partner on the floor. When a newcomer arrives at the lodge, Glebsky’s only concern is how this person is connected to the murder. And most crucially, when the plot makes its ultimate transition from mystery to science fiction, and not only are we introduced to aliens but the murder itself is undone, Glebsky is unable to shift his mindset in any way. (Tellingly, actor Pūcītis was a Latvian in a cast of Estonians; he did not speak the same language, and thus was perpetually isolated amidst the production.) He remains utterly committed to his certainty that he’s in a police procedural, and any facts that don’t fit must not be facts at all.

A film made amidst the Cold War in a republic under Soviet domination will inevitably have a political element, and Glebsky is a serviceable stand-in for a state that was so committed to a point of view that stifled dissent in all its forms, even in the shape of contradictory facts. (Thank goodness that’s behind us.) But the extra layer of commentary is not necessary to deliver the tragedy of Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel. Nearly every character demonstrates the ability to perceive new circumstances and adapt to them, even the late alpinist’s dog. But not our hero. He remains shackled to his orders, enables a tragedy because he knows no other way, and ends the film trying to convince himself of the righteousness of his actions. If only he’d been able to roll with the changes when the mystery dropped out from under him.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This is another of those movies that’s not really within just one genre as there are elements of mystery / suspense, crime, science fiction, surrealism and horror all weaved in plus lots of flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations and oddball characters and even some bizarrely-placed b/w newsreel footage showing real people falling to their deaths trying to escape from a burning high rise apartment building. While it’s well-made, handsomely-shot and keeps you guessing, it’s at its best as a visual piece…” – Justin McKinney, The Bloody Pit of Horror

(This movie was nominated for review by MrEvilGuy. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)