Mountains: A Wiser, Kinder View of Haitian Immigrants
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A-
Although Donald Trump and JD Vance’s grotesque tales of Haitian immigrants eating pets seemed to come out of nowhere, these fictions are consistent with a long history of American suspicion and hostility directed toward people from the Caribbean nation.
Following the Haitian slaves’ successful revolution against their French overseers (1790-1804), slave-owning Americans, fearful of homegrown uprisings, spread stories of barbaric rituals from the newly liberated people Thomas Jefferson called “cannibals of the terrible republic.” In the film world, Haitian folklore provided the basis of Hollywood’s favourite subhuman invaders, zombies.
By chance, this week sees the release of a different picture of Haitian American immigrants, a film called Mountains, the feature debut from Miami-born, Haitian American filmmaker Michelle Sorelle, cowritten with Cuban American Robert Colom who she met while both worked as crew on Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. After making the rounds on the festival circuit for more than a year (including Tribeca and TIFF 2023), Mountains is now available on video on demand.
A group portrait of an immigrant family in Miami’s Little Haiti, Mountains is embedded in lived experience of immigrant community, including the diegetic music, the eclectic colourful interior décor of the family home, the focus on the codes of social behaviour and the dialogue that flows between English and Haitian Creole.
The opening explains the film’s title, from a Haitian proverb meaning, “Behind mountains are mountains,” an expression recommending humility because challenges never cease, or perhaps, in the contemplative spirit of the film, that life is full of ups and downs.
Family patriarch Xavier (Atibon Nazaire) is a big, strong, grizzled middle-aged man who works constant overtime shifts on a demolition crew, knocking down old bungalows to make room for bigger homes as the neighbourhood becomes gentrified. He has a loving relationship with his wife, Esperance (Sheila Anozier) who juggles jobs as a crossing-guard, laundromat attendant, and seamstress.
Together, they have a tidy home, good health and some savings but, to Xavier’s disappointment, their son Junior (Chris Renois) has dropped out of college and moved back home. At first, we have the impression that Junior, who goes out late, might be slipping into a life of delinquency but the truth is more interesting. He wants to be a standup comic and is going to open mic nights, hoping for a career that is incomprehensible to his cautious immigrant parents.
Xavier decides they need to live in a bigger house, one where the parents need not speak in whispers in bed at night and where Esperance can have her own sewing room. He has spotted a promising fixer-upper for sale in the neighbourhood. “Let’s do a little dreaming together, love.”
But at a realtor’s open house, we see other prospective buyers, including young white couples, and the subtle condescension the Haitian-speaking agent displays toward Xavier and Esperance. Meanwhile, at Xavier’s job, there are percolating tensions between the Cuban American boss, the boss’s arrogant nephew, and the crew’s Black workers.
Even without racial tensions, life is an ongoing series of tests of social status and respectability. A well-off brother-in-law visits, offers to hire Junior to work at his car dealership, and leaves Xavier and Esperance offended by his smugness. At a joyous neighbourhood birthday party for a friend’s young daughter, Xavier admonishes Junior for having his shirt untucked and, in a breach of social etiquette, wanting to leave early.
Sorelle almost breaks the fourth wall in a couple of scenes, as the characters seem to be talking directly to us: Xavier has a long monologue to his son, which consists of an inventory about what he has overcome to get as far as he has. When Junior does his semi-polished comedy routine at a local comedy club about the burden of being a child of immigrant parents, the jokes feel grounded in the filmmakers’ experience as children of immigrants choosing a career in the arts.
In this nuanced and often joyful film, the only violence involves the recurrent crash of bulldozers through stucco and timber walls as the neighbourhood transforms and some dreams get crushed as well. Just for the record, no animals were harmed.
Mountains. Directed by Monica Sorelle. Written by Monica Sorelle and Robert Colom. Starring Atibon Nazaire, Sheila Anozier, and Chris Renois. Available now on Apple TV and other video on demand services.