Upamanyu Biswas
‘Mountainhead‘ revolves around a get-together of four billionaire friends in a remote mansion in the snow-capped mountains of Utah, where they must navigate a potential international crisis of their own making without causing even more harm. While much of the story is told through the eyes of wealthy and influential figures who have a say in critical sectors of civilization, one amongst the group stands out for lagging behind the rest – Hugo Van Yalk, the founder of a meditation app named Slowzo. As the proverbial runt of the litter, Hugo is often overlooked by his pals, even though it is his titular mansion they find themselves staying in as the world burns outside their doorstep. Yet, the character quickly finds his fortunes flipped as the narrative progresses, raising his and his app’s importance in the movie.
Slowzo is a Fictional Lifestyle App With an Emphasis on Meditation
While it is a marker of Hugo’s status amongst his billionaire friends, Slowzo is a fictional meditation app brought to life by writer-director Jesse Armstrong. The app contrasts sharply with the other technological marvels led by Hugo’s friends, such as Traam and BILTER, which are primarily the center of growing AI technology. By comparison, Slowzo is a much smaller business operating on a lower rung of the tech ladder, mainly providing mental health services to its customers. Parallels can be drawn with like-minded real-life apps such as Headspace, Calm, BetterSleep, Buddhify, Meditate, and The Mindfulness App. These loose similarities could be a deliberate choice by Armstrong to ground the app in existing technologies that are used by people worldwide.
One of the other reasons behind Slowzo’s inclusion in the narrative could be to differentiate Hugo from the rest of the group. As the founder of a self-styled lifestyle app, he is often treated as a token addition to the four billionaire pals. In fact, Hugo does not even qualify for the billionaire tag because of his multimillionaire status. Thus, there is a vast disparity between him and those he calls his pals. It also illustrates Slowzo’s market cap in a transparent manner, showing how it has limited growth potential, especially when competing against rapidly advancing technologies such as AI. To that end, Slowzo serves an essential narrative purpose – laying down the foundations for the social dynamics between the group’s members and their hierarchical order in terms of wealth.
Hugo Van Yalk is Partially Inspired By Real-Life Business Leaders
For the most part, Hugo Van Yalk plays the fourth wheel among his group of friends in ‘Mountainhead.’ The character is inspired by a retinue of real-life figures who all have a similar streak of philosophizing their thoughts and actions in a seemingly profound manner. As such, one might see parallels between him and people who have openly proscribed the benefits of meditation, including Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and Square CEO. In an interview, writer-director Jesse Armstrong said, “For people who know the area well, it’s a little bit of a fun house mirror in that you see something and are convinced that it’s them. I think all of those people featured in my research. There’s bits of (Marc) Andreessen and David Sacks and some of those philosopher types. It’s a good parlor game to choose your Frankenstein limbs.”
In addition to the real-life inspirations, each character in ‘Mountainhead’ is also designed to fit into four specific character archetypes – the father, the dynamo, the usurper, and the hanger-on. It is evident that Hugo fits into the fourth category, trying his best to cling to the sides of his more influential friends. Because of his much lower net worth, he is often called Souper, a term bestowed on him for his soup kitchen wealth. As such, one of the main driving forces in his life is getting investment into his company via his rich pals, who all have bags of money compared to him. It makes him gullible to schemes that might be hatched by other members of the groups, which is what happens as the narrative progresses. Thus, his hopes of growing Slowzo into a billion-dollar company are often his Achilles Heel.
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