Technofeudalism: From creator of ‘Succession,’ a delicious satire of Tech Right

In November, when 'Succession' creator Jesse Armstrong got the idea for his caustic new movie, 'Mountainhead', he knew he wanted to do it fast. He wrote the script, about grandiose, nihilistic tech oligarchs holed up in a mountain mansion in Utah, in January and February, as a very similar set of oligarchs was coalescing behind Donald Trump’s inauguration. Then he shot the film, his first, over five weeks this spring. It premieres Saturday on HBO — an astonishingly compressed timeline. With events cascading so quickly that last year often feels like another era, Armstrong wanted to create what he called, when I spoke to him last week, “a feeling of nowness.”

He’s succeeded. Much of the pleasure of 'Mountainhead' is in the lens it offers on our preposterous nightmare world. I spend a lot of my time saucer-eyed with horror at the rapid degeneration of this country, agog at the terrifying power amassed by Silicon Valley big shots who sound like stoned Bond villains. No one, I suspect, can fully process the cavalcade of absurdities and atrocities that make up each day’s news cycle. But art can help; it’s not fun to live in a dawning age of technofeudalism, but it is satisfying to see it channelled into comedy.

In 'Mountainhead', three billionaires gather at the modernist vacation home of a friend, a Silicon Valley hanger-on they call Souper, short for “soup kitchen,” because he’s a mere centimillionaire. One of the billionaires, the manic, juvenile Venis — the richest in the world — has just released new content tools on his social media platform that make it easier than ever to create deepfakes of ordinary people. Suddenly, people all over the world are making videos of their enemies committing rapes or desecrating sacred sites, and any prevailing sense of reality collapses. Internecine violence turns into apocalyptic global instability.

It’s not a far-fetched premise. Facebook posts accusing Muslims of rape have already helped fuel genocide in Myanmar, and tools like those that Venis unleashes seem more likely to be months than years away.

Venis’ foil is Jeff, who has built an artificial intelligence that can filter truth from falsehood and whose flashes of conscience put him at odds with the others. Rounding out the quartet is Randall, a venture capitalist — played by a terrific Steve Carell — who pontificates like the bastard offspring of investors Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.

Journalists can write exposes just as they have about the family of Rupert Murdoch, on whom 'Succession' was based. But art and entertainment can make such figures feel real in a more visceral, emotional way.

'Mountainhead' isn’t about Trump, but it is about people to whom he’s given nearly free rein. Considering how cowardly many media executives have been about crossing the president, I wondered if Armstrong had any problem getting the movie made. He said, however, that HBO was supportive: “Maybe they had some qualms, but I’ve never felt the vibrations myself.” I hope audiences reward the network for that. 'Mountainhead' is the first movie I’ve seen about now, but many more should follow.

@The New York Times