Lost on a Mountain in Maine is a survival drama about a 12-year-old boy who gets lost on a mountain in Maine. If that sounds rather obvious, wait until you see the film. The new feature offers few surprises as it recounts, with workmanlike style and genuine compassion, the true story of pre-teen Donn Fendler, who was separated from his family while hiking Maine’s Mount Katahdin in July 1939 and survived nine days without food, water, or appropriate clothing. It’s a heck of a story and debuting feature director Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger treats it in a fashion that’s a bit tidy and traditional.
Where the film pushes against — but can’t quite break through — the boundaries of the well-worn wilderness survival genre is in its portrayal of Donn as a young boy desperate to connect with his taciturn father bent low by the ravages of the Depression. In adapting the 1939 book written by Fendler and Joseph B. Egan, screenwriter Luke Paradise wisely understands that their relationship is, ultimately, what the movie is really about. An approval-seeking son fights his way through the forest to return home to an aloof father passing down the pressures of masculinity to his children: that’s the heart of the film.
More a family friendly drama with a light, faith-based streak than a tough-minded survival epic, Lost on a Mountain in Maine achieves its modest aims and even jerks an easily-achieved tear by the end.
A Depression-Era Father Suffering from Toxic Masculinity
12-year-old Donn Fendler becomes trapped on a treacherous mountain when a fast-moving storm separates him from his family. With no food or proper clothing, he begins a desperate fight for survival in the unforgiving wilderness of northern Maine.
- Release Date
- November 1, 2024
- Director
- Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger
- Cast
- Caitlin Fitzgerald , Paul Sparks , Ethan Slater , Luke David Blumm , Dean Neistat , Dan Matteucci , Bates Wilder , Mason Cufari
- Runtime
- 98 Minutes
- Writers
- Luke Paradise
- It tells an amazing true story that most viewers are unaware of.
- The troubled father-son relationship gives the movie some depth.
- It’s a survival story that’s appropriate for the entire family.
- The survival scenes are rote and have been done much better elsewhere.
- The film could have put even more meat on the father-son relationship.
- The ending does little to mitigate its predictability.
Terms like toxic or unchecked masculinity weren’t around in the U.S. in the 1930s when Donald Fendler (Paul Sparks) returned home after a few hard weeks on the road. Calling his kids “sir” and wife, Ruth (Caitlin FitzGerald) “ma’am,” Donald is a stern father so hardened by the Depression that the wisdom he imparts to his children is on the order of “sometimes you gotta fight. Sometimes you don’t gotta choice.”
Donn hates his father for being on the road so much and the feeling is only reinforced when a last-minute work commitment means Donald must cancel the family’s two-week fishing trip. But he makes up for it by offering an overnight hike up Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine.
Related
10 Survival Movies Based on Thrilling True Stories
These survival movies draw from real-life events, showcasing the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity.
Sparks is quite fine as Donald, with his Central Casting visage of stone-faced resignation to the penurious life that America has bequeathed to his children. He, along with Paradise, score points by presenting Donald not as a Depression-era Great Santini, just a product of hardscrabble circumstance. If his eventual realization that he was “so focused on trying to make him tough that I forgot to be his dad” sounds trite and on-the-nose, his struggle to reconcile his love for his children with his desire to toughen them up establishes some juicy familial conflict that’ll pay off in standard issue fashion later.
A Dangerous Hike Through 100,000 Acres of Treacherous Forest
After the hike goes south and a terrified Donn makes his way down the mountain, Kightlinger occasionally interrupts the drama with vintage interviews featuring Donn’s actual brother Ryan (who had “a very strong feeling they wouldn’t find him”), his mother Ruth and others. While they disrupt the story to a certain extent, Donn’s treacherous descent is presented in such a straight-arrow fashion that these interludes serve as a bracing reminder that his ordeal was real.
Luke David Blumm gives a hardworking performance as the resilient boy, who trudges through 100,000 acres of wilderness at below freezing temperatures while fighting off bugs and leeches and eating berries and raw fish. Cinematographer Idan Menin, filming in Hudson Valley, NY, delivers massive overhead shots of dense foliage that convey the near impossibility of Donn being alive, let alone found.
Related
10 Most Satisfying Family Reunions in Movies
From literal gathering of relatives to long-awaited reconciliations or the forging of new connections, here are the most satisfying family reunions.
Since the survival aspect of the story is a foregone conclusion that lacks the muscle of films like The Grey and The Edge, and the filmmaking technique of 127 Hours or The Revenant, it’s up to Donn’s parents to slake our thirst for something deeper. FitzGerald cuts a noble Depression-era figure as a mother who frets that each time the phone rings it could be “the call.” Later she takes matters into her own hands, ensuring enough volunteers and media coverage to raise the odds of finding her son. Ultimately, though, the film is about a ramrod serious father who learns to thaw out after a near-tragedy, and a son who comes to understand his father’s troubles and motivations. Their fraught nine-day separation is mental as much as physical, as is their eventual reunion.
Maybe It Should’ve Been Directed by Producer Sylvester Stallone
Lost on a Mountain in Maineskates by on the strength of its amazing true story of grit and determination (Fendler’s book is still required reading by all fourth graders in Maine) and the relationship between Donn and his father. Its light-touch condemnation of overt masculinity and its thin overlay of biblical notions like faith and neighborliness are too gentle to land a knockout dramatic punch. Maybe the film would have had one if directed by producer Sylvester Stallone. Instead, Kightlinger delivers a straightforward, predictable, if capable enough, survival story that goes down way easier than Donn did on that formidable mountain.
Lost on a Mountain in Maine, produced by Blue Fox Entertainment, will be released in theaters nationwide Friday, November 1.