Producers: Sylvester Stallone, Braden Aftergood, Dick Boyce and Ryan B. Cook Director: Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger Screenplay: Luke Paradise Cast: Luke David Blumm, Paul Sparks, Caitlin FitzGerald, Griffin Wallace Henkel, Mason Cufari, Ethan Slater, Bates Wilder and Mackenzie Sage Distributor: Blue Fox Entertainment
Grade: C+
Donn Fendler was twelve years old when, on July 17, 1939, he got separated from his father Donald, his twin brother Ryan, his younger brother Tommy and their guide Henry as they were all hiking up Mount Katahdin in Maine, the state’s highest peak. For eight days he was alone in the dense forest as a massive search effort was underway to find him and his plight incited national interest. On the ninth day he emerged some thirty-five miles from where he’d gone missing. He told his story to Joseph B. Egan, who edited it into the book from which this dramatization has been adapted.
As written by Luke Paradise and directed by Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” relates this true-life story as an old-fashioned boys’ adventure period piece, earnestly inspirational but rather plodding. It does, however, feature a committed performance by Luke David Blumm as young Donn. He makes you feel how harrowing the boy’s experience in the wilderness was, even if the movie’s attempts to recreate the hallucinations he had are not always successful (the bed he saw in a lake is fine, but the Indian deity with the head of a moose and the wings of an eagle is close to risible).
Blumm and the filmmakers don’t portray Donn as a perfect child. In the prologue that precedes the hike, he’s depicted as an obstreperous and willful kid, often tussling with his twin brother Ryan (Griffin Wallace Henkel). Both have been raised strictly by their father Donald (Paul Sparks), who’s struggling to keep the family financially afloat during the Great Depression and feels that he needs to teach his sons to be tough and resilient in the face of the world’s ever-increasing challenges. Though his wife Ruth (Caitlin FitzGerald) offers warmth to balance his sternness, she’s completely supportive of him.
The boys are excited when their father returns from one of his long trips on the road as a salesman, since he’s promised to take them on a two-week fishing trip. (One thing the screenplay doesn’t make clear is that their rustic Maine house is a summer getaway; they reside most of the year in Rye, New York.) They’re both disappointed when Donald cancels the trip because he has to go back on the road, but it’s Donn who lashes out at him, and isn’t fully mollified even when Donald suggests that they instead climb the nearby mountain with an experienced guide, their neighbor Henry (Ethan Slater). The next day they’re off.
But the adventure quickly becomes very dangerous. Halfway up the mountain, the weather turns nasty and it begins to storm. Donald turns back with Tommy, and when Donn and Ryan argue over whether to continue the climb, Donn breaks away and is unable to find his way back to the trail. Thus begins his ordeal, and that of Donald, who’s obsessed with finding the boy as authorities and volunteers join him, many alerted to the need by Ruth, who takes to the phone to contact politicians, journalists and anyone else who might spur the effort.
The script juxtaposes the two parts of the narrative—Donn’s solitary journey and the search operations—but it adds a third element, snippets from interviews with family members and searchers recorded long after the event, culminating in a recollection by Donn himself, followed by archival footage of his recovery taken in 1939. The source of these materials isn’t indicated, but presumably it’s the 2011 documentary “Finding Don Fendler: Lost on a Mountain in Maine 72 Years Later,” which was co-directed by Ryan B. Cook (one of the producers here) and Derek Desmond (one of the executive producers).
But the source is less important than the intrusive effect the inserts have on the dramatization; simply put, they detract from the tension rather than adding to it, as interesting as they might be in a documentary context, Whether their inclusion was a decision by editor Andrew Drazek, director Kightlinger or the producing team (which includes Sylvester Stallone, whose support was doubtlessly instrumental in getting the long-planned film made), it proves a mistake, undermining whatever energy the slowly-paced picture manages to generate.
Nonetheless one can appreciate the effort behind telling this tale, which apparently has become almost legendary in Maine, as a result not only of the book (recently transformed into a graphic novel) but of Donn’s visits to schoolrooms to talk to youngsters about his experience. It’s not easy to mount a period piece on a limited budget, but production designer Darcy C. Scanlin, costumer Amit Gajwani, art director Jaf Farkas and set decorator Charlene Wang De Chen deserve credit for their efforts, and so does cinematographer Idan Menin, who in impressive widescreen images provides far views of Maine mountains while actually shooting the ground-level action in New York’s Hudson Valley. Garth Stevenson’s score, which he performs on multiple instruments including a prominent banjo, is colorful and engaging.
In the end, the film belongs to Blumm, whose performance is a mite clumsy at the beginning and the close, when he’s out of the forest, but excellent when he’s scrambling around in the wild. FitzGerald really hasn’t much to do but look angelic and concerned, but Sparks has a character arc of his own, portraying a father whose sternness morphs into tenderness as he desperately tries to save his son, and manages it reasonably well. The rest of the cast is adequate but no more.
In sum, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” is a well-intentioned telling of an uplifting story from American history that can teach today’s youngsters something about grit and determination. It obviously has a Christian dimension—Donn prays during his ordeal, and some interviewees talk about his sustaining faith—but it doesn’t hammer you over the head with a religious message. One can imagine that Disney might have made it as a live-action feature back in the 1950s, and for many families that will be a strong recommendation in itself. It’s just a pity it couldn’t have been made with as much dramatic urgency as dogged dedication.