A large and essentially undirected group of people trek up a rocky, fog-covered mountain – as well as moving in the opposite direction – and it’s unclear what they’re doing in this inhospitable place. Their numbers grow but the circumstances remain shrouded, and the film evokes anxiety through uncertainty. Are they pilgrims? Are they perhaps on the run? The picture, in which a nipping wind drowns out all expressions of human voice, was named for the 1870 Victorian novel by E. G. E. Bulwer- Lytton – a work that posits the notion of people living inside the mountain, long considered by many to be based in fact.