SummaryThe Eight Mountains is the story of a friendship. Of children becoming men who try to erase the footprints of their fathers, but who, through the twists and turns they take, always end up returning home. Pietro is a boy from the city, Bruno is the last child of a forgotten mountain village. Over the years Bruno remains faithful to his mo...
SummaryThe Eight Mountains is the story of a friendship. Of children becoming men who try to erase the footprints of their fathers, but who, through the twists and turns they take, always end up returning home. Pietro is a boy from the city, Bruno is the last child of a forgotten mountain village. Over the years Bruno remains faithful to his mo...
Its social reality – that of the emptying and decline of rural regions in Italy – is contemporary and vital, but there is something deeper and simpler at play here. In that simplicity, with its notes played purely, there is no need of distortion or abstraction to justify itself.
The spiritual dimension of Pietro and Bruno’s bond has its appeal, and one of the movie’s pleasures is that it takes male friendship seriously. There’s an expressly erotic dimension to the men’s love for each other, as can be the case with intimate relationships, though not an explicitly carnal one.
The best film of the year, so far. I loved the book that it is based on, and the film is just as good, if not better. The pacing was perfect. The scenery and cinematography were beautiful.
The actors did a great job. We need more films like this.
Here's a film that takes the time to show the events that shape people, and the result of their choises. We're talking epic, as in that other movie where a person tries to go for a alternative lifestyle, Into The Wild. And wild it gets, the mountains in winter are no flowery meadow. And that atmosphere is perfectly captured by Swedish singer songwriter and formerly known Blues artist Daniel Norgren. Most songs are from the 2015 album 'Alabursy' I think. Songs like 'Everything You Know Melts Away Like Snow' or 'Why May I Not Go Out And Climb The Trees?' give my life meaning! And movies like this are a refuge against awful feasts of useless beastliness and gruesome bloodlust like in Evil Dead Rise. Just this flash of light
In the endless night
And it's done (from 'As Long As We Last')
Its good that every now and again a movie shows a life in fast forward; living might seem endless certain days, but it passes far to fast, and like in the cinema there is no rewind button. Also starring: the Italian Alps.
Just as the film’s near-sole setting — a remote mountain cabin beneath the peaks of northwestern Italy — beckons Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) throughout their lives, the intoxicating atmosphere of The Eight Mountains is a cherished retreat I’m already eager to revisit.
Much like climbing a mountain, the two-and-a-half-hour runtime may occasionally feel arduous, but the emotional release is worth it once you reach the peak.
The Eight Mountains is a sentimental ode to those singular friendships we make in our lives, the kind that can’t be severed by any amount of distance, physical or temporal. Even when there’s so much left unsaid, it’s the comfort they find in each other that resonates most.
This beautifully shot drama transforms an Italian summer of fraternal love into a delicate, decades-spanning exploration of friendship. It’s overlong, and overfamiliar, but remains a nuanced dual character study.
The filmmakers’ self-imposition of a pristinely clean aesthetic results in the kind of emptied, tranquillized, minutely calibrated experience that’s no less a matter of fan service than the latest installment of comic-book I.P., and offers no more meaningful a view of life.
Visually stunning! If you didn't care for the story, (which I did, immensely), you still can't fault the film for its cinematography. Like I said, though, it's the story that got me. It's subtle and the main two actors give nuanced performances that still resonate in the glorious Alps. One of the best movies about platonic love and masculinity I've seen in a long time. Conjured up Breaking Away for me, in a way, with a little Razor's Edge vibes too boot.
There are certain movies in modern cinema that have an abstract length and tempo. They’re often hard to describe and sometimes even tougher to sit through. At the same time, they work somewhat like a time travel machine. Suddenly, everything stops and life flashes before your eyes. Before you even realize it, you’re contemplating the sense of your life and are forced to evaluate the decisions you made and the person you’ve become. You either love it or you hate it.
In 2021, Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi was a pitch-perfect example of such cinema. Now, it’s almost impossible not to feel similarly about The Eight Mountains by Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. The film follows a simple yet complex story of Pietro, who visits an almost abandoned mountain village as a child with his mother during summer. There, he meets Bruno, a boy his age who’s one of the 14 citizens who have stayed following an “industrial revolution.” Their lives vary on every possible level. Pietro is a city-raised boy, with all the flashy clothes and fancy Adidas on his feet, while Bruno wears the same dirty bags and has to take care of cattle. The former is successful in school, while the second struggles to read. Yet, they form a connection that, to much of their surprise, would hold them together until the end of their lives.
At first sight, The Eight Mountains feels like an ordinary story of friendship that was lost in time, yet marks its return in an unexpected fashion as both Bruno and Pietro (now adults) find themselves building a house together. A house, that was a dream of Pietro’s father, who doesn’t really have a significant relationship with his son but has found an oddly, though, understandably, strong bond with Bruno instead. The friendship between Pietro and Bruno is a feat so incredibly acted and written, with its subtlety telling us more emotions than any words could have, that it’s definitely a perfect choice to have it as a main story. What does true friendship mean? And how much can it take? Does it have boundaries, and if so, can they ever be crossed? You’ll find answers to these questions here. But The Eight Mountains is much more than that. It’s a tale about stepping out of your parents’ shadow, yet struggling to cut away the same (often toxic) habits they had. It’s about searching for your own purpose, while also trying to fulfill your parents’ wishes and dreams. It’s about looking for your own place in the world in light of always being the second choice among the people you know, but still coming back and finding happiness and solace with them. It’s about crossing your own limits in your head but failing plenty of times along the way.
The list of themes in The Eight Mountains is definitely a lengthy one. Such cases are often a recipe for messy productions that struggle to keep viewers’ attention. This time around, it’s also not perfect. There are moments when you start crying, only to wipe your tears and focus again on the short but important conversations, with dramatic, almost thriller-like music suddenly playing in the background. Then you’re back to crying but also holding your breath. Yes, The Eight Mountains can be sometimes hard to keep track of. With all its emotional themes and rhythmical rollercoaster, you will find yourself confused, just like I did. Still, it does an even better job of gluing you back into the screen, not only due to the story but the monumental views it shows. The majority of the movie takes place somewhere in Italian Alps. While I’ve never personally seen this part of the world, I don’t need any convincing anymore to do so. The film is shot masterfully, with the camera often zooming out and transforming the main characters into a small element of the background, while the astonishing mountains take the main stage. There aren’t many moments like these in The Eight Mountains, but when they strike, they do so with full force. With an inspiration surely taken from a movie like Into the Wild (2007), it feels somewhat familiar, but it doesn’t take away the pleasure and with its unusual narrow camera angle, it’s certainly special.
These mountains, cliffs, edges, and so on aren’t only there to take your breath away. They’re a perfect metaphor for the story. “The mountain is a way of living life. One step in front of the other, silence, time and measure,” says Bruno throughout the film.
The Eight Mountains is an incredibly ambitious project which tells numerous stories, all connected to each other. Pietro’s journey to self-discovery is one that won’t grab everyone’s attention at first sight, but those who give it a try and have some patience will certainly be rewarded with a mix of emotions. Emotions, that take your heart by storm and won’t let go. You either love or hate this kind of cinema, and I unquestionably belong to the first group. After watching The Eight Mountains, you will love it as well.
Considering the importance of friendship in our lives, it’s somewhat surprising that there aren’t more movies devoted to this subject. But perhaps that’s because it’s difficult to make truly engaging films that effectively address this topic. Such is the case with this would-be grand sweeping epic set against the mountain landscapes of Italy and Nepal. In this tale of life-long friendship and self-discovery, directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch attempt to examine these issues through the complex relationship of two boyhood chums (Luca Martinelli, Alessandro Borghi) over the course of four subsequent decades. Unfortunately, the film seeks to cover so much ground (and lacks the kind of clarity required to do so) that much of the narrative seems muddled, meandering and just plain dull. The filmmakers try to paper over this central shortcoming with its visually stunning cinematography, which is so impressive in itself that it almost makes the picture worth watching. However, given the overall lack of focus, snail-like pacing and inclusion of too much easily removed extraneous material, the visuals are not enough to overcome a script that’s not as profound as it likes to think it is. Moreover, the chemistry between the two protagonists is often unconvincing and unclear as to what the true nature of their connection is supposed to be, making it hard to believe that they’re genuinely the good friends that the directors are attempting to claim they are (or, strangely enough at times, that they’re perhaps more than just the friends that they allegedly are). In the picture’s defense, it improves somewhat the further one gets into the story, but so much narrative clutter has preceded this that it’s difficult to muster much enthusiasm for how events play out. And, despite a supposedly uplifting message, this offering has a profound level of sadness attached to it that the filmmakers try to deflect with a sense of overblown phony nobility that, even if widely held, fails to muster the empathy it tries to generate with audience members. Friendship is indeed something that deserves wider attention in the cinematic landscape, but this release is not the way to go about it.
Production Company
Wildside,
Rufus,
Menuetto Film,
Pyramide Productions,
Vision Distribution,
Elastic Film,
Sky,
Canal+,
Ciné+,
Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds,
Screen Flanders,
Film Commission Regione Valle d'Aosta