Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch (director)
(studio)
12 (certificate)
147 (length)
12 May 2023 (released)
11 May 2023
Told over a lifetime of friendship The Eight Mountains is epic filmmaking on a very human level telling the stories of Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) and Pietro (Luca Marinelli) as friends apart and together.
Meeting as children when Bruno a local boy from the Aosta mountains that Pietro and his family visit for holidays from Turin. A bond and friendship are established but broken when petulantly Pietro objects to Bruno going to the city with them for an education. A moot point as Bruno’s father bans it anyway.
They don’t meet again for another fifteen years. Bruno never left the mountain Pietro has mucked about and is now something of a freewheeler and directionless. Both scarred by bad relations with their fathers, though this turns out to be more complicated as they begin to reacquaint.
The film gathers itself together when the adult Bruno and Pietro played by Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli respectively and the two begin to rework their friendship through the building of a cabin the mountain and some familial revelations, which splits them again as well as Pietro’s girl friend turns out to be more interested in Bruno than him. He’s so fine about it that he leaves for the Himalayas to write books.
The viewer is never guided towards one or the other though Pietro is probably the least sympathetic of the two: his objection of Bruno going to Turin as a child was selfishly to preserve him as his mountain friend.
And in some respects, that’s what happens as Bruno never leaves the mountain and thinks of little else to the point of splitting with the ones he loves. Pietro meanwhile trashes his advantages in life and destroys his relationship with his father, that comes back to haunt him when finds a cache of letters.
Written and directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch from a novel Paolo Cognetti, The Eight Mountains looks wonderful with the sweeping beauty of the landscapes, a score by Daniel Norgen that blends and subtly backdrops the detailed character studies of two quite flawed men, who nevertheless have forged a lifelong friendship.
The acting from the two leads is understated for the most part that suits the majestic tenor of the film overall. It is long but one of those that the viewer has to allow themselves to sink into to fully appreciate.
The Eight Mountains opens in UK cinemas on 12 May 2023.
