The Eight Mountains
A mountainous friendship spans the years in Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Cannes Jury Prize winner.
Although this is a film adapted from a novel by Paolo Cognetti which was published as recently as 2016, it seems very uncharacteristic of today's cinema. Indeed, despite also containing some scenes set in Turin and including footage that takes place in Nepal, this is a quiet, intimate epic in which the main location is the Aosta valley and the nearby mountains of the Italian Alps. In dealing with lives over a considerable period of time in an unhurried but insightful way, The Eight Mountains reminded me of a past age of cinema and in particular of the work of the late Ermanno Olmi, especially his 1978 rural classic The Tree of Wooden Clogs. The latter lasted a full 186 minutes and, while this new work is not as long as that, it comes in at just under two and a half hours.
The Eight Mountains is not a period piece but there is something timeless about its study of the lives of two friends who first meet in the valley when each of them is eleven years old. Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) is there because his father, Giovanni (Filippo Timi), is a factory manager, an engineer who can afford holiday accommodation in the village where Bruno (Cristiano Sassella) has always lived. Bruno's own father, a bricklayer, is not around so the boy lives with an uncle who is a cheesemaker. The fact that Bruno's background is so modest doesn't prevent the boys from playing together and becoming friends to the extent that they link up again when Pietro returns with his family and, indeed, Bruno joins with Pietro and his father in local climbing endeavours, one of which remains an uncomfortable memory for Pietro because the altitude is such that he proves unable to continue. There is tension of another kind when, taking an interest in their son’s friend, Pietro's parents offer financial assistance for Bruno to be educated in Turin but the uncle insists on Bruno staying put and starting to work.
This childhood friendship is superbly portrayed and is notable for the seeming ease of the direction which appears unforced and effortless. For me this came as a considerable surprise because the filmmaker is Belgium's Felix van Groeningen, here working with his partner Charlotte Vandermeersch as co-director and as co-adaptor of the novel. Previously he was best known for the 2012 movie The Broken Circle Breakdown and for his English-language film Beautiful Boy (2018). Both of those films had their admirers but I was not among them finding the earlier piece a romantic melodrama not to my taste and regarding the direction of Beautiful Boy as self-consciously arty in an off-putting way. The quiet assurance, the sense of inevitability, that characterises so much of The Eight Mountains is not what I would have expected from him, but I found myself admiring it enormously. It is exactly what is needed for a film which seeks to portray a close platonic friendship between two boys which becomes lifelong. Oddly enough, that is a theme rarely explored in films yet, even if youthful friends often lose touch, most people have at least one such bond in childhood and that gives this portrayal a universal appeal, a direct connection.
Since The Eight Mountains is a film about a lasting friendship, it inevitably covers a lengthy period. After the initial childhood scenes, we glimpse Pietro and Bruno in adolescence but a more detailed narrative emerges once more when they meet again in their early thirties with Luca Marinelli now taking on the role of Pietro and Alessandro Borghi that of Bruno. Between times their lives have taken very different paths, not least because Pietro’s desire to be a writer and his determination not to live a life like that of his father has led to a severe estrangement between father and son that has lasted for years. Meanwhile, Bruno has continued his rural existence and, as it eventually transpires, has developed a bond with Pietro’s father often climbing with him on his continuing visits to the valley. If there is irony in Bruno finding a father figure in this way and in a sense taking Pietro's place in his father’s life, it is also apparent that both Pietro and Bruno can look to the life of the other and see in it something that is lacking in their own lives.
In this way the narrative development becomes less universal but remains fully effective thus far. It is aided by the very capable acting (the time jumps are such that they help us to believe that the adult figures are indeed the boys in later life as the cast changes) and also by the fine colour photography of Ruben Impens. The latter ensures that the scenes in the mountains are suitably powerful and do not suffer from the decision not to shoot the film for the widescreen, the tighter ratio being exactly right for such an intimate tale. What is less well judged is the way in which the last quarter of the film feels increasingly thin. We do meet Asmi (Surakshya Panta) and Lara (Elisabetta Mazzullo) who become the partners of Pietro and Bruno respectively, but they are too sidelined to account for much and, while there are moments later on to illustrate how the men's friendship is sustained despite occasional clashes, the material lacks real strength in its later stages. This is all the more apparent given the decision to let the film run on for longer than average (I do not know the novel but its length would seem to be relatively standard). However, if there is some disappointment here, it is also down to the film’s first half being so masterly and setting a standard that is not maintained. Yet regardless of that, at its best The Eight Mountains is memorable indeed and in any case the fact that it won the Cannes Jury Prize last year suggests that not everyone shares my reservations.
Original title: Le Otto montagne.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Lupo Barbiero, Cristiano Sassella, Elisabetta Mazzullo, Andrea Palma, Surakshya Panta, Elena Lietti, Filippo Timi, Elisa Zanotto, Chiara Jorrioz, Gualtiero Burzi, Alex Sassella, Francesco Palombelli, Benedetto Patruno, Iris Barbiero.
Dir Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, Pro Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa, Screenplay Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen from the novel by Paolo Cognetti, Ph Ruben Impens, Pro Des Massimiliano Nocente, Ed Nico Leunen, Music Daniel Norgren, Costumes Francesca Maria Brunori.
Wildside/Rufus/Menuetto Film/Pyramide Productions/Canal+/Ciné+/Elastic Film/Sky-Picturehouse Entertainment.
147 mins. Italy/Belgium/France/UK. 2022. US Rel: 28 April 2023. UK Rel: 12 May 2023. Cert. 12.
