The Eight Mountains Paints a Romantic, Picturesque, Familiar Friendship
A story eternally running through novels (and films based on novels) is the hypothetical question of what would happen if a man had a friend. Supposing also that these men couldn’t really talk openly with one another, and perhaps came from different walks of life, the psychological groundwork is laid once again for a tale about a surface-level relationship that belies deep truths about masculinity and eagle-eyed observations about how we choose to approach our brief time on this world. The Eight Mountains, from Belgian writer-directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, has a familiar focus, but a self-conscious artistry that draws our attention away. Brilliant landscape photography and two pairs of poignant performances elevate the drama to an enjoyable distance above sea level.
The Eight Mountains hikes the beaten trail of a city boy’s memories, both when he befriended a local kid during his summers in the country town of Grana and when he returned to this retreat (and friendship) as a man. The novelistic premise and presentation (voiceover-heavy and expected, being based on Paolo Cognetti’s book) is sometimes self-important—most notably as its two-and-a-half-hour runtime starts running out of oxygen on the last leg of its journey—but always lush enough that the trip is worth the underwhelming destination. We don’t really care about where the winding road of time takes urban softie Pietro (Lupo Barbiero; Andrea Palma; Luca Marinelli) and blue-collar Bruno (Cristiano Sassella; Francesco Palombelli; Alessandro Borghi), but they’re amiable sight-seeing companions as we follow them from the Alps to the Himalayas.
It’s on these mountain ranges, not in the ponderous dinner conversations, that the film finds its meaning. Its rebellious boys want to strike their own paths, distinct from their fathers, and that only resonates if we see them chafe against the rut they’re set in. In the first and most engaging section—where the preteen boys’ experiences tweak the calibrations of their lives’ trajectories—Pietro’s father (Filippo Timi) takes him and Bruno on a snowy expedition. We follow closely, either in expansive wide shots that track the climbers from an adjacent peak, or as the last in line, our eyeline established by Ruben Impens’ immersive Steadicam. The single-file procession is as beautiful as it is succinctly symbolic.
As a refuge within a refuge, these rural climbs hone in on the film’s observations of contradictory male leisure—of hyper-masculine escapes that shoulder stereotypical implications of solitude and self-reliance, but are, inherently, better when shared. Young Bruno thrives in these conditions, quiet yet capable, while Pietro succumbs to altitude sickness. These are individual issues, but the meaning of the trip, why it’s burned into everyone’s memories, is found in the praise or care shown by another. Pietro’s dad tends to both boys, but Pietro feels inadequate and, thus, replaced by a more competent surrogate.
As the film leaps in time (with winning, nonchalant cuts that quicken your heart rate), we learn that Pietro has embraced this self-imposed role as he’s grown up, which encourages the other men to do so in turn. The friends only begin to mend their bond during the course of another one of these familiar masculine contradictions, brimming with meaning: Constructing a home together on the land left after Pietro’s father dies.
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