The Eight Mountains

The first time Pietro lays his big blue eyes on Bruno is by the kitchen table of his family’s home­ly sum­mer house in Grana, a small com­mune in the Ital­ian region of Pied­mont. ​“I’m the last child of the vil­lage,” says the 12-year-old to Pietro’s atten­tive moth­er as she lays down choco­late bis­cuits in front of the two boys. Munch­ing, the duo mea­sures one anoth­er, timid­ly pranc­ing by the table before head­ing out the door and into the vast­ness of a world that feels excit­ing­ly fresh when expe­ri­enced through new­found companionship.

Adapt­ed from the epony­mous Ital­ian best-sell­er by Pao­lo Cognetti, The Eight Moun­tains is Bel­gian film­mak­er Felix van Groeningen’s first col­lab­o­ra­tion with his actress wife Char­lotte Van­der­meer­sch and it feeds his pen­chant for adap­ta­tions, with 2009’s The Mis­for­tu­nates, 2013’s The Bro­ken Cir­cle Break­down, and 2018’s Beau­ti­ful Boy all based on pre-exist­ing work. Told across four decades, the sto­ry ping-pongs between the two boys as they grow into men, drift­ing apart and find­ing each oth­er again, Bruno a man of the moun­tains, Pietro a man of the world.

As with the mighty glac­i­ers, the rela­tion­ship between the friends is guid­ed by the unavoid­able rhythms of nature – all that is allowed to expe­ri­ence the glo­ry of the extra­or­di­nary will one day need to come to terms with the real­i­ty of the com­ing down, be it as gnaw­ing droplets or thun­der­ous avalanch­es. When one of the two reach­es a peak, the oth­er is mak­ing his way towards the base, an ever-present pat­tern: feet climb stairs, roofs, hills, bunkbeds; hands grasp for nooks, han­dles and branch­es; the friends are syn­chro­nised like a seesaw.

Yes, the run­time stretch­es as far as the unbound­ed fields of the Alps, but there is lenience to be had in its poet­ic pay­off, which encap­su­lates the cen­tral relationship’s gen­er­ous patience. Luca Marinel­li and Alessan­dro Borgni – Pietro and Bruno in their adult years – effort­less­ly feed off each oth­er in bal­anced jux­ta­po­si­tion. When down­ing gulps of grap­pa, gig­gles escape from the ordi­nar­i­ly aus­tere Bruno like fire­works, a pri­vate spec­ta­cle for the enjoy­ment of Pietro alone. When Pietro trav­els across the globe, he scrib­bles on paper in antic­i­pa­tion of tales told to Bruno late at night by a timid fire.

In this years-long dance between the two, The Eight Moun­tains plays as a gen­tle epic, equal­ly accom­plished in its min­i­mal­is­tic approach to inti­ma­cy as in its grandiose por­tray­al of land­scapes, an immer­sive visu­al expe­ri­ence that needs not sac­ri­fice the arcs of its char­ac­ters to suc­ceed in build­ing arrest­ing con­tem­pla­tion. By com­mit­ting to the pace of life’s steady tides, Groenin­gen and Van­der­meer­sch build an entranc­ing ele­gy to friend­ship, and as we bid farewell to the two men, it is as painful as say­ing good­bye to old friends.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.