The Eight Mountains has given me a range of altitude jealousies and gratefulness. I want so badly to have a seasonal mountain friend who only I know the deepest intricacies of. On the other hand, I also can’t stand the idea of around the clock climbing to reach a cabin with one lightbulb and a significantly too thin mattress. This film slots itself into the slice of life films to make me question my relationships, life choices and fluency in other languages.
The film follows a simple three act structure, beginning, platonic house building and sky burial. We meet Pietro, who’s just a city boy, living in a dilapidated Italian mountain village for the summer. Pietro meets Bruno in the way that all childhood friendships begin, they share an age and are in close proximity to each other. They awkwardly bond until a friendship is formed through vertical exploration and big cat roleplay.
Bruno’s refusal to go out into the city and go into school defines his life path for the rest of the film, never leaving the mountain where he was born. The theory that Pietro brings up about the eight mountains and the one tall mountain in the middle directly applies to both friends and how they decided to live. Pietro expands his horizons in attempts to find himself, spreading himself thin, never really feeling a loyalty or connection to one thing or place in particular. He seems to accept whatever comes next without much question. Bruno’s approach is the opposite, as he dedicates all his time and emotions into one place with most of the same people, closing himself off from his own potential.
In the interim of the childhood and adulthood friendship is a brief encounter Bruno and Pietro have in a cafe, around age fifteen. Pitero and Bruno nod at each other, with some voiceover of Pietro expressing the lack of communication and connection. You feel the anticipation of their reunion, expecting a child-like reaction when they reunite. We then feel the same disappointment that Piretro feels as we get the nod from a now distant stranger, an acknowledgement of familiarity without any remembrance of the time they shared together as kids. This short scene stands out to show the mid point of their diverged paths in life, the lack of similarity they now share.
From there we go to Pietro, working in a bar, in his early thirties. He’s grown a beard now, which is a strong choice, not one I endorse or understand, but one I would distantly support because his personality makes up for it. He gets word his father has passed away and goes back to mountains to fulfill his final wish, to build a house along the side of the mountain. He first travels to their old summer home to stay, where he finds the fire has been lit for him. Bruno arrives the next day and they speak for the first time since they were here in their childhood summers. They make small talk, about how much both have grown and compare beards, classic conversation fuel.
The growth of friendship feels natural from here, they bond over the labour intensive construction with their donkey transport units. Pietro slowly learns about how his father returned to the mountains over the years, climbing trails with Bruno and marking them on the map he used when Pietro was young, taking his first trail up the snowy peaks to see the glacier. They are colour coded, one for each climber. We see some regret and guilt in Pietro that he didn’t get to bond with the side of his father he loved the most. He mourns the loss of someone he rarely got to meet but knows more about than the father he did lose. He fights to get this side back by following each trail, adding his colour to them and reading his journal entries at the top, reading the joy his father felt with Bruno, the ease of their connection. There is a maturity in Pitero’s reaction to these entries, he understands Bruno’s family situation and his need for a strong paternal figure, he allows him to have that, without making him feel any less because he isn’t blood related.
This film heavily deals with male relationships, on both a parental and friendship level. The connection Pietro and Bruno share is described by Pitero at the end, as one of intimacy, the closest relationship they both have. Pietro says they both know each other deeper than anyone else, him losing that is him losing the one who understands him the most. He has lost both his father and his friend, leaving a gap he says he can never fill, or a mountain that he can never climb. The absence of a strong father figure is seen manifesting in two ways with both Bruno and Pitero, as Bruno is afraid to break out of his comfort zone and Pitero has been unable to find his. Pietro does find comfort in his friendship with Bruno and the promise of his dependability, that he will be there every summer, in the cabin they built together. Bruno never really finds this, he shares some small comforts with his dairy farm, but his inability to further the business causes the downfall.
Technically, this film is so excellently crafted, from cinematography to music. The camera work is pretty simple, all it has to do is frame the characters in the environments they are in and you have a shot that you would want to set as your mountain girly aesthetic wallpaper. The choice to have a square crop on the film is interesting , giving it an older feel while also giving the height of the mountains the vertical scale they so truly deserve. Musically, we have one artist, Savfk, who does most of the songs throughout, almost building a connection and familiarity with the audience as the film goes on. The songs themselves fit so perfectly into the world but also are sung in English so adding in some juxtaposition to the native language being spoken in the film. I assume this means nothing and the songs were chosen for their nice sounds.
This film lived up to my expectations so fully, I was so ready to love this movie while also preparing myself to walk out feeling like I just watched Living again. Thankfully it was less Living and more Close. I would 100% watch this one again, it got the perfect balance of a comfort movie, friends being friendly in remote places with a sprinkle of tragedy to make you reminisce about the good times.
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