This is a newer Italian film I recommend, The Eight Mountains, i.e., Le Otto Montagne, directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. It had an American release this May, and while it is a film I especially wish I had seen on the big screen, I’m grateful that the Criterion Channel streaming service brought it to me.
Imdb labels it “an epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the breathtaking Italian Alps…[it] follows over four decades the profound, complex relationship between Pietro and Bruno.” A critic for The Jerusalem Post tags it an “arthouse bromance.” But don’t worry, what was for a long time a rather predictable arthouse move, the suggestion of a homoerotic tinge whenever there was any sustained exploration of male friendship, is not foisted on us in this. The JP critic calls it “arthouse” to prepare viewers for its slower pace, although amid scenery like this, that is hardly unexpected.
It’s not a mountaineering movie, i.e., one like North Face that shows the exploits and tribulations of expert climbers, but a personal drama mostly set in the mountains, and with the three main characters touched by romantic, yet naturally-occurring, ideas of what Mountain Life could be.
I agree with the many reviews which stress the moving character of the story, and as a guy who basically embraces the middle-class romance with camping, hiking, etc., I am a sucker for the loving depiction of the mountains themselves.
Based on an acclaimed novel by Paolo Cognetti, the script is one which delivers a high-point at the middle of the film, a happy “first-ending” of the first part, and then, a more-complex and sadder story at the end. The second-half involves a character-arc which is certainly possible, and it likely was true to the novel and to some of Cognetti’s own experiences, but I do wonder if the screenwriters should have opened their hearts to a less-stark outcome.
Anyhow, the middle-point’s portrait of redemption and happiness is a simple one—you can guess what it consists of even from the trailer, but nonetheless, my account of it in the next few paragraphs is strictly speaking spoiler-material.
The depiction of happiness is the building of a one-room house, a summer retreat just below the highest peaks, in a simple yet craftsman-guided manner. It is built by two young men who are rekindling the friendship they had in childhood—one of them is the working “country” man, a bricklayer, and the other is the educated “city” man, who has been dribbling his life away in bohemianism. For the second man, Pietro, the act of building is a physical and spiritual renewal, a return to manliness, purpose, hope, friendship, and understanding of his father. A shedding of his hipster “futility” and a deeper bitterness he has been nursing. For the first man, Bruno, it is a pure gift to the second, although it is rooted in a promise he made, and in his abiding friend-love.
And the house is theirs—in future summers, they might share it together!
There’s some interesting scenes once its completed, with Pietro’s citified hipster friends visiting, all of them gushing at the wonder of the snug pre-electricity chalet and its situation, and a few of them voicing stereotypical and unrealistic hippie-like dreams in which they could live up there year-round, getting away from it all, growing their own food, etc. The second half of the film in fact meditates on Bruno’s attempt, alongside a sympathetic and hearty wife, to try a far more-realistic-version of those dreams, a return-to-the-old ways cheese-making business. That dream will be guided by the lore Bruno has gathered from having been raised in the area, and yet linked to the bohemian foodie networks of Pietro’s city friends.
So the film is thinking about what it takes to return to simpler, more-rooted-in-the-land, ways. That explains its having those brief scenes with the visiting hipsters; although they feel, when juxtaposed against what came before, the re-blossoming friendship, and the much-needed turning-around of Pietro, both of which are mostly accomplished by way of quiet working together, and by way of unspoken understandings, a bit repellant. That is, it is grating to have to hear the sweet yet all-too-typical and un-grounded talk of Pietro’s old friends (with one exception) after the sheer beauty, both scenic and interpersonal, of what we have been shown.
And that brings me to the most beautiful scene of the film. No, I’m not going to show it to you. Rather, listen to this, and carefully.
It’s a song by Daniel Norgren, whose music provides the soundtrack. Stylistically, you might recognize the “genre”: millennial gen chill-rock, with a Roky Erickson-like, Green on Red-like, and Daniel Johnston-like shaky-vocal feel. Melancholic, slightly psychedelic—music for those who have taken some hits, suffered some cracks to their souls.
Easily classifiable, then. But, do you hear the hope of uplift, and can you imagine these sounds when behind a depiction of a man beginning to ascend a mountain, leaping from rock to rock, joyously realizing the strength now present, after a month of hard labor in the uplands, in his limbs and lungs, and in his spirit, through the quiet ministry of his friend? A friend he now knows he has for life? A life that now promises to reconnect him with dreams of his boyhood (and to partially heal the deep wound/rift his rebellion had opened with his father)?
That is, can you hear how this, placed at the central moment of this film, could feel like the most exciting music ever?
Probably not, but the directors evidently had been touched, and realized this song’s hidden energies could be unleashed when woven into the scene I’ve described. The result is incredibly moving, so joyous, something we might describe as an earned “Hallmark moment” were it not best to just stay silent before its beauty.
Here’s more Norgren, a live version of another song used in The Eight Mountains, but in this case to capture a low moment:
And here’s one more taste, also in the film, and in this case I’d like to highlight the lyrics, because they stand as well as anything for where the writers of The Eight Mountains are coming from.
It’s a strange world, to live in,
bitter and confusing.
I’m glad that I found you,
and your—love.
It’s no problem at all for the film to suggest that the love here might be friendship-love, for Norgren kept his song open to that. But here’s the key lyric:
…I don’t believe, that’s there a God,
that there’s another, better place.
You give me faith, and the will to live,
with your—love.
The least memorable part of the film is Pietro’s travelling off to Nepal and exploring its mountains, as well as meeting the different kind of mountain locals, who yet in some ways are Bruno-reminiscent, who live there. We are unobtrusively shown that he adopts aspects of Nepal-ese culture—upon returning to Italy, he hangs one of those colorful prayer-flag strings, the ones you see at every other yoga studio in the world, around the chalet. The film’s title itself comes, we learn, from a Buddhist story he heard there. There’s more about his genuine connection to Nepal that I cannot share here, but I should say we are not given the sense that he undergoes a religious conversion. He is rather a respectful cultural appropriator; at the most, if he has acquired a new religious belief, he is tactfully reticent about it.
So, this all feels pretty familiar: chastened moderns realizing the futility of the usual bohemian pursuits circa 1989-2019, who turn their desire for personal and spiritual questing out to the mountains, to the Eastern religions, to projects of simpler living—often mere episodes of “project-talk,” but sometimes the real thing—, and perhaps also, into mostly-depressive but sublimely-beautiful music. The stages of exploration are all written up in a novel, or a reflective travel book—part of Pietro’s gradual healing is that he becomes some kind of moderately successful writer—, and then, well, we might as well film the book with the finest photographic techniques.
I don’t want to sigh or sniff at the familiar here; yes, The Eight Mountains is all of this, but it is executed with a sure sincerity, without arrogance, and with plenty of good simple pleasures and moments of uplift along the way. The focus always remains on the friendship
But no-one will be surprised that a Christian critic like myself suggests that what’s missing is a belief in transcendent purpose, in God; and, that what comes to fill its place, despite the gorgeous mountains the filmmakers have managed to put our characters and our eyes amid, is a kind of spiritual disturbance wafting up from the valleys below, a buzz of modern restlessness and a sigh for modern man’s debilitation. The wounded beauty of Daniel Norgren-type music is meant to give any one of us relief from that, but perhaps cannot but inoculate you with it, that is, to train you in advance to feel the hope-haunted hopelessness your life is destined—it seems according to the lights of this atheistic view—to bring you to. Even if it’s a life lived among mountains, which, like the stars sung about by Andrew Bird, strictly speaking don’t owe you anything.
That said, believers like me should acknowledge that the tragic possibilities of the fallen human condition in all times, which no Christian ever fully gets past in this life, as another key ingredient of such music, and of this film. Additionally, viewers of The Eight Mountains should acknowledge that at least one of its characters seems to elude any final defeat by hopelessness, and notably, through a devotion to family, children, and the small community.
In any case, I highly recommend it, and I should also put in a word for the Criterion Channel streaming service which delivered it to me. While the service does have all the expected “arthouse” characteristics that can annoy, I have been pleasantly surprised by its temporary selections, the quality of its permanent catalogue, and even more so, its creative curation. I consistently find my browsing with their service far easier and more satisfying than with Netflix or Amazon Prime. The Criterion people know how to put together and recommend a set of related films like no-one else, and defy our expectations of “arthouse” at every turn. This last month, for example, they gave us a meaty selection of “70s Car Films!” They are not afraid of genuine diversity. So far, very much so good, and I thank Titus again for recommending it to me. The classic days of “arthouse” are gone, largely for the better, but I predict these Criterion curators are going to continue to thrive.