The Eight Mountains
A devastating portrait of brotherhood spanning decades, The Eight Mountains adapts Paolo Cognetti’s novel through lyrical voiceovers and comforting silences across a breathtaking alpine setting
The Eight Mountains is a soaring platonic romance following the ironclad bond between city boy Pietro and montanaro Bruno, who find common ground in the stillness of Grana, Piedmont, and its surrounding mountains. Pietro spends family holidays in Bruno’s secluded village, with the teens measuring each other up and soothing their peculiar lonelinesses. After losing touch and being drawn back to one another, these boys-turned-men – now played by Martin Eden’s Luca Marinelli as narrator Pietro and Alessandro Borghi as Bruno – rekindle their sturdy, no-nonsense and accepting connection.
Committed not to repeat the mistakes of their fathers and yet tragically bound to, the two protagonists handle their connection with the utmost reverence, each not fully realising their place in the world lies in the friendship they forged many summers prior. Ruben Impens’ camera captures them chipping away at their silence in the dumbfounding vastness of the Alps, with the long pauses aptly filled by Daniel Norgren’s quiet folk ballads.
Their relationship is a sacred land where there isn’t room for others. Absent dads, caring mothers, and feisty female figures are roughly sketched; peripheral characters who will never truly understand the rules of the boys’ game and those of their beloved alpine peaks. With a runtime that, at times, feels as long as an unforgiving winter, The Eight Mountains is occasionally weighed down by Marinelli’s voiceovers. Once you get to the other side, the promise of snow melting to reveal a fresh start proves to be well worth the wait.
Released 12 May by Picturehouse; certificate 12A