The Eight Mountains (2022)

[dave jenkins]

The Eight Mountains (2022)

A film by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, adapted from the novel by Paolo Cognetti.

He understood that I was not a casual walker, and discovering that I could even string together a few phrases in Nepalese, asked me why I was so interested in the Himalayas. I had a ready answer to that question: I told him that there was a mountain where I had grown up, and to which I was attached, and that it had fostered in me a desire to see the most beautiful mountains in the world.

"Ah," he said. "I understand. You are doing the tour of the eight mountains."

"The eight mountains?"

The man picked up a small stick and drew a circle with it on the ground. You could tell he was used to drawing it; he executed it perfectly. Then, inside the circle he drew a diameter, and then another perpendicular one bisecting the first, and then a third and fourth through the point of bisection, thus creating a wheel with eight spokes. I thought that if I had drawn that figure myself I would have started with a cross--that it was typical of an Asian to begin with a circle.

"Have you ever seen a drawing like this?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied. "In mandalas."

"That's right," he said. "We believe that at the center of the earth there is a tremendously high mountain, Sumeru. Around Sumeru there are eight mountains and eight seas. This is the world for us."

While he was speaking he drew outside of the wheel a small peak for each spoke, and then a little wave between one peak and the next. Eight mountains and eight seas. Finally, at the center of the wheel, he drew a crown which I thought might represent the summit of Sumeru. He assessed his work for a moment and shook his head, as if to say that this was a drawing that he had made a thousand times but that of late he had begun to lose his touch a little. Be that as it may, he pointed the stick to the center and concluded, "We ask: who has learned most, the one who has been to all eight mountains, or the one who has reached the summit of Sumeru?"

[dave jenkins]

An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery, The Eight Mountains is a landmark cinematic experience as intimate as it is monumental, as deep as it is expansive. Adapting the award-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch (The Broken Circle Breakdown) portray through observant detail and stunning landscape photography the profound, complex relationship between Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who first meet as children when Pietro?s Milan family vacations in an isolated village at the base of the Alpine slopes. As they mature, Pietro becomes estranged from his business-minded father (Filippo Timi) even as Bruno?emotionally abandoned by his own father?takes up the role of surrogate son. Pietro?s father?s death reunites the two in realizing his dream of constructing a cabin on the Alps, and the project and subsequent explorations of the awe-inspiring mountain range bond Pietro and Bruno in a shared purpose. Yet despite their connection, the purity of nature and the demands of society both threaten to drive the men to pursue different, possibly irrevocably divergent paths on the vertiginous terrain of life.

https://www.janusfilms.com/films/2119

The fact that Janus has picked this up for theatrical runs means almost certainly Criterion will release it on disc. Here's hoping we don't have to wait until next year.

[Novecento]

I?ll be watching this.

[dave jenkins]

An interesting portrait of Paolo Cognetti done for (I'm guessing) Italian TV (here with English subs):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiJlMXVPaO4