The Eight Mountains

I was really intrigued by The Eight Mountains because it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year (tying with EO) so I decided to see it last night as the first in a double feature at the Broadway.  I absolutely loved this moving portrait of a 40-year friendship.  An 11-year-old boy from Turin named Pietro (Lupo Barbiero) spends the summer with his parents in a mountain village in the Italian Alps.  He soon meets Bruno (Cristiano Sassella), an 11-year-old living in the village, and they become inseparable as they hike around the mountains with Pietro's father Giovanni (Filippo Timi).  They reunite every summer until they eventually grow apart as the teenage Pietro (Andrea Palma) becomes estranged from his father and stops coming to the village while Bruno (Francesco Palombelli) continues hiking with Giovanni on his visits.  Fifteen years later, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) returns to the village after his father's death and learns from Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) that Giovanni purchased a plot of land with the intention of building a cabin on it.  The two of them spend the summer building the cabin together and, even though adventure takes Pietro around the world and domestic responsibilities keep Bruno busy in the mountains, they vow to spend their summers there.  Pietro relates a story he heard in Nepal about the world being made up of eight mountains separated by eight seas surrounding the tallest mountain.  They have a philosophical discussion about whether it is better to visit the eight mountains or to climb to the top of the tallest one which is an allegory for their lives (this reminded me of the theme in Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse).  What I loved most about this movie is that, even though Pietro and Bruno are very different people, the friendship that is forged between them as children is genuine and they support each other through the vicissitudes of life.  Marinelli and Borghi have tremendous chemistry together (as do Berbiero and Sassella) and the friendship feels very lived in and believable.  The cinematography is simply breathtaking with vast mountain landscapes and lakes and I especially enjoyed the Steadicam shots as Pietro and Bruno hike at different times during the year.  The action is very slow (the runtime is 147 minutes) but I was never bored because I was so emotionally invested.  I highly recommend seeking this one out!