"Le otto montagne" or "The Eight Mountains" is a relatively new film as this one premiered in 2022 and has by now reached movies theaters in most countries, especially in Europe. The writer and director is Felix van Groeningen, which may explain why Belgium is one of the three production countries here. It is also an Italian co-production and the reasons there are the base material, where the film is set and, as a consequence, also the language spoken in here and of course also where the lead actors come from. With the French influence, I am struggling to find an explanation. As for van Groeningen, I will always remember him for his Oscar-nominated "The Broken Circle Breakdown", a film I really liked. I liked it more than "Beautiful Boy", the film he made afterwards, which maybe also had to do with who played the title character. Anyway, it has been almost five years now between "Beautiful Boy" and his new film and these years flew by quickly. Nice to see him back. In several of his films, van Groeningen had his wife Charlotte Vandermeersch play (minor) characters, but this time she is credited as co-writer and co-director. Solid rise for her. It is not the first time she helped her man with the screenplay, but in terms of being equals (at least according to the credits) it is. And with directing, it is definitely the first time too. This is a really long film at almost 2.5 hours, so nothing wrong with two directors, and it is based on a novel by Paolo Cognetti and this is not his only work that got turned into a movie, not even in recent years. Good for him.
The two leads are Luca Marinelli, who reminded me of Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar Isaac and who is most known for playing Martin Eden, and Alessandro Borghi, who may not be famous outside Italy, but this could change soon and anyway looking at all the awards attention he has scored in Italy, it is quite something too. As for this film here, the actors did not score a lot of awards attention, but the film overall managed to sneak in at times. The biggest triumph was probably the win in Cannes, not the big prize, but still not shabby at all. If I had to decide, then I would say that Borghi should have received the most awards attention from the cast. He was good. His screen time helps of course as he is clearly lead, even if not as much of a lead as Marinelli maybe as the film is told from the latter's character's perspective and he is also the narrator and reflects on what happened to himself and the people around him, especially his best buddy. This movie is about friendship between two males that started during childhood. We follow them through the years and they used several actors for this. The childhood inclusions like how one of them would maybe leave the countryside and go to school with the other was pretty interesting to watch. When they were older, but still not fully grown-up, it was not great, but the segment was short anyway and the two had almost no contact with each other anyway. The core story is when they meet again as grown-ups. Build a house together. Are interested in the same woman etc. Not a lot of comedy in here and when it is there, it is rather subtle like how one man cannot really get away from all the noise in the city when he is on the phone with his friend.
With the looks of the poster and the idea of two men up there in the mountains, one immediately thinks of "Brokeback Mountain" and in one scene when one character screams out the other's name, you could maybe also think of another Chalamet movie, not the one van Groeningen directed, so I was wondering if here we have a gay-themed movie. It was nothing explicit, but there were a few indicators that the guy who died in the end was more into his buddy than the other way around, even if he lived with a woman and fathered a girl. One indicator for me was the moment when he says that he won't be going anywhere after bis buddy says in a playful manner that up there in their shack he has all he needs. A second indicator would then be the potentially gay man's awkward response when he finds out his buddy has a girlfriend and the third indicator was how he orders his buddy so angrily to go to the mountain top right away, which to me sounded a lot like how he wants him to be courageous and not postpone important decisions. There was a similar aspect when he says something along the lines of how all that matters is what you do, not what you say. I am not sure if I remember this correctly. Of course, you can also make a connection there between these words and his early death. Towards the end, during the last encounter between the two men, it felt as if the guy from the mountains up there had already lost a bit of his sanity. As for the other one, the main character, he has his transformation too. The final hike in the mountains with his father and friend stayed in the mind for him when he was struggling physically and you could worry about him, even if you knew he would not die because you heard his voiceover narration already. And apparently this hike was motivation enough to live a life afterwards in which he overcomes these health issues and makes a living as a documentary filmmaker who spends a lot of time in mountains much higher than the Alps. In Asia. Interesting development, but not unrealistic. I know from myself that asthma for example gets better when you grow up and anyway, maybe he just needed a little longer to adapt to the surroundings than the other boy.
Both protagonists have difficult relationships with their fathers. We know that even if we do not meet the other boy's father at all. The one mother character that is included here is very loving and caring. Only once she gets a bit mad and it is not unjustified with the words said to her. I must say with this scene I was struggling a bit in general. I would have expected the main character there still as a boy to be happy that his buddy accompanies him to Turin and it did not feel too realistic that the boy was angry because he believes the other boy does not belong in the city. Seemed a bit as if the main character was depicted as more grown-up than he actually was. Another thing I did not like was how the main character behaved towards his dad, like he really hated him, but the father did not seem entirely unlikable to me, especially from a young boy's perspective. The words he said to him about failure when he was already considerably older seemed exaggerated too. In contrast to that, the interactions between the two boys were nice and not stressful at all. They were really harmonic with each other and it was good to see them play like boys again when they were grown men already. The film has great attention to detail and many beautiful camera shots. No surprise the cinematographer also scored some awards recognition. There are also many metaphors and symbolisms in here. Just look at the title. It was decent, but not one of my favorites. The question who is better I mean: the one in the middle or the one moving from one mountain to the next? Of course, the story about the birds eating the dead body and how it is given back to nature this way stays in the mind as well, especially with what happens in the end. Haunting thought though and I see it just like the two women and cannot decide either if it is disgusting or meaningful. Maybe a bit of both. My favorite metaphor from the movie, however, is the one linked to why nature is called nature. I never thought about it like this, but it felt really deep and touching for me. That we have to give it a name to mention something as a contrast to the cities we live in. People actually living in the nature rather use words like "river", "forest" and "mountain". I really loved this inclusion. I hope I can remember it for years to come.
But this film also elaborates on the cruelties of nature. Not only on what hungry birds do, but there is on a few occasions talk about how living in the nature can be really rough and even dangerous. Surely dangerous with what we see happened in the end there. So this is not a full-on romantic nature tribute by any means. It stays realistic and while it nicely gets through the spirit of two friends building a small shack up there in the mountains, it never forgets to put this area into perspective to the cruelties around it, even if the one who dies in the end says that the mountains have never treated him in a bad way. I think there is really a lot to discover here. I am honestly really glad that van Groeningen did not turn this into a (more obvious) gay-themed movie because I am sure this would have gotten people to only talk about that aspect there instead of talking about all the other beautiful aspects the film delivers. It is right the way it is. I also think the running time is fairly accurate and I would not have cut a lot from this film. I would not necessarily say it flew by, but it did not drag either and this is surely a success for a film of almost 2.5 hours. I am positively surprised that the room was relatively packed during my screening and I did not expect that because the movie had been in theaters for weeks already. Positive surprise for sure. All in all, the film turned out with the positive recommendation that I thought I would give it and it was never a disappointing film, but the moments of greatness were also not frequent enough for me to give it an even higher rating and thus elevate it into my favorite films from 2022. That good it is not, admittedly. "The Broken Circle Breakdown" stays my number-one favorite from the director. But "The Eight Mountains" is surely also a film that deserves to be seen, preferably on the big screen. Oh and I finally have to elaborate on the beards in van Groeningen's films: Helderbergh, Carell and now Marinelli and Borghi, do I have to say more? I don't think so. Van Groeningen himself also has/had one of course. Just a little anecdote to end the review with. That's all now.
The two leads are Luca Marinelli, who reminded me of Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar Isaac and who is most known for playing Martin Eden, and Alessandro Borghi, who may not be famous outside Italy, but this could change soon and anyway looking at all the awards attention he has scored in Italy, it is quite something too. As for this film here, the actors did not score a lot of awards attention, but the film overall managed to sneak in at times. The biggest triumph was probably the win in Cannes, not the big prize, but still not shabby at all. If I had to decide, then I would say that Borghi should have received the most awards attention from the cast. He was good. His screen time helps of course as he is clearly lead, even if not as much of a lead as Marinelli maybe as the film is told from the latter's character's perspective and he is also the narrator and reflects on what happened to himself and the people around him, especially his best buddy. This movie is about friendship between two males that started during childhood. We follow them through the years and they used several actors for this. The childhood inclusions like how one of them would maybe leave the countryside and go to school with the other was pretty interesting to watch. When they were older, but still not fully grown-up, it was not great, but the segment was short anyway and the two had almost no contact with each other anyway. The core story is when they meet again as grown-ups. Build a house together. Are interested in the same woman etc. Not a lot of comedy in here and when it is there, it is rather subtle like how one man cannot really get away from all the noise in the city when he is on the phone with his friend.
With the looks of the poster and the idea of two men up there in the mountains, one immediately thinks of "Brokeback Mountain" and in one scene when one character screams out the other's name, you could maybe also think of another Chalamet movie, not the one van Groeningen directed, so I was wondering if here we have a gay-themed movie. It was nothing explicit, but there were a few indicators that the guy who died in the end was more into his buddy than the other way around, even if he lived with a woman and fathered a girl. One indicator for me was the moment when he says that he won't be going anywhere after bis buddy says in a playful manner that up there in their shack he has all he needs. A second indicator would then be the potentially gay man's awkward response when he finds out his buddy has a girlfriend and the third indicator was how he orders his buddy so angrily to go to the mountain top right away, which to me sounded a lot like how he wants him to be courageous and not postpone important decisions. There was a similar aspect when he says something along the lines of how all that matters is what you do, not what you say. I am not sure if I remember this correctly. Of course, you can also make a connection there between these words and his early death. Towards the end, during the last encounter between the two men, it felt as if the guy from the mountains up there had already lost a bit of his sanity. As for the other one, the main character, he has his transformation too. The final hike in the mountains with his father and friend stayed in the mind for him when he was struggling physically and you could worry about him, even if you knew he would not die because you heard his voiceover narration already. And apparently this hike was motivation enough to live a life afterwards in which he overcomes these health issues and makes a living as a documentary filmmaker who spends a lot of time in mountains much higher than the Alps. In Asia. Interesting development, but not unrealistic. I know from myself that asthma for example gets better when you grow up and anyway, maybe he just needed a little longer to adapt to the surroundings than the other boy.
Both protagonists have difficult relationships with their fathers. We know that even if we do not meet the other boy's father at all. The one mother character that is included here is very loving and caring. Only once she gets a bit mad and it is not unjustified with the words said to her. I must say with this scene I was struggling a bit in general. I would have expected the main character there still as a boy to be happy that his buddy accompanies him to Turin and it did not feel too realistic that the boy was angry because he believes the other boy does not belong in the city. Seemed a bit as if the main character was depicted as more grown-up than he actually was. Another thing I did not like was how the main character behaved towards his dad, like he really hated him, but the father did not seem entirely unlikable to me, especially from a young boy's perspective. The words he said to him about failure when he was already considerably older seemed exaggerated too. In contrast to that, the interactions between the two boys were nice and not stressful at all. They were really harmonic with each other and it was good to see them play like boys again when they were grown men already. The film has great attention to detail and many beautiful camera shots. No surprise the cinematographer also scored some awards recognition. There are also many metaphors and symbolisms in here. Just look at the title. It was decent, but not one of my favorites. The question who is better I mean: the one in the middle or the one moving from one mountain to the next? Of course, the story about the birds eating the dead body and how it is given back to nature this way stays in the mind as well, especially with what happens in the end. Haunting thought though and I see it just like the two women and cannot decide either if it is disgusting or meaningful. Maybe a bit of both. My favorite metaphor from the movie, however, is the one linked to why nature is called nature. I never thought about it like this, but it felt really deep and touching for me. That we have to give it a name to mention something as a contrast to the cities we live in. People actually living in the nature rather use words like "river", "forest" and "mountain". I really loved this inclusion. I hope I can remember it for years to come.
But this film also elaborates on the cruelties of nature. Not only on what hungry birds do, but there is on a few occasions talk about how living in the nature can be really rough and even dangerous. Surely dangerous with what we see happened in the end there. So this is not a full-on romantic nature tribute by any means. It stays realistic and while it nicely gets through the spirit of two friends building a small shack up there in the mountains, it never forgets to put this area into perspective to the cruelties around it, even if the one who dies in the end says that the mountains have never treated him in a bad way. I think there is really a lot to discover here. I am honestly really glad that van Groeningen did not turn this into a (more obvious) gay-themed movie because I am sure this would have gotten people to only talk about that aspect there instead of talking about all the other beautiful aspects the film delivers. It is right the way it is. I also think the running time is fairly accurate and I would not have cut a lot from this film. I would not necessarily say it flew by, but it did not drag either and this is surely a success for a film of almost 2.5 hours. I am positively surprised that the room was relatively packed during my screening and I did not expect that because the movie had been in theaters for weeks already. Positive surprise for sure. All in all, the film turned out with the positive recommendation that I thought I would give it and it was never a disappointing film, but the moments of greatness were also not frequent enough for me to give it an even higher rating and thus elevate it into my favorite films from 2022. That good it is not, admittedly. "The Broken Circle Breakdown" stays my number-one favorite from the director. But "The Eight Mountains" is surely also a film that deserves to be seen, preferably on the big screen. Oh and I finally have to elaborate on the beards in van Groeningen's films: Helderbergh, Carell and now Marinelli and Borghi, do I have to say more? I don't think so. Van Groeningen himself also has/had one of course. Just a little anecdote to end the review with. That's all now.