Eight Mountains review

Eight mountains review

Summers for me as a child was focused and lost asimultaneously Some would be distant removes with the television and a local neighbourhood Aunt and UUnclein their living room with hot toast and three channels. 

As I got older, they were time in the extended families. A few summers In Ireland in Clare. And others In India with relatives in Calcutta. This progressed into more months. I would travel with Dad or Mum in these countries—singular units. India, as I hit my 20’s, was more protracted. More seeing the continent with my father than seeing the family. It was my first experience of Altitude sickness. The border of Nepal became our regular off-season haunt. But I would turn up to prove how Asian I was in the first two days by eating every ‘authentic dish on the menu’ and then the following three being utterly English and crying for a Western toilet. I would alter the travel and migrate on my own. I say Edinburgh as it is, after all, a different country, and Paris. Breadth and caution were my bywords from 18-30 with a more sedate London life, willingly for the last decade.

This period in my life as a man keeps coming to the fore while watching eight mountains. We watch the introspective and academically raised Pietro befriend the more assertive Bruno, whose background is more fractured and challenging. While Pietro has a certain agitation typical of teenagers, it’s pretty apparent he idolises Bruno’s ‘naturalistic purity’ in terms of his outlook and sentiment, placing him in a child’s understanding of Reausseaus noble savage, that to have his friend educated would be to ruin the qualities he envies.

This sets the tone initially for my trepidation of class barriers, but it is underplayed as their relationship is built on both being, in a sense, sons of the same father. One biological rejects him, and the other adoptive for having qualities the father shies away from in his son.

The actors have such an easy chemistry it feels documentary. Shot in4:3 ratio, it ages to keep the depth of a large screen while ensuring intimacy with the characters. As they come to rekindle their connection by rebuilding the ruins of the past, we see them become the innocent of their history, and the sheer joy can not be ignored.

We are first led to believe that some sort of feckless indifference to his self-care in Pietro is broken down as he travels the world and Nepal. He shows that Bruno focuses on the mountain man and sees that as a height. howing the heart of the dynamic.

Having exchanged heights for breadth, Pietro builds. He brings his urban life to Bruno, but they can not understand the struggle for the reward. Much like I once said to my uncle Liam “You live with this view every day”, he replied, “Every day, yes, but you can’t eat scenery”, which is almost impossible for Pietro’s peers to comprehend.

As the film develops, we understand more: is it heights or depths with a mountain man? 

It’s not that darkness and isolation are not part of life. But it is accepted more, and in the spate of man and mindfulness movies, we have seen what I call ‘their emergence’ era of cinema making. There is a maturity and relatability in the characters that makes you cling to every changing season and snowflake and root for their peace of mind by the end.

I saw this film in the early afternoon with four people—mesmerising and meditative. More people need to see this as it’s a gem that needs the medium of a big screen.

Do pursue it like happiness before the summer ends.