Reflecting on 2023, I don’t have the wherewithal to synthesize the blessings and challenges of this year. My words won’t capture the love experienced in the embrace and well-timed words of friends. I’m too tired to explain where I traveled and why, how early I woke, how late I arrived, and how much my bag weighed. Time is insufficient to introduce you to the incredible humans I met, some of them after a long correspondence and some after only stepping into their taxi by God’s Providence. You’d be scandalized to know all the projects I’ve undertaken and how many remain incomplete. The highlights are numerous, as were the passing frustrations. My hard-won lessons are guarded close while I try to internalize them.
To give thanks for and close out 2023, it’s enough to tell you about the most wondrous viewing experience I had this year: watching The Eight Mountains at a local independent theater last May.
The Eight Mountains is by Belgian filmmakers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. Runtime is 147 minutes. It is in Italian with English subtitles.
This film caught my attention when I saw it listed in the Sundance Film Festival program last January, because I had read and enjoyed the novel by Paolo Cognetti the previous summer while traveling in Sweden. The story follows two boys—Pietro from the city and Bruno from the mountains—who connect every year during summer holidays in an Italian Alpine village. Their friendship endures over years, distance, separation, disagreements, and loss.
The cinematography is breathtaking. I’m in awe that it was filmed on location, at high elevations, in at least two countries, over the course of several seasons. What were those logistics like? A great gift of this film is getting to see these stunning places.
The central friendship of the film is another gift. Pietro is our narrator and while he admires Bruno, Bruno’s ways are mysterious. I love how Pietro also remains a mystery to himself while he earnestly strives to find his way and make sense of his family. This feels true.
Both the novelist and the filmmakers gracefully invite us to journey with Pietro and Bruno over 20 years or more, and with the gift of that long-view, we naturally treasure them and their relationship.
The casting is perfect. It is a special treat of foreign films that the actors are usually unknown to me and I’m able to fully embrace the characters, rather than think about their previous roles and accomplishments.
Themes: male friendship, fathers and sons, rootedness and adventure, action and contemplation, city and mountains, responsibility, vocation, authenticity, one’s inability to do the thing the person one loves expects/hopes for/needs, home mountains and foreign mountains.
This film hit for me. Like a song whose lyrics are specific and obviously not yours, but still express the thing you needed said. Together with the chords and the vocal expression, you might as well be the singer. That’s how I felt when I walked out of the theater. I couldn’t make this film, but I needed it, so I’m grateful to those who made it for me.
I recommended this film with abandon for weeks after seeing it. When a filmmaker I’d just met took my word for it and went and bought a ticket, I was nervous the whole 2+ hours he was in the theater, wondering if this movie might be only special to me. I smiled when this text came: “The film was amazing. Truly.”
For each of us who has seen and loved it though, we aren’t impressively articulate about why. Another friend, when we spoke of it recently, sighed deeply and with a voice full of emotion simply said, “Awh, that movie. Yeah.”
For me, The Eight Mountains has only a couple of minor imperfections. After you’ve seen it, maybe we can discuss them along with your impressions.
The Eight Mountains is available for streaming and buying on Amazon and The Criterion Collection.
Looking forward to…
…attending the Portland premiere of our Beauty First Films short documentary, Amphilochios: Saint of Patmos—in the same independent theater where I watched The Eight Mountains. We’re excited to host a double-feature with Sacred Alaska. Tickets here, and more screenings coming soon.
May your new year be blessed and citrus-scented!
Thomaida