A large pine tree at the foot of the mountain occupies the center of the frame, surrounded by rows of smaller pine trees. The sun shines down, casting a warm, golden light. Nature emanates tranquility and a voice-over breaks the silence: “I didn’t expect to find a friend like Bruno in my life.” A match cut to a tall, thin tree standing alone against a cloudy sky introduces the other side of the mountain: a desolate, unforgiving summit where life can barely survive. The voice-over bridges the gap. “Nor that friendship was a place where you put down roots, that remains waiting for you.” So begins Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, where the speaker of these opening lines, Pietro, searches for his place in the world through the mountain and Bruno, whom he meets on a childhood vacation in the Italian Alps. The two sides of the mountain, two aspects of nature, as welcoming, hospitable, and harsh, unforgiving are established in the opening frames, as are the connection for Pietro between Bruno and nature, in all its dimensions.
Valle d'Aosta. Flickr, by R Boed (2015).
After the title, the film shows the young Pietro (11) looking at a mountain range in the background through an open window. Meditative, he sits within the wooden frame, a barrier that separates him from the mountain village where his parents have rented a house. He is still contained by the city life he has left behind. His red shirt, however, implies the innate vigor that will sustain his quest for nature’s freedom. An off-screen voice calls, “Bruno,” and Pietro stands up to take a closer look; the voice is like a calling. Then the young Bruno, Pietro's age, appears, tending a cow under his aunt’s command. Only 14 villagers are left in the depopulated mountain village. It's a hard life, and the child Bruno helps with the demanding milking and grazing duties. But Pietro, too young to understand the mountain’s cruelty, feels only delight as he and Bruno become friends, and he is guided out into the natural setting.
When his father Giovanni dies, Pietro (31) without a wife or a steady job returns to the long-forgotten mountain where Bruno conveys Giovanni’s final wish: to build a house on the mountain. Pietro looks at the pile of wood he inherits and says, “It’s a ruin,” as if referring to his life. Bruno suggests that they build the house together, but Pietro declines. “I’m very clumsy.” Only when Bruno assures that he will teach Pietro does he agree to work on the project. When Bruno walks away, Pietro still sitting on the wood says, “Thank you,” unclear if it refers to the upcoming construction or Bruno’s support. On the first day, they dismantle the original structure, kicking down the rocks. Pietro unearths a sapling beneath the wood and transplants it to a nearby field. Destruction of the old is followed by the nurturing of a new life; the juxtaposition suggests that aside from his father’s last wish, the building of a house is a means for Pietro to sort out his life. Indeed, after the construction, Bruno marries Lara, raises a daughter, and tends to the pasture in the Alps while Pietro picks up writing and visits Nepal, a country most synonymous with the Himalayas, the youngest fold mountains. Through hiking, Pietro finds his place in the world as he documents his travels and publishes a book.
Drawing, Details of Mountain Sheds, Houses and a Rock, Bernese Alps, Switzerland; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900); Switzerland; graphite on light gray paper; Sheet: 11.7 x 20.5 cm (4 5/8 x 8 1/16 in.); Gift of Louis P. Church; 1917-4-165.
Back in Italy, Pietro reunites with Bruno and shares a story he hears when he travels. The flashlight strapped to Pietro’s forehead illuminates the dark house, indicating a newfound wisdom. A bit tipsy, he draws a circle in the notebook and divides it into eight pieces that represent “eight mountains and eight seas, and in the middle is Mount Sumeru,” the center of the world in Buddhist cosmology. Pietro asks, “Who will have learned more, the one who has traveled the eight mountains and the eight seas, or the one who has reached the top of Mount Sumeru?” Bruno says that he is the one who has reached Mount Sumeru and that Pietro travels the eight mountains. Pietro seconds the idea only to add that he is the one who wins. Partly due to the pride of being at the top, partly due to his profound tie to the mountain, Bruno chooses to die alone in the mountain house giving up his family when he loses his pasture, his purpose in life, due to mismanagement.
Cosmological Mandala with Mount Meru. Wikimedia Commons, by Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017).
But is Bruno a loser? When the rescuers cut a hole in the roof with a chainsaw, the mountain house through which Pietro reclaims his agency becomes a site marked by a void. Perhaps there is no victory, as Pietro’s voice-over concludes, “Nothing is left to do but wander around the eight mountains, for those who, like me, on the first and highest, have lost a friend.”