The eight mountainsnovel by Paul Cognetti winner of the Strega Prize in 2017, he became a movie directed by Felix Van Groeningenformer director of Alabama Monroe and Beautiful boywith Alessandro Borgo and Luca Marinelli. A story of training, friendship, but, above all, of identity, in which places they become, like the characters, protagonists.
The success that the feature film is having in Italian cinemas it is undoubtedly due to an exciting plot built down to the smallest detail, but we already knew this: Cognetti is a great storytellerand what he knows best – its mountains – looks great on the page. But the images, the footage of an astonishing Aosta Valley and brings us back to a natural, wild and, at the same time, profoundly human dimension.
Asked, therefore, about where it was filmed The eight mountainsthe answer is easy, because Cognetti’s geography is precise: we are not only in Valle d’Aosta, we are in Graines, at the foot of Monte Rosa, among the paths that the author, and then the actors, know inside out. It seems that it was the writer himself who taught the crew how to move in the mountains, in Val d’Ayas and in Estoul, in the hamlet of Brusson, with real walking and topography sessions. And thanks to the film and its photography, places are rediscovered that to the most – to the less experienced, perhaps – seem inaccessible or too far away, such as the lakes of Frudiereat an altitude of 2400 metres, or Pietro’s house in Graines, which is actually his school, or even Bruno’s pasture, in Merendioux.
A walk with your eyes in the smallest and most enchanted region of Italy. But if the story is a coming of age storythe path – metaphorical and at the same time very physical – of the two protagonists, Pietro and Bruno, is accompanied by a a soundtrack copyright that underlines the magic and sincerity of the mountain.
In a continuous ups and downs of silences and soundsthe music of Daniel Norgren they are powerful to the point of moving us as much and more than the images, in turn building the nature we see on the screen. Norgren is a Swedish singer-songwriter of Borås, a city in southern Sweden, which chose a 2015 single for the film As long as we last. Listening to him, she seems to hear the rhythmic steps of those who walk in the mountains, of those who sing on the paths and are accompanied by her own echo.
Could a film like this not be a success? Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, The eight mountains retraces the story that Cognetti dedicated to the friendship between Pietro and Bruno, but does much more: builds something new and complete. One of those rare cases in which one cannot say that “the book was better”, because here one does not exist without the other, and the two complement each other perfectly. To see, to read and to listen, therefore: what could be better?
