As part of Criterion's continuing new releases from the Janus Film Collection, I watched Belgian directors' Felix Van Groeningen/Charlotte Vandermeersch's expansive adaptation of novelist Paolo Cognetti 2016 book
THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS
Spanning over four decades and shot in the Italian Alps, it's the story of two young boys who meet in a remote Alpine village and become lifelong friends.
The two leads [as adults], Luca Marinelli and Alesandro Borghi are magnificent as Pietro and Bruno who both share a love of the soaring mountains and reconstruct a house which Pietro's father built many years before on a remote mountain top before becoming estranged for 15 years as each pursues their own destinies. And the ending is a real tearjerker!
The Eight Mountains boasts gorgeous cinematography and a modest DTS~HD MA 5.1 soundtrack but inexplicably it was shot in 1:33.1 which puzzled me since the majesty of the scenery, IMO, should've commanded the full 1:85.1 scope which ironically, the two acompanying documentaries share!
VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and at the asking
sale price of $15 ......
one of the jewels in my expanding Criterion collection of World Cinema!