I tried to stick a position on this, like a thesis. But I think I like it better if it's a quiet movie about friendship that always finds its way back to that source. Pietro and Bruno come together by coincidence and necessity, apparently the only two children in the remote mountain community. They bond in sticky, complicated ways - changing each other while still observing some fundamental difference between the two of them.

I think that's why I stopped looking for broader conclusions about human nature beyond the close look at their relationship. There's an easy friendship archetype to lay on them. The same one you get with the McLean brothers in "A River Runs Through It" with one of them understood as the untamed savant of the wilderness and the other an introspective traveller who appreciates nature, but isn't *of* it in the same sense. But the cool thing they do is show these characters engage this archetype themselves, let it describe and constrain them, and then move past it (one of them at least) as they become real, adult men.

It's quiet and maybe sometimes a little bit aware of its grandness. But the performances are excellent. The actors let this long, slow story have complexity and problems but are very careful to deploy actual conflict, and it works perfectly as two friends who love and care for each other deeply but ultimately recognize they aren't the same person.
There's also a nice little tip of the cap to Buddhist thought, with the fun framing of the Eight Mountains conceit and a short discussion of Tibetan sky burial that ends up acting as a perfectly sly, uncontroversial wedge between the characters here.

It was really good. I recommend it if you want something quiet but still grand to watch. And if you're not into the story, about 90% of the story is shot in the Italian alps and another 5% in Nepal. So it basically doubles as a beautiful painting of mountains to stare at for two and a half hours. And that sounds dismissive but the whole thing is astonishingly gorgeous so I'm pretty convinced here that if I found Bruno and Pietro tedious that I would have enjoyed just watching this thing happen.

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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad