The eroticism of friendship and the strength of the mountain
The two actors and the writer Paolo Cognetti tell what they learned from the mountaineers during the making of the film "Le otto montagne". A great test of acting, authenticity and humility: «Up there the ego is resized»
The film 'Le otto montagne' is an excursion of rare visual and emotional intensity. A must for those who loved Paolo Cognetti's novel from which it's based, for those who love mountain life in general, and for those who know nothing about it, but know what a true friendship is, its adventurous mystery. The story, brought to the big screen by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, is a double love story: for the mountains and for friendship. To guide us, the actors Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi, in the role of Pietro, the citizen, and Bruno, the mountaineer. Cognetti was their guide in the summer of 2021, when he hosted them in the refuge in the Aosta Valley where he wrote and set a large part of the novel (a refuge that he bought with the profits from the book). The friendship of the two resonated with the mountain and its singer.
«I had two fears about the film», confesses Cognetti connected via Zoom with Marinelli and Borghi «related to inauthenticity: that the story was taken elsewhere. There was talk of America, of the Rocky Mountains, where, however, there is no mountain pasture culture, which is central to the story. And then the two friends, the heart of the film, had to be real. It was important that the mountain was real and that the two friends were real». The setting has not been distorted, also because the Belgian directors were conquered by the beauty and seasonal cyclicality of the Aosta Valley, functional to show a friendship that resists distance in time, as well as in space. True the mountain, true friendship. Marinelli and Borghi were chosen not only for the sum of their talent, but for their experience. They met on the set of 'Non Essere Cattivo' by Claudio Caligari, filmed in 2015, then they never worked together again, although they remained friends. «Their meeting again, on the set, after a common past and a distance is what happens to Bruno and Pietro».
The two actors auditioned for both roles, but for Cognetti and the directors there were no doubts as to who should play the brighter role, full of energy and vitality and projects (i.e. Bruno, the mountaineer, played by Borghi), and who, on the other hand, is the shyer one, to be pulled out (ie Pietro, the citizen, or Marinelli). If for Marinelli love is the common root «of the billions of friendships in the world», for Borghi the fulcrum is diversity: «The most beautiful moments in the film for me are those in which the two friends recognize their differences and accept them, it's something that I also find a lot in my life, diversity nourishes the love for the woman with whom I have the good fortune to live with and all my friends, even Luca». Thus, with their different physical and emotional masses, and a familiarity due to real friendship, Marinelli and Borghi guaranteed that corporeity which in the novel is a vast front, a contact surface between the world of the city and the mountains.
«In the city» recalls Cognetti, who lives between Milan and the Alps «we are used to shaking hands, embracing, kissing. In the mountains it's a problem. My friends up there are often embarrassed to even shake your hand. Once a very dear friend told me: "You touch a little too much". He hurt me. In the novel, corporeality is important because the two friends find it hard to talk, in the mountains there is little talk and where words fail, bodies arrive, there is almost an eroticism in the friendship of Pietro and Bruno, who played together as children, they rolled around in the grass, they wrestled, they bathed. For me it was important that the two actors already had this eroticism, and they have it».
Eroticism in friendship. One can slip into the simplification of fluidity, but Borghi, connected from his Roman house, wearing a red dressing gown (Cognetti is in front of the bookcases of the Milan house and Marinelli has two abstract paintings behind him), shares a childhood anecdote with chaste eloquence: «As a child, when I had to leave the campsite and we had to dismantle the tent, I ran away from the pitch and went to kiss everyone to greet them and my mother scolded me: "It's not normal love that you go to all the people, unknown, to greet them with a kiss". But for me it was essential to show that I was happy to have been there and I wanted to thank them for the days together. Yes, I am an extremely physical person, the erotic side of a friendship is always present, I often happen to confuse love and friendship, I can't always understand when one begins and the other ends".
Marinelli reciprocates: «When we see each other, sometimes instead of asking "how are you", we understand each other from an embrace, we rest our heads on our shoulders and something passes, like in the last embrace between Pietro and Bruno, we sink into each other. It happens often between me and Alessandro too. I think I also passed this on to my character, surely the friendship between us was an important starting point». However, there was a catch: that the friendship between the two actors turned from a resource into a burden: this was not the case. Pietro and Bruno are not Luca and Alessandro. «For me, yes», protests Cognetti candidly, confessing himself unable to distinguish between reality and fiction, autobiography and fantasy, friends of yesterday and today, people who inspired the characters and actors they play. "I'm not joking, I've seen the film about twenty times, first it was more than three hours long, then every time a scene was cut and for me it was as if they cut off a piece of my body". Sadism? No, nostalgia. Of course, it is a bit sadistic: «I watch the film because I miss everything, I miss them, it's like having in your phone not only photos and videos of a beautiful thing, but an entire film».
Rewinding the tape of memories, off-screen episodes appear. Like the first meeting between Cognetti and Marinelli, recounted by the writer: «Luca arrived months before the start of filming, it was April, there was no one there that day, I was agitated, I did the cleaning, there was snow and we went for a walk. I remember that Laki, my dog, who is not as kind as me, stamped the ear of Mino, the little dog that Luca had brought with him. A nice menacing bite, to make clear how things are in the mountains. Then we went back, I have a guitar, he can play and sing very well and so the music, especially by Bon Iver, filled the typical silences of the shy. Luca also helped me set up the lights in the refuge, but the greatest satisfaction, after those months, was seeing how he changed his way of walking, when he dances on stony ground or when he climbs the mountains of Nepal, you can tell he knows how to do that".
For Marinelli, the mountains have a simple but strict rule: «To be on the high seas you must be sailors, to be in the mountains you must be mountaineers. When I went with Paolo we made wonderful laps, if I went alone with my dog I covered 500 meters and then came back. But walking with Paolo means putting yourself on the line, it's not a walk, it's an adventure» (Borghi intervenes with affectionate irony «Paolo the ibex»). Marinelli continues: "When we shot the scenes in Nepal, walking for a long time to reach the locations, I thought about Michael Ende's book Momo, where there's a street sweeper (Beppo) who says he doesn't think about the road all at once, but see it piece by piece. Of those walks from a certain point on, I remember the heels of the guide in front of me and I followed him as if I were a little donkey. Don't look at the top, but at the little piece in front of you, and this trust in the other are two very beautiful things».
For Borghi, who had been going to the mountains for a few years but always in the summer and never in the Aosta Valley, the pasture was a mystical discovery. Thanks to a week spent at an altitude of 2,300 meters with a young shepherd, Esteban, to learn how to milk and make cheese. “He has huge, gorilla-like hands and a heart of gold. Age, unknown. He said he was 18, but he was a man disguised as a boy, because mountain people are of an age you can't understand. We woke up at 4 in the morning, first milking, then we went to the pasture and there we had to learn to recognize the simplest cows and the most complicated ones... my favorite, which I also milk in the film, is Dorina, I fell in love with her. She had a severed tail from a dog's bite, they couldn't tie her tail up and so I found her excrement smeared on my face, and I didn't say anything so as not to look unable. After seeing Esteban's face, I knew I could complain without ruining my reputation. The reputation. But the beauty of the mountain, its essence, frees you from superstructures, from fear of being judged by others».
The ego, thus, develops a healthier need for the other. «You are in a place that makes you feel small» concludes Borghi «the mountain puts you back in your place. Every time Luca and I were looking out over the refuge, at sunset or sunrise, with or without snow, we felt nothing compared to what we were looking at. So it's natural for you to take refuge in the affection of the other. You look ahead, you see infinity, you feel small, then you look to the left, there is Luca, to the right there is Paolo, and you are safe again. This is the secret of the mountain and the need to be together». Before saying goodbye, Cognetti recalls the day in which he introduced the two actors to his two mountain friends: «Remigio and Gabriele, whom I met when I was 30, were the embodiment of the imagination that I had as a child when I went alone during summer in the mountains. I was inspired by them for Bruno, whose name I took from a neighbor at school». On the first day together, with Luca and Alessandro, they performed a psychomagic ritual: «Remigio took us to slide on the snow, then, all wet, we went to Gabriele's hut to drink hot wine or coffee. I saw in the eyes of Luca and Alessandro how wonderful everything was, we were already inside the film before it started and that world was real. I looked at all this like a child to whom life has given a gift, I saw everyone together, Gabri and Remigio, Luca and Alessandro, I smiled and took pictures, it was happiness».
Like usual, sorry for my English
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