The Eight Mountains (2022)
Directed by Felix van Groeningen
No — The Eight Mountains is not woke, scoring 7 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
There is a house to be built on an Alpine slope, two men to build it, and roughly four decades over which to watch them fail to say the things that matter.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is overwhelmingly white Italian, with Nepali characters (Asmi, the schoolteacher) appearing naturally in the Nepal-set passages rather than as programmatic representation casting.
The eight-mountains philosophy is mulled quietly between characters rather than delivered as a thesis, keeping didacticism low.
Lara is a character with some agency who argues with Bruno over money and his priorities, but the film remains resolutely centered on two men and the feminine presence is largely instrumental.
There is a mild tension between Bruno's precarious pastoral life and the comfort of Pietro's urban world, but the film draws no economic critique or eat-the-rich argument.
The central relationship is an intense male friendship, but it is never framed romantically or as an LGBTQ+ narrative.
The Nepal subplot and Buddhist cosmology are cultural rather than racial-consciousness themes; the film makes no commentary on race or systemic inequity.
The Alps, pastureland and mountaineering are backdrop and lifestyle, not a vehicle for environmental advocacy of any kind.
No attention is paid to body image, size, or fat-acceptance themes whatsoever.
No character is framed through neurodivergence or mental-health-identity lens.
The borrowed Buddhist/Indian cosmology of the title is philosophical metaphor, not a revisionist recounting of historical events.
Why it received this score
There is a house to be built on an Alpine slope, two men to build it, and roughly four decades over which to watch them fail to say the things that matter. The Eight Mountains is adapted from Paolo Cognetti's novel and carries all the patient, unhurried gravity of a film that has decided the mountains themselves will do the emotional labor. Pietro and Bruno meet as boys in Grana, drift, reunite, and drift again, and the camera regards their silences with the solemnity of a nature documentary. It is beautifully made. It is also very long, and it knows it.
On the matter of social consciousness, the ledger is thin. The cast is white Italian, with Nepali performers appearing naturally in the Nepal passages instead of being paraded as an announcement. The relationship between the two men is intense, tactile and entirely platonic, so nothing here reads as a romance in disguise. Lara has a temper and a mortgage argument, which earns the film a flicker of feminine agency before it returns to its true subject, which is two men staring at a ridge line. There is a faint friction between Bruno's precarious pastoral life and Pietro's urban comfort, though no economic thesis is advanced, and the Alps serve as backdrop and vocation, never as a climate sermon.
The Buddhist cosmology of the title arrives as metaphor, not as a lecture, and the film is content to let its philosophy sit quietly in the dialogue without demanding we applaud it. What we get instead is grief, snow, a sky burial implied rather than shown, and the slow recognition that some mountains do not permit return. A restrained, handsome, faintly exhausting achievement. The film has almost no interest in instructing us, which is its most admirable quality and, for a certain kind of viewer, its most frustrating one.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the breathtaking Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains follows over four decades the profound, complex relationship between Pietro and Bruno.
Questions about The Eight Mountains
Is The Eight Mountains woke?
No — The Eight Mountains is not woke, scoring 7 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Eight Mountains have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 12.
How does The Eight Mountains compare to other 2022 movies?
It ranks #183 of the 223 films from 2022 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Bros (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.