he has finally returned to the New York City of his childhood and his earlier films. The last movie he set in New York was his 2013 period drama, “The Immigrant,” whose story finds a resonant echo here when Paul’s grandfather reminisces about the family’s own passage through Ellis Island.After three years away, Times critic Justin Chang returns to the world’s grandest and most important film festival — and shares what he’s most looking forward to.
Coincidentally, “The Immigrant” was also Gray’s last movie to screen at Cannes, a festival that has been both kind and unkind to this filmmaker over the years. This is the place where Gray, an underappreciated figure in the U.S., cemented his passionate following among French critics and cinephiles, many of whom regard him as an heir to great American auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
Even still, none of Gray’s four previous movies selected for the prestigious Cannes competition — “The Yards,” “We Own the Night,” “Two Lovers” and “The Immigrant” — has ever left the festival with so much as a single prize. That’s partly because juries sometimes assume a starry American movie doesn’t need the extra recognition, and also because Gray’s resolutely old-fashioned classical storytelling can draw indifference and scorn as well as admiration.
For the Turin-raised Pietro, these mountains, looming majestically in Ruben Impens’ nearly square compositions, are a gorgeous, glorious retreat. For Bruno, raised by local farmers and cheesemakers, they’re the only home and world he’s ever known. While both characters are played by different actors at different ages, most of the movie takes place when they’re in their 30s, as Pietro struggles with wanderlust, a literary calling and the emotional void left by his late father .
As a story about two boys from vastly different families, classes and worlds, “The Eight Mountains” would make a fitting double bill with “Armageddon Time,” if also a long one, since Van Groeningen and Vandermeersch’s movie runs nearly 150 minutes. I think it earns just about all of them, given how gradually and perceptively it tracks its characters’ journey, as friends and individuals.
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