The Eight Mountains · reception & legacy
2022 · Charlotte Vandermeersch
How The Eight Mountains has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It shared the Cannes Jury Prize in 2022 (with EO) to warm but quiet notices, then did something rarer: grew by pure word of mouth into a Letterboxd favourite, passed between friends with a warning to bring tissues.
What's debated
The recurring fight is over its two-and-a-half-hour, seasons-drift pacing — devotees say the slowness IS the film, sceptics call it a very long walk uphill.
Its footprint
It's become shorthand for the great male-friendship weepie — a film people cite when arguing cinema rarely takes platonic love between men seriously — and it turned Swedish folk musician Daniel Norgren's songs into instant emotional triggers for everyone who's seen it.
Where it stands
A canon climber: too recent to be canon proper, but already a 'trust me, just watch it' title among Letterboxd's quiet-devastation crowd.