That Guardian quote is a pretty exact description of this pretty amazing movie. The story is essentially about two friends that live in the alps north of Turin. They meet, initially, because the father of one, Pietro, wants to get away from the pollution of the city, so they buy a house in a small town in which Bruno, a farmer’s son, is the only child.
Pietro’s father and mother make a somewhat ham handed attempt to bring Bruno back to Turin to get an education, stating that Pietro’s friend needs a fair chance at having a life. This makes Bruno’s absent father angry, and instead he takes Bruno away and makes him become a construction worker in Turin. Their friendship is over and they grow up to be young teenagers or perhaps they are in their early twenties, when they happen to see each other at the same cafe. They barely acknowledge each other — just a not and a kind of wave. And again, a period of time passes before they reunite because Pietro’s father dies and leaves him a dilapidated stone house in the same area as the town where they have their getaway apartment. Bruno, who now lives back where he started, suggests that they rebuild this stone house, and that’s when Pietro discovers that his father had a friendship with Bruno, and that they often spent time together: far more time than Pietro ever spent with him. His father liked Bruno better, and basically took him as a son. Pietro’s girlfriend also seems to like Bruno better, and eventually becomes his wife and the mother of his children.
I don’t remember when, exactly, Pietro decided to move to Nepal, but he finds a wife there, and I was struck by the fact that both friends have found their homes high in the mountains. Pietro, on one of his visits to his stone house, tells his former girlfriend and Bruno about the fact that they can’t cremate people in Nepal because of the lack of wood, so they have sky burials. This is where they place the body high on a stone peak and let the elements take the body. Then, he claims, they go up to retrieve the bones, grind them into a powder and do something I can’t remember. I looked this up and it’s only true of some Buddhists.
Anyway, I won’t belabor the story because it’s a quiet one and beautifully sad. What struck me so acutely is that friendship between men is rarely spoken about or depicted. It either becomes Brokeback Mountain, which is an entirely different friendship, or it’s kind of jokey and palsy like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Rarely is a regular friendship between two straight guys handed to us with great sensitivity and reality. The reality is that straight guys don’t talk very much about their feelings and especially with each other. They often find that they can only talk about deep thoughts or feelings to their wives. And these guys are not really very different, but the unspoken feelings between them are almost palpable. Pietro doesn’t voice his hurt about his father sort of adopting Bruno, but you feel it. Likewise when Bruno takes his girlfriend, or rather, she moves away from Pietro and toward Bruno, you understand perfectly why Pietro had to go find a life in Nepal, without him saying anything at all. I think that’s where this airy feeling comes from.
Anyway this was a wonderful movie.