Tom Cruise with his ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ touches down in Cannes

Tom Cruise is one of the permanently switched on Peter Pan stars — he doesn’t seem to have aged a day since he appeared in and as “Top Gun”, in 1987. The premiere of the sequel, ‘Top Gun, Maverick’, which comes over 30 after the original, was a fully starry Cannes moment. Cruise waved to the screaming crowd, which had been lining the Croisette for hours, happily posed for selfies, as the band belted out ‘Great Balls Of Fire’, that anthem from the original movie which had all of us bopping along.
Back when the original film came out, the word ‘dude bros’ hadn’t been invented. “Top Gun” was nothing but an array of dude-bros engaged in chest-thumping machismo, while also trying to save the world. It was a film of its time, in the way it indulgently did its boys-will-be-boys thing, as the ‘boys’ swarm around the lone woman on the base. Kelly McGillis’s attractive instructor becomes the target, and we fall for their romance. A character says to Cruise’s Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, “you go home with the hottest woman”, and said captain smirks, accepting that his charm is a magnet with the gals, as McGillis looks on.
Apart from becoming a pop culture moment, the film was single-handedly responsible for the sky-rocketing popularity of Ray Bans, the glasses that all cool aviators wore, as well as all the cops and crooks in Hollywood and Bollywood.
Cruise is the last of the breed of superstars whom we readily forgive even when they do the most outlandish things — jumping up and down the sofa alongside a famous anchor still count? “Top Gun” took Cruise’s career straight into the stratosphere, and he is still around, knocking of impossible missions, looping the loops. ( Please look out for The Indian Express review when the movie comes out in India, end of May).
An enduring tale of friendship
Male friendship is also the abiding theme of “The Eight Mountains”, based on the best-selling novel of the same name, in the way Pietro and Bruno keep circling back to each other, as they grow from man to boy.
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The two-and-a half-hour film, directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, screening in the Competition section, requires patience. It begins in 1984, and tracks the two boys who spend all their time outdoors, getting to know each others rhythms. In the first half hour, as we watch them run around on slopes of the stunning Italian Alps, and dive into crystal clear lakes, we also see how different they are. Pietro’s father, who likes to trek in the high reaches, finds Bruno a readier learner. Leaping across an icy glacier is an act of faith. Pietro’s failure to do so defines their future relationship — it is like a wound that they can neither tease, nor heal.
What is the glue that keeps them returning to each other? “The Eight Mountains” works better at outlining their differences. Bruno’s convictions as compared to Pietro’s uncertainties are easier to grasp — the former knows that the mountains are where he belongs, the latter continues to be a nomad. Their friendship is enduring, but not endearing, and you keep waiting for an ah-moment, even as you admire the magnificence of the mountains.