The Summit of the Gods is exclusively available Nov. 30, 2021 on Netflix.
The Summit of the Gods is a French animated film based on the acclaimed manga series of the same name by Jirô Taniguchi, which is based on the novel by Baku Yumemakura. The 2D animated adaptation, directed and co-written by Patrick Imbert (The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales), and is both an ode to extreme climbers and an unraveling mystery about what propels them to keep seeking new peaks to conquer.
A fictional story set in 1994, Japanese reporter and outdoor photojournalist Fukamachi Makoto and a climbing team he is covering are thwarted from summiting Mt. Everest due to bad weather. Frustrated with just missing the peak and brooding at a bar in Kathmandu, he’s approached by a local to buy what is purportedly the lost camera of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, real climbers who died on Everest in 1924.
The pair perished before returning to base camp, but lore grew that they might have actually beat the official pair to summit in 1953, sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary. Proof would be in the frozen images inside Irvine’s camera, but his body and the camera have yet to be found.
Initially dismissive, Fukamachi decides to follow up and witnesses in an alley the long-lost extreme climber, Habu Jôji, taking the camera and disappearing into the night. This tiny moment spurs Fukamachi into an obsessive search to find out what happened to Habu over the last decade and what he is doing now.
Imbert wisely constructs the narrative to initially unfold as a mystery, with Fukamachi pursuing the lost camera and Habu. In Japan and through flashbacks, we’re given the basics of Everest climbing history to understand context and the camera's significance. And then Fukamachi leads an engrossing, personal investigation into how the massively talented but notoriously misanthropic Habu became a world-class climber. We see his early hubris with peers, a tragedy that informs his decision to climb solo, and even the impact of his climbing nemesis. Through first-person interviews and Japanese mountaineering coverage, Fukamachi is our conduit into understanding the selfish and tragic incidents that led Habu to that alley in Kathmandu. And it’s through his dogged pursuit of Habu that Fukamachi comes to grips with his own maddening quest to understand the climbers he covers, and why he is so compelled to chase them up the most treacherous peaks of the world to tell their stories.
The film is animated in the traditional 2D techniques, so its landscapes and aesthetics are across-the-board beautiful; subtle yet impressive. The animators render those landscapes sometimes in expressionist styles, while other environments look like watercolors. The palette of Japan is colorful almost like a Ghibli film with its urban landscapes and nighttime city environments, which are then juxtaposed with the stark renderings of the muted grey and white mountains. The animators have clearly put a lot of effort into translating scale, so you feel the cold and icy climate lash at the climbers the entire length of their relentless ascents.
And what the medium uniquely allows for is the capturing of impactful performances, which is almost impossible to do well with live-action, snow-saturated climbing movies. Shooting in arctic temps requires face coverings along with oxygen issues and that means obscured faces. But that’s not an issue in The Summit of the Gods, where we can see the unencumbered pain, stress, or moments of introspection on the faces of animated Habu and Fukamachi.
In particular, the Everest ascent sequences in the last act are spectacular. The animators are able to capture the intensity of the climb with eerily photorealistic movement. Imbert places the camera in places that always intensifies, or clarifies, the scale of what these climbers are attempting. Assisted by composer Amine Bouhafa’s score, the stakes and majesty of the climbs are palpable. Put together, it all makes for a thrilling and often awe-inspiring watch.
And existentially, the higher the two men climb, the more introspective the film becomes as Fukamachi’s ambition but lesser skills make him ponder, and in turn press the taciturn Habu to reveal his own truths about why he climbs. To the outsider and the insider, the question remains perplexingly the same: why does the pursuit never seem to satisfy, instead always tempting the climber to move to the next challenge and peak? It’s an eye-opening peek into those with unquenchable, unsatisfiable souls. The climb is the why, and to die trying to do so is both maddening and fascinating.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3IbZjOn
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