Mark Reviews Movies: THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 23, 2021

The lives of two men, obsessed in different capacities with the mountains and climbing, intersect by chance near the start of The Summit of the Gods. One is a professional photographer, who earns a living by documenting the mountaineering expeditions of various climbers for a magazine based in Japan. The other is a climber who, because of his socioeconomic backdrop and personality, never officially elevated in status beyond an amateur.

The climber has become something of a legend in recent years (The main part of the story here is set vaguely in the late 1980s or early 1990s). One day, the climber, who showed so much potential, disappeared. A few would get word of his climbs, but fame would elude him. It's not that he really wanted fame at this point, but maybe that would have changed things for Habu (voice of Éric Herson-Macarel), the mysterious man of the mountains who keeps climbing, regardless of any physical, emotional, or psychological burden the pursuit may put on him.

All of this setup is to note that this animated film, co-written and directed by Patrick Imbert, features a thoughtful and often haunting story about obsession, the search for some kind of truth, and, ironically, an underlying sense of peace in the dangerous and potentially deadly sport of mountain climbing. Habu climbs because he has to, just as George Mallory—the British climber who was among the first of his country to attempt to scale Mt. Everest, died on that mountain, and figures with fair importance in this tale—put it when asked why he wanted to climb the planet's highest mountain: "Because it's there."

As for Fukamachi (voice of Damien Boisseau), the photojournalist who tries to track down the elusive climber, there's an apparently similar philosophy in his search for Habu: because he was and is somewhere. Finding him might provide some answers to the mystery of Mallory's final, fatal climb, since he seems to have the camera the famed explorer took on his doomed climb. Obtaining that could change the entire history of mountaineering, and Fukamachi wants to write that exclusive.

There's also the puzzle of Habu's continued pursuit of climbing higher, faster, along different routes, and with less equipment, despite the fact that mountains almost seem to have a vendetta against him. A series of flashbacks, as the journalist follows the climber's tragic past through the years, relate that history.

This makes for a fairly good story—philosophical and lonely and filled with enigmas about human nature, which cannot be answered except in statements, like Mallory's most famous one, that basically turn questions into assertions. It comes from the manga series co-written by Jirô Taniguchi (who also illustrated the five-part series) and author Baku Yumemakura, whose 1998 novel of the same name served as the foundation.

Here, Imbert and co-screenwriter Magail Pouzol (in collaboration with Jean-Charles Ostoréro) have narrowed the focus of original graphic work, which apparently goes into more detail about history and assorted other climbers, to the crossing obsessions of these two men. The director and a team of incredibly skilled artists, though, maintain the freedom, innovativeness, and marvel of seeing real places and death-defying sequences translated into hand-drawn art.

Apart from the engaging story, the film is a stunning visual experience, which re-creates so many famous mountains and so many routes, paths, and rock faces that would otherwise only be seen by the most daring of humanity. Some may wonder why a film that relies so heavily on the natural wonder and tactile surfaces of these locations would use animation, instead of simply filming on-the-scene, at a stand-in location, or in an accurate stage setting. There are technical and safety matters, of course, because the story features multiple close-calls, a few moments of literally cliff-hanging suspense, and an assortment of images and angles that either wouldn't be physically possible or would require the use of practical or visual effects.

One imagines, though, Imbert's answer for himself and on behalf of the rest of the artists here might be akin to Mallory's famous three words. They drew all of this because they can.

The art is the point in this film. The visual cohesion here, as the non-stylized characters interact with breathtakingly realistic scenery, gives the film—as unlikely as it may seem—a sense of realism that might have been distracting with actual people working under controlled or phony conditions and environments.

Instead, we get to admire the technical know-how (The "camera" here isn't simply still and doesn't just pan across images, since it at times subtly rotates around a mountain) and artistic skill of the filmmakers, only to forget it. The expertise on display creates a reality of its own. There are miniscule details—the way clouds cast a grim shadow on the landscape or snow cakes eyebrows and clothes as a layer separate from those things—that solidify the illusion.

At times, then, the shock of the artistry here returns, and we're overwhelmed by a single image of, say, Everest looking relatively small under the shadow of a massive storm, the visualization of a lack of oxygen as a consuming field of red, or a long-lost but never-forgotten explorer, whose preserved body and weather-beaten clothes have left him in a state of both agony and peace. Those moments might surprise, or it might be an extended sequence of, say, Habu and a young, admiring climber having a single, fraying line, holding tautly between them and the empty space of cruel, inevitable gravity.

The Summit of the Gods tells a fine story. The way in which it's told, though, makes the film particularly worthwhile.

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