Le Sommet des Dieux is a French/Luxembourgian animated film adaptation of the Japanese manga 神々の山嶺 (Kamigami no Itadaki) by Jiro Taniguchi, which I watched with an English dub produced by its American distributor Netflix. It focuses on a mountaineering magazine photographer named Fukumachi on the hunt for famed Everest scaler George Mallory’s fabled lost camera, which has seemingly made its way into the hands of Habu Joji, the other focus of the story. It is a simple tale, told well. It is a grand adventure across the eras. It is a tragedy. It is tense at times, but in bursts rather than as sustained, ratcheting worry.
It is one of the most gorgeous films I have seen in a long time.
The Summit of the Gods’s strongest aspect is in the way it conveys space. When we’re in Fukumachi’s office, things feel cramped, like we’re being pinned in by the clutter and the city. There’s a yearning to many of the interior scenes, as if the call of these immense challenging, outdoor spaces are so great, even the inside wishes to go. The same holds true for the cities and even the smaller villages the film takes us to. Once we’re on Everest, however, that all falls away and all that remains is the vastness of it all.
Now Everest is an obvious candidate for symbolically representing the beauty and danger of nature; it is what the title of the film is pointing to after all. But director Patrick Imbert and the animation team don’t just imbue Everest with this awe-inspiring magnitude – they imbue every moment they can with it. There are two moments in particular that have stayed with me in this regard.
The first is when Habu and Buntaro, a young kid who idolized Habu, are climbing a challenging but familiar wall. The camera begins with an extreme wide shot, keeping the two of them not quite center frame but near enough to let the rock face stretch out beyond my peripheral vision in all directions, their bodies tiny against the brown rock but still large enough to make out discreet motions and identify the two of them.
The other is when, later in the film, Fukumachi is walking towards an old house on the outskirts of a Nepalese village. Again, the camera takes an extreme wide shot but rather than it being static, it moves. The camera sweeps across the ridge, framing the house and Fukumachi’s approach against the green hills and bits of unmelted snow. Each contrasts the other; the house is barely holding up while Fukumachi is pushing forward, invigorated in knowing, or thinking he knows, that his journey is nearing its end. Both sit in this landscape, unable to affect it but invariably being shaped by its contours. This is true of the film as a whole too.
Earlier in the review, I made a bit of a word-salad sentence when introducing it. I did this to try to capture what it felt like to watch a black and white japanese manga be transformed into a full color, 2D/3D hybrid film that is reflective of French/European filmmaking & stylistic choices, with the added layer of an English dubbed cast. It’s this wonderful, beautiful fusion of sensibilities, helped along by Jiro Taniguchi, the original mangaka’s naturalist approach to storytelling. I also really just wanted to write the film’s title in French because I find it fun.
For those looking to watch the film dubbed in English, do note that there’s a bit of a stiffness and a slight rush to much of the actors’ performances, most noticeably with Habu’s voice actor. It did not affect my viewing experience however. I bring this up mostly because The Summit of the Gods is a very slow movie. The first thirty to forty minutes of the film seem to be entirely beside the central plot as we walk through Habu’s life interspersed with Fukumachi’s attempts at finding him. However, this is just one tool the film uses to impress upon the audience the gravity of every situation and to channel the patience that the characters have to have to do what they do.
From the first scene of the movie, this ethos is expressed textually and subtextually. If you rush, if you go in unprepared, your only options are to turn back early or risk severe injury or death. The film never makes it a grand moral failing to do either; every character acts rashly or fails to prepare at one point or another, and they suffer the consequences, though Habu does this the most. It is the central tenet of the film, right next to the glaringly obvious question: what makes a person want to risk their life climbing in hostile and unforgiving environments, constantly fighting to do it faster, alone, and under increasingly harsh conditions?
Continued belowThis question is often at the heart of Everest media. It is important, and the The Summit of the Gods takes its time to consider the question, but, as the film unfolds, it becomes clear it’s not interested in answering it directly. Instead, it uses Mallory’s camera to ask a different question: is there meaning in an accomplishment no one knows about?
At the start of the film, Fukumachi believes that to know, to document, is to give an event meaning. However, by the end, he is less sure. To do a thing is fundamentally different from knowing someone has done a thing. Meaning is subjective, meaning is personal. For Fukumachi, knowing whether or not Mallory or Habu accomplished their goals does not answer why doing this action holds meaning to them. Yet by climbing alongside Habu, he found his own meaning in the action and he knew that Habu was finding his own with each new step.
The Summit of the Gods is the kind of film built for the theaters, but easily enjoyable at home. A nearly perfect mix of 2D & 3D animation, it does the original work justice. Though the story may be simple and the action light, the atmosphere is thick even when the air gets thin. Grand and sweeping but small and intimate, one leaves the film thinking about their own treacherous mountains that they dream of climbing, knowing that to do so is to create life’s meaning.
