The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #15: "The Summit of the Gods"

2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #15

by Xavier E. Palacios

"The Summit of the Gods"

4.5 out of 5

Directed by Patrick Imbert

Rated "PG"

Based on the manga by Jiro Taniguchi and the novel by Baku Yumemakura, Makoto Fukamachi (voiced by Damien Boisseau) is a mountain climbing photojournalist who has grown disenchanted with his work. One night, while on assignment in Kathmandu, Nepal, he glimpses Habu Joji (voiced by Lazare Herson-Macarel and Eric Herson-Macarel), a mountaineering prodigy who disappeared eight years ago, seemingly in possession of the legendary George Mallory and Andrew Irvine camera. The undeveloped film preserved on the camera could prove that the lost pair were the first humans to reach Mount Everest's peak during their failed 1924 expedition. Thus begins Fukamachi's investigation into the past of the obsessive, complicated, and inevitably human Habu, hoping to find the climber and the camera. As the mystery unfolds, Fukamachi finds himself ever compelled to reach Everest's peak through an unconquered path, all while Habu's troubled past and shrouded future force him to consider both their overwhelming compulsions to dare the impossible.

Just last month, thanks to moving to this new place I am currently writing in, I had the opportunity to climb a local mountain at a national park. The hill came from quarry work decades ago, and is, really, a big ole mound anyone with working legs could scale as a lovely nature hike. I had a harder time walking the awful neighborhood slopes from my canvassing job years ago. Still, I had never climbed anything official designated as a mountain before, and the special occasion was steady work. When I finally got to the upmost peak in the late afternoon, I was smack-dab in the middle of and above a sea of green and wintery trees. Jet planes soared all around me in the surrounding sky that lovingly stretched on and on. A steady, cooling wind rippled the pools in the rock nearby. I was happier than I had been in months. I felt free of so much. With such glorious views, I sat on the stone like an Airbender and meditated. Serene and in touch with something I rarely grasp in life.

Perhaps this "something" I felt atop that mountain is an infinitesimal piece of what drives Habu and other mountain climbers. No: what drives people like him. I mean, after eight years I am still slaving away at Cosmos, a project I hope to make into an animation mini-series with the quality of The Legend of Korra when I have every reason to believe that the difficult, obsessive, and not-entirely positive process will never culminate in anything close to such an achievement. So, I cannot say I do understand Habu's need to climb. Heck, by the third act of The Summit of the Gods, even Fukamachi realizes his own raging impulse to fill, for lack of a better term, a neutral void inside him. Indeed, the film does not praise mountaineers or anyone with that potentially destructive human touch of daring the impossible no matter the cost like they are better than others; nor does the film condemn them with ridicule or misunderstanding. Instead, this piece simply presents the tale of Habu and Fukamachi, men who cannot let go of what makes them feel alive, and nothing more.

I heard of The Summit of the Gods several months ago and found the project exciting. A new, French, and hand-drawn animated picture for grownups featuring realistic mountain climbing? I did not need much more convincing to see the film. By these obscure identifiers, I figured I would not be able to ever see the flick. Then, I discovered the piece had been released on Netflix, which was a real treat to learn. While I prepared myself for a possibly slow, "sophisticated" beauty-piece imitating documentary films on mountain climbing, what I watched was a totally engaging, thrilling, dramatic, and entertaining flick that, despite my constant and reasonable doubts to the contrary, proves the troubled state of modern animation is still full of wonder, possibility, and inspiration.