Summary
This remarkable French animated film, but with a Japanese aesthetic, is a fiction that addresses the world of mountaineers, transmits the smallness of the human being in front of the immensity of the mountains and recounts the constant challenges that climbers impose themselves, putting their life, a life literally and permanently uphill.
Review
Makoto Fumagachi is a Tokyo photographer and photojournalist who documents the ascents of mountaineers. While in Nepal, he learns of the existence of a camera belonging to George Mallory, a British climber who was part of the first three expeditions to climb Everest and who disappeared in the third (1924) without knowing if he had reached the top or not. His camera photos could shed light on this question. On the other hand, said camera would be in the power of another important (fictional) climber, Habu Joji, whom Makoto will try to contact and who will become the other protagonist of the film.
The French film Patrick Imbert is based on a Japanese manga and novel, and its graphics are faithful to the animations of that origin, especially in the approach to the human figure. The imposing images of the mountains are at times almost photographic realism.
Although its temporal structure is interesting and Makoto's journalistic investigation has something of a thriller and contains effective and tense scenes during the escalations, with their physical and meteorological setbacks, The Summit of the Gods is one more film of climates and impressions, with frames that emphasize the smallness of the human being in the face of the immensity of the mountains and effectively convey the sensation of ascent. And, above all, it is a story that delves into the psychology of mountaineers, who not only set themselves the challenge of reaching the peaks but also of doing it again through more difficult roads and in increasingly adverse conditions, without giving up and putting his life at stake, a permanently and literally uphill life.
This remarkable French animated film, but with a Japanese aesthetic, is a fiction that addresses the world of mountaineers, transmits the smallness of the human being in front of the immensity of the mountains and recounts the constant challenges that climbers impose themselves, putting their life, a life literally and permanently uphill.
Review
Makoto Fumagachi is a Tokyo photographer and photojournalist who documents the ascents of mountaineers. While in Nepal, he learns of the existence of a camera belonging to George Mallory, a British climber who was part of the first three expeditions to climb Everest and who disappeared in the third (1924) without knowing if he had reached the top or not. His camera photos could shed light on this question. On the other hand, said camera would be in the power of another important (fictional) climber, Habu Joji, whom Makoto will try to contact and who will become the other protagonist of the film.
The French film Patrick Imbert is based on a Japanese manga and novel, and its graphics are faithful to the animations of that origin, especially in the approach to the human figure. The imposing images of the mountains are at times almost photographic realism.
Although its temporal structure is interesting and Makoto's journalistic investigation has something of a thriller and contains effective and tense scenes during the escalations, with their physical and meteorological setbacks, The Summit of the Gods is one more film of climates and impressions, with frames that emphasize the smallness of the human being in the face of the immensity of the mountains and effectively convey the sensation of ascent. And, above all, it is a story that delves into the psychology of mountaineers, who not only set themselves the challenge of reaching the peaks but also of doing it again through more difficult roads and in increasingly adverse conditions, without giving up and putting his life at stake, a permanently and literally uphill life.