The Summit of the Gods: How 2021’s Hidden Gem Builds Silent Suspense

This story of scale creates the most suspenseful scenes of the past year, all without dialogue.

The 2020 French animated film The Summit of The Gods reaches emotionally and physical heights few adventures do. The film follows Japanese reporter Fukamachi on his quest to find George Mallory’s camera that could reveal Mount Everest was first scaled decades before we thought. However, this camera is taken by legendary climber Habu, forcing Fukamachi to find the recluse by investigating his past. Through the journey Fukamachi takes to both find Habu and capture his dizzying climb of Mount Everest on tape, the film is not just a personal reflection of obsession and meaning, but a prime example of quality visual storytelling.

As one would expect from a film about climbing, there are quite a few scenes that make ones stomach churn. Impressively, this tension that made me squirm in my seat was usually executed with little to no dialogue. The film generates a feeling of unease through wide shots of the mountains that are as beautiful as they are imposing. It establishes a precedent of danger; through only a single frame the film is able to convey a feeling of vertigo and its resulting panic. This technique is used throughout each climbing sequence, depicting characters hanging from a rope that when shot in wide makes them look no bigger than a speck of dust in the wind.

Following an establishing wide shot, the camera usually cuts into a few mediums of the climbers actively engaging in the climb. These shots are drawn out, thus creating a sense of uneasy anticipation in the viewer. However, in some cases dialogue is used in a light hearted manner to build a false sense of hope. This confuses the viewer, making them feel as though maybe the very real danger is just out of reach. However, the majority of climbing scenes have little to no dialogue, which results in a lonely atmosphere, telling the audience that on top of a mountain no one can hear you scream. Eventually, all of the painful elements of suspense culminate in a life or death scenario, but what makes these climaxes so frightening is the pace at which everything collapses. They act as a jump scare, with a single misplaced foot resulting in a nightmare scenario within moments. When Habu is climbing with a young protege and asks for more slack, the aspiring climber slips and careens down a mountain side in a flash, resulting a feeling I can only describe as sheer panic. The pairing of the established threat, drawn out shots of preparation to build anticipation and the lighting fast climax all make for nauseating scenes heightened by their lack of dialogue. Rather than characters bantering about “how high up we are” and how “it would be deadly to fall from this height”, the film chooses to make the audience feel like they’re climbing with the characters.

The film provides textbook examples of how to create an effective scene with little to no dialogue and why that is so important. It is the directors job to guide the viewer through a journey, a feeling, an experience that they could never understand. The Summit of The Gods proves the strength of visual storytelling in generating the feelings of an indescribable moment, and one that after watching this movie, I hope to never encounter.