“Do you want to die?” he asks. Ione (Patricia Lopez Arnaiz) a Matthew (Xavier King) in The top (Theatrical release March 25). "I do not want to live". He answers, convinced, with a real smile, but he still misses the rest of us.
The summit was born as an attempt to Ibon Cormenzana, director and co-writer (together with Nerea Castro), for explaining the sensations that he, "a fan of the mountain world", has felt when reaching a peak. “I have had moments of connecting with life, of feeling that you understand everything and I got the bug of trying to transmit it in a film”, he says, just before the premiere of the film in the Malaga Festival.
Javier Rey trying to reach 'The top'.
Thus he created Mateo, his protagonist, “a character who wants to live, as I understand that it happens to all mountaineers, but that he has had a great trauma and his way of trying to overcome it is to set himself an almost impossible challenge: climb the Annapurna, one of the most dangerous mountains in the world.
Mateo leaves for Nepal even in winter, a time that adds difficulty to his feat. He is also not the most experienced climber, but he has the desire, a promise to keep and a trauma to overcome. The Annapurna is his particular mountain to overcome all the load that he carries.
“The mountain is a metaphor, It is not necessary to do mountain climbing to try to overcome traumas, dismissals, farewells, health, love affairs…”, explains Javier Rey. “The human being always tends to go forward, what happens is that sometimes a mountain too high appears before you, but whenever you reach the top, there is this feeling of starting a new life, a new dawn, It's what the characters are trying to say: I want to live."
Rey and Patricia López Arnaiz in the shelter.
IN THE MIND OF THE MOUNTAINEER
Even so, for those not fond of mountains or heights, understanding the logic behind what Mateo intends is complicated. “I understand that it is difficult for people who do not do mountains to understand”, Cormenza accepts. “You see the danger more, you think that what these people want is to die, that they are risking their lives and it makes no sense. But actually, I see them as someone who squeezes the moment and who enjoys the essence of life with the most subtle and smallest things, They think in the moment, not in the future. They are doing something that, bringing them closer to death, connects them much more with life.”
Javier Rey and Patricia López Arnaiz have had the advice and training of the mountaineer Jordi Tosas. They trained, read everything they could and prepared for a shoot that was not easy at all. "I think it is the most demanding film that I have had to do in many ways. gets together the physical, the climatological, the emotional… because everything is on the limit in this film”, admits Rey.
Definition of very hard shooting.
TOP IN THE PYRENEES
The plan was always to shoot at least part of the film in Annapurna itself, go to Nepal, but the pandemic prevented that. The magic of cinema (using images from other films, archives) does not make us miss it. Y the Pyrenees they help.
“We were rolling around the area of Benasque, Cerler, Aneto and also some area of France”, says the director. they were there in January and February 2021, when there is more snow, when it is colder, and the conditions could be more similar to those of the environment of the great Nepalese mountain.
They rolled for days “at 2,000 meters and peak altitude”, surrounded by snow, at -17 degrees with wind, on ice walls...
The interior of the shelter was built in an abandoned house.
The refuge that is seen and in which Ione lives, is a small royal refuge in the foothills of Aneto, the first to be built there, near the Refuge of the Renclusa, where they stayed "as if they were a school in colonies, sleeping in bunk beds, sharing bathrooms."
“It was an adventure, but I see it positively, because you always remember more of those shoots in which you experience things that you normally don't do”, says Cormenzana. They came very close to understanding the psychology of the mountain and those who love it, "They may seem crazy, but they are not, because perhaps they are the most sane."
The happiness of the mountain, the connection.