‘Climbing For Life’ review: Sayuri Yoshinaga lifts flat biopic of Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei

Dir: Junji Sakamoto. Japan. 2025. 130mins

Legendary mountaineer Junko Tabei’s conquest of Mount Everest within the Seventies within the face of baked-in sexism, gender discrimination and household trauma appears tailored for the dramatic biopic therapy. But, even with the potential to place Tabei as a stealth feminist trailblazer wrestling with ingrained cultural instincts, director Junji Sakamoto lets old style sentiment get the higher of the fabric. The result’s a rousing, inspirational melodrama about by no means giving up in your goals, or your life.

Lets old style sentiment get the higher of the fabric

That’s to not say that Climbing For Life, which opens Tokyo after its San Sebastian bow, is with out its positives – chief amongst them the complete wattage attraction of star Sayuri Yoshinaga, reuniting with Sakamoto for the primary time since 2012’s A Refrain Of Angels. Sakamoto has at all times had a little bit of a candy tooth, as evidenced by his embezzler-with-heart-of-gold thriller Human Belief (2013) or small city drama One other World (2018), and this newest gently stirring, non-confrontational drama can be forgettable with some other forged. But even Yoshinaga’s appreciable star energy is unlikely to hold the movie outdoors of Japan, the place it opens on the finish of October, and it might be greatest fitted to streaming platforms.

Climbing For Life may be very a lot indebted to the tried and true – some might say stale – method of the biopic: the topic exhibits early promise and keenness, enjoys success which introduces rigidity within the house, suffers a disaster of confidence after which rebounds to safe their legacy. Junko’s ardour was mountaineering, which she did virtually to the day she died (in 2016, aged 77), scaling the very best mountains on this planet identified collectively because the Seven Summits. Her different achievements embody the organisation of a trek up Mount Fuji in help of children impacted by Fukusima. In 2010, she was recognized with a terminal most cancers that she merely rejected. The items of a compelling story are all there, however this dramatization by no means varieties a compelling image.

The movie opens with Junko (performed as a younger lady by Non) summitting Everest in 1975 to nice fanfare, earlier than flashing forward to her first most cancers prognosis. The story then flits backwards and forwards in time, monitoring how Junko grew to become the primary lady to succeed in the Himalayan peak (truly shot in Japan’s Toyama Prefecture). This accomplishment makes her and husband Masaaki (veteran Koichi Sato) gender outliers in Seventies Japan – he’s the stay-at-home father or mother whereas she’s away mountaineering.

That’s not the one problem Junko faces. As a way to make the journey to the highest of the world, she should put collectively an all-female climbing crew and get modern with gear, coaching and journey when Japan’s institutionalized sexism means they win subsequent to nothing in funding. Energised, the 12 girls head off to Nepal with journalist Etsuko Kitayama (performed first by Mizuki Kayashima and later Yuki Amami), who turns into Junko’s closest buddy. 

Regardless of these obstacles, Climbing For Life is nearly utterly freed from battle – aside from some resentment of Junko’s fame from her son Shjntaro (Ryuya Wakaba), who ultimately reconciles his emotions and picks up the climbing baton.

Screenwriter Riko Sakaguchi’s (Takahiro Miki’s Fortuna’s Eye) expository dialogue brushes over probably the most fascinating components of Junko’s life: the group disintegration stemming from her particular person renown. Visually, too, the movie is sturdy and purposeful, if not as sweeping and breathtaking as one may anticipate. Even the avalanche that gives the impetus for the group’s eventual disunity is hampered by what was probably a modest finances.

All through, Sakaguchi and Sakamoto steer nicely away from any hints at social or feminist agitation, finally rendering the movie a pleasing couple of hours, however removed from as memorable as Junko Tabei herself.