Plot: Chronicles the little-known story of Tenzing Norgay, a gifted Himalayan climber who, alongside New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, became the first to summit Mount Everest.
Review: Having seen multiple documentaries and films about the sheer difficulty of scaling Mount Everest, I know that it is not something that I would ever personally have any desire to undertake. But I also have immense respect for those who have put themselves on the line to summit the largest mountain on Earth. While films like Everest have looked at the tragedy and disaster that has befallen those who have tried to scale the mountain, few films have looked at the first successful summit, and none have chronicled the true story of the man who was integral to the successful achievement, Tenzing Norgay. The new film Tenzing focuses on the Sherpa who aided the historic climb to the peak of Mount Everest. Partially a light biopic of the mountain climber and, in part, a look at the 1953 climb itself, Tenzing is an old-fashioned underdog story that sheds light on Norgay’s part in the legendary summit.
Opening with young Tenzing meeting George Mallory (Johnny Flynn) on the Tibetan Plateau in 1924, mere days or weeks before the British mountaineer perished trying to scale Everest, we see the youthful desire to climb the mountain the locals refer to as Chomolungma, or Holy Mother. The film then jumps to 1953 as Tenzing’s (Genden Phuntsok) benefactor and employer, Jill Henderson (Caitriona Balfe), sends word that the latest British expedition wants him to join as head Sherpa. Tenzing meets with John Hunt (Willem Dafoe) and insists he will only join if he is made a full member of the climbing party, to which Hunt agrees. Looked down on by the native Sherpas working for the expedition because he is Nepalese and an outsider, Tenzing quickly befriends Sir Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), a New Zealand mountain climber, also treated as an outsider for not being British. As the expedition comes together and they set out, Tenzing maintains an air of positivity and hope as he aims to finally achieve his lifelong dream and reach the pinnacle of Everest. Tenzing’s experience climbing the mountain multiple times and his unwavering professionalism ingratiate him with both the British and the Sherpas, but they still face challenges as they progress to thinner air and harsher climate.
The expedition kicks off quickly, with the film interspersing flashbacks of how Tenzing became a Sherpa, despite being considered less than natives of the region. We also get to see him fall in love with his wife, Dawa (Thinley Lhamo), who supports his dream but constantly fears the potentially deadly stakes that climbing the unforgiving mountain landscape presents. These flashback moments do add insight into who Tenzing was and what really mattered to him beyond climbing Everest, but they also slow down the pace of the story. It does work better than a linear story would have worked, but I can’t help but wonder whether there was a different way to structure this story that would have kept the momentum of the mountain climb at the forefront. Since the film shows Tenzing as a small, young child left at a monastery by his parents, who felt he was too weak to continue the journey to India, we gain insight into his youth and the factors that shaped his ambition. In the present day, we see the not-so-subtle racism that the British hold toward the Nepalese and Sherpa, regarding them as lesser than their own countrymen. But it is never overt racism, as Tenzing’s skill outweighs the color of his skin.
With Tenzing Norgay as the central protagonist of the story, everybody else plays a supporting role. Newcomer Genden Phuntsok is excellent as Tenzing and portrays him as a determined and inspirational figure who is calm and collected when dealing with protests and revolt from his fellow Sherpas, being overlooked for selection for the final ascent, or rescuing Edmund Hillary from death when part of the mountain collapses under them. Willem Dafoe is understated as expedition leader John Hunt, who treats the quest as a military endeavor that must succeed at all costs. Tom Hiddleston, in a mild New Zealand accent, is a quiet and understated champion of Tenzing. Hiddleston and Phuntsok work well together as two men who respect one another and share the same desire to scale Everest. Tenzing never aligns the backgrounds or lives of Hillary and Norgay as being similar, but it doesn’t shy away from presenting the future close friends as the duo who will finally achieve what no human beings had done before. But the film also doesn’t really spend much time truly digging into the root of the British Empire and its control and subjugation of other cultures. The movie, instead, is presented as a unified human achievement.
Australian director Jennifer Peedom makes her narrative directorial debut with Tenzing. Peedom has directed the documentary films River, Mountain, and Sherpa, the last of which was filmed during the 2014 Everest avalanche. Her experience filming on actual mountains and in extreme weather on Everest lends a realism to this production, which was lensed in both New Zealand and Nepal. Tenzing was written by Luke Davies, best known for scripting the acclaimed 2016 film Lion, starring Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, and Nicole Kidman, and the 2020 western News of the World, starring Tom Hanks. Davies does a good job of chronicling who Tenzing Norgay was and his role in the first successful summit of Everest, but the film is so traditional and old-school in its manner that it never has any stakes. You root for Tenzing and Hillary to make that final push, and Peedom does give that sequence a real underdog feel, but the movie never has any sense that they will not make it. Obviously, we know the end of the story is going to be positive, but at no point does this film ever feel like it’s going to go any other direction other than achievement.
With a rousing, old-school score by Rebekka Karijord and stunning cinematography by Stefan Duscio, Tenzing is refined and buttoned-up like the British characters in the story. I appreciate the tale of the Sherpas who have long been overlooked despite being vital to every expedition to climb Everest, and director Jennifer Peedom gives them a fitting tribute here. At times, this feels like a Disneyfied true story that has all of the glory but not much of the bumps and bruises it took to get there. While Genden Phuntsok makes for an inspiring protagonist with Willem Dafoe and Tom Hiddleston in solid supporting roles, Tenzing is just a little too clean for a story surrounded by death. But Peedom may have been aiming for this to be a story of success and achievement rather than anything else, and it certainly gets your emotions going by the end, but it could have been much more had it either excised some of the flashbacks or given us a little more of the trials on the climb to the top. Tenzing is a visually impressive film and tells a long-overdue story that gives Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpa people their due.
Tenzing is now streaming on Apple TV.
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