THE STORY – The untold and inspiring tale of one of the most important mountain climbers in history who, with Edmund Hillary, became the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
THE CAST – Genden Phuntsok, Willem Dafoe, Tom Hiddleston, Caitríona Balfe, Thinley Lhamo & Iain Canning
THE TEAM – Jennifer Peedom (Director) & Luke Davies (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 126 Minutes
Nearly three-quarters of a century after Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first climbers confirmed to reach Mount Everest’s summit in 1953, the achievement is still frequently framed through Western eyes. With “Tenzing,” director Jennifer Peedom returns to Himalayan terrain after her mountain documentary films “Sherpa” (2015) and “Mountain” (2017), and co-writer Luke Davies (“Lion“) places Norgay at the center of his own history. Guided by Genden Phuntsok’s powerful performance and supported by Tom Hiddleston, Willem Dafoe, Caitríona Balfe, and Thinley Lhamo, the film is an inspirational biographical epic elevated by an extraordinary life and crowd-pleasing filmmaking.
The movie opens with some breathtaking visuals of a young kid climbing the Tibetan Plateau on a hike in 1924. The landscape is beautiful, the terrain is rough, but this kid has heart and a dream of one day achieving what many considered to be impossible: climbing the world’s tallest mountain, Chomolungma, otherwise known as Mount Everest. He’s always wanted to climb from a young age, and when the movie fast-forwards 24 years later, Tenzing Norgay is doing just that as he and another climber come so close to achieving this great milestone, but at 28,000 feet high on the 29,031 feet mountain, he was forced to turn back due to weather conditions that surely would’ve ended his life. But this will not deter him. He will find a way of accomplishing that which he feels his whole life has been driving towards, and throughout “Tenzing” we see him as he’s preparing for this latest British expedition (the ninth attempt overall) led by British officer John Hunt (Dafoe) and alongside fellow climber New Zealander Edmund Hillary (Hiddleston). Intercut with this latest attempt to climb Everest, we see flashbacks of Tenzing’s life, from his family’s migration at a young age, the poverty they experienced, his illness and his parents’ abandonment of him, to meeting his future wife, getting married, and tragically losing her, leaving him to take care of their children. Desperately needing to provide for his children and prove something to himself, he embarks on a 3-month journey as Head Sherpa with a full climbing team to reach the summit, but it won’t be an easy task; what many a millionaire does today for “fun” was certainly not seen as that back in the 1950s.
The characters for the expedition are introduced by name to Tenzing, but you would be hard-pressed to remember a single one of them outside of Tom Hiddleston’s Edmund Hillary and Willem Dafoe’s John Hunt. Even Caitríona Balfe, who plays Jill Henderson, the Secretary of the Himalayan Club based in Darjeeling who supported local expeditions and cared for the Sherpa climbing community, leading to Tenzing eventually being chosen for the expedition, isn’t given much of a character to work with. Tenzing is technically not a Sherpa; he’s considered an outsider, and this makes it much harder for him to be accepted by the community and his fellow climbers, but his determination, hard work, and perseverance eventually win everyone around him over. It certainly doesn’t solve the deeper underlying layers of racism and classism that exist within this story. Still, it sends a positive message that no matter where you come from, or the color of your skin, you can rise above prejudice, misfortune, and all kinds of other obstacles with the right attitude to make your dreams come true. The film plays this broadly, largely because we spend a lot of time on Tenzing’s personal life. The eventual climb doesn’t begin until forty minutes into the movie, but once it does, Jennifer Peedom’s filmmaking reaches another level. John Hunt treats the expedition like a military-led mission, which adds drama to what is already a very dangerous undertaking. The higher these men climb, the harder it becomes, as altitude takes a toll on their bodies and minds, leading to impressive cinematography and sound work from Peedom’s collaborators that add up to an overall thrilling experience, despite some formulaic scripting issues from Davies.
Despite underestimating Tenzing, Edmund Hillary takes a liking to him early on, and as two of the expedition’s best all-around climbers, they bond. When Edmund falls into a crevasse, it’s Tenzing who saves him from hitting the bottom, which leads Edmund to consider him his climbing partner of choice for any future summit attempt. That friendship eventually carries both of them into history, cemented by an iconic photograph that, to this day, has lasting power and emotional uplift, inspiring others to achieve similar heights. There is also a spiritual component to the storytelling, for in Tibetan and Sherpa culture, Mount Everest is considered to be a sacred entity known as Chomolungma, translating to “Mother Goddess of the World.” Tenzing and other Sherpa climbers commonly refer to the mountain as “she” and have great respect for her beauty, what it means to climb her, and the lives she has taken along the way.
While all the supporting actors do what they can to liven the picture with their screen presence, it’s Genden Phuntsok who leaps off the screen with a breakthrough performance that commands your attention with his soulfulness, grit, and integrity. Tenzing is an honest, hard-working man who is very easy for the audience to root for, and Phuntsok imbues him with a strong emotional core that radiates through the screen and elevates the material, so that by the time he falls to his knees on top of the world, having achieved the moment he’s thought about since he was a kid, hopefully the audience, who has been along with Tenzing on this decades long journey, will shed a tear or two. With only three feature film credits to his name, this star-making turn should surely result in him receiving more offers in the future.
Shot amid imposing mountain terrain by cinematographer Stefan Duscio and propelled by Rebekka Karijord’s stirring score, “Tenzing” finds the sweeping emotional grandeur of such an awe-inspiring achievement without losing sight of the man at its center. Although its supporting characters never receive the same attention, Peedom’s film draws immense power from Phuntsok’s humane performance, its reverence for Chomolungma, and its focus on the often-neglected voices that add crucial context to the story’s enormity. Its inspirational biopic structure may be familiar, but this stirring historical corrective gives Tenzing the perspective, pride, and cinematic scale he deserves, so his moment of greatness is not reduced to a single image but to 24 moving images a second for 126 minutes.
