‘Tenzing’ movie review: Genden Phuntsok is Mr. Amazing in Jennifer Peedom’s soulful ode to an overlooked hero

The very human impulse to be the first to do something has propelled generations towards the poles, into the ocean’s lightless abyss and beyond the atmosphere, all for the absurd but undeniably potent distinction of having ventured where no human has gone before. The twentieth century made a mythology of such endeavours, lionising the figures who planted flags at the end of the impossible. Few have been short-changed by selective bookkeeping from the frontiers of such heroism as acutely as Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa mountaineer who reached the summit of Mount Everest alongside Edmund Hillary in 1953.

Based on true events, Jennifer Peedom’s Apple TV feature chronicles the life of the titular climber — played by Tibetan actor Genden Phuntsok in his English-language debut — whose extraordinary familiarity with the Himalayas and spiritual reverence for Chomolungma (the mountain’s Tibetan name) eventually carry him towards one of humankind’s most consequential achievements. Encouraged by his wife Dawa (Thinley Lhamo) and aided by expedition secretary Jill Henderson (Caitríona Balfe), Tenzing fights for recognition as a climber in his own right, persuading British expedition leader Colonel John Hunt (Willem Dafoe) to accept him as a formal member of the climbing team rather than merely the dutiful Sherpa expected to carry its equipment. His eventual partnership with Kiwi mountaineer Hillary (Tom Hiddleston) gives the film a sense of historic camaraderie. 

Peedom’s previous documentary, Sherpa, examined the mountain folk whose indispensable labour sustains Everest’s commercial and sporting ambitions. She approaches her first narrative feature with an evident interest in correcting the historical framing that made Hillary the internationally recognisable face of the 1953 ascent while leaving Tenzing comparatively obscured. The film draws on Ed Douglas’s biography Tenzing: Hero of Everest, which explores Tenzing’s early life and his substantial organisational responsibilities during the expedition, grounding the drama in a life considerably more complicated than the iconic photograph of two men standing at the top of the world. The disparity in their subsequent recognition remains galling: Hillary and Hunt were knighted, whereas Tenzing received the George Medal, a civilian honour for bravery; a difference that has drawn criticism from Tenzing’s family and estate. Against this history, Tenzing makes a persuasive case that the distinction between the man who supposedly conquered Everest and the man who helped him do so was never merely a question of mountaineering merit.

The film begins its excavation of Tenzing’s ambition on the Tibetan Plateau in 1924, when a young boy (Samdrup Dorje Lama) gazes longingly towards the breathtaking Chomolungma. He watches, fascinated, as foreign mountaineers arrive. Among them is British mountaineer George Mallory (Johnny Flynn), whose ill-fated expedition and brief encounter with Tenzing plant the seed of a lifelong obsession.

The narrative subsequently moves between Tenzing’s childhood, his early adulthood with Dawa, and the climber he becomes in 1953. As a member of the Bhotia community, Tenzing has already spent much of his life negotiating a sense of otherness among the Sherpas, making his position on the expedition a sort of outcast twice removed. His intelligence and formidable climbing ability eventually earn him greater responsibility and respect, along with an almost ceremonial formal inclusion in the otherwise all-white climbing team, but Peedom remains attuned to the expedition’s entrenched class divisions and the casual racism underpinning its hierarchy.

Where Defoe’s Hunt approaches the expedition with the quintessentially British conviction that Everest is a problem to be solved through the strategic subjugation of an adversary — even preparing his contingent for what amounts to “the siege of Everest” — Tenzing approaches Chomolungma as the sacred mother goddess she is to him. His Rinpoche at the monastery articulates this distinction, instructing him to climb the mountain “like a child climbs into his mother’s lap”.

Tenzing’s spiritual quest, however, does not render the other Sherpas oblivious to the indignities of their circumstances, with Tenzin Jigmey’s Pasang providing the film with a welcome, snarky counterweight to its protagonist’s extraordinary patience. Pasang sees through the expedition’s grandiosity, recognising that the Sherpas’ back-breaking toil is little more than the human scaffolding for a bunch of imperial peacocks to strut around in the afterglow of borrowed heroism, as men who “get to pretend they are heroes.”

That said, Phuntsok is all of the hope, all of the future, and all of the heart of this film. Even if Peedom’s reverence for Tenzing sometimes threatens to sand away the rougher edges, Phuntsok is so infectiously joyful that begrudging the film its hero worship feels almost rude. He gives Tenzing a buoyant sense of finally finding the one place in the world where his instincts make perfect sense, and it’s an absolute joy to witness.

The flashbacks, too, benefit enormously from Tenzin Dalha’s youthful earnestness and Thinley Lhamo’s tender, grounded portrayal of Dawa, whose shared optimism and intimacy lend the narrative a warmth the summit-bound spectacle might otherwise have swallowed whole. Their scenes with Tenzing and their two daughters give his all-consuming ambition a life beyond the mountain, enriching the film’s nonlinear structure. It couldn’t help but remind me of Ryan Gosling’s affecting portrayal of Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s First Man.

Hiddleston understands the assignment and keeps Hillary’s considerable historical stature from elbowing its way into Tenzing’s story. Dafoe has the enviable ability to heighten everything he touches. Though my tolerance for colonial-era Brits (or any-era Brits, I suppose) congratulating themselves on their civilisational superiority while outsourcing all the actual suffering to the brown people they consider glorified pack mules is approximately nonexistent, Hunt’s unexpectedly tender gesture of reading a Sherpa prayer to Tenzing before his final ascent caught me thoroughly off guard.

Stefan Duscio’s cinematography is largely content to let Chomolungma do the heavy lifting, which is hardly unreasonable considering his subject happens to be a sun-kissed Himalayan colossus. His camera captures the mountain’s austere grandeur with a wistful, almost yearning lens that feels intimately tethered to Tenzing’s own gaze. And Rebekka Karijord’s beautiful score moves between swooning biopic crescendos, Buddhist chants and Tibetan aural traditions with hearty helpings of sentimentality. The inclusion of a stirring vocal track by Nepalese Buddhist nun Ani Choying Drolma is the final, gut-punch of a flourish, giving the mountain an almost otherworldly presence that no Western orchestral grandstanding could conjure on its own.

Peedom’s tendency to lacquer her protagonist in near-immaculate virtue often edges towards hagiography, but its craftsmanship goes a long way towards compensating for the dramatic sanitisation. Given the graveyard Everest has become, with more than 200 bodies believed to remain entombed in its unforgiving slopes, the view from the summit and the emotional catharsis of Tenzing “Mr. Amazing” Norgay’s journey make the privilege of basking in Phuntsok’s blinding, toothy grin worth every minute of the climb.

Tenzing is streaming on Apple TV