Seventy-three years after he stood on top of the world, Tenzing Norgay finally has a feature film that puts him, and not his climbing partner, at the front of the story. Jennifer Peedom’s Tenzing on Apple TV is heartfelt and often thrilling, and it gives its subject the respect history was hesitant to offer him.
The long wait is surprising. Tenzing’s name has been given to buildings, red pandas and even an energy drink, yet the man himself has rarely had a screen of his own. For decades the 1953 ascent was told as a triumph for Edmund Hillary and for Britain, with the Sherpa cast as a loyal helper rather than an equal. Peedom and screenwriter Luke Davies set out to correct that, and they largely succeed.
The film moves back and forth across the decades, and three actors share the title role. Samdrup Dorje Lama plays Tenzing as a wide-eyed boy, Tenzin Dalha plays him as a restless young man, and Genden Phuntsok plays the seasoned climber the British recruit in 1953. All three call the mountain by its Tibetan name, Chomolungma. The film never lets us forget that for Tenzing, it is a Goddess and not a trophy.
The spark comes early. As a child in 1924, Tenzing watches the “men from away places” prepare to climb the peak and has a brief encounter with George Mallory, played in a short cameo by Johnny Flynn. Mallory never came back from that climb. The boy’s fascination grows into a lifelong calling.
From there, the flashbacks follow his courtship of Dawa (Thinley Lhamo), whose father disapproves of the match, their move to the city and his first rejection by an expedition team. They then trace his slow rise to become one of the most trusted guides in the Himalayas. Indian viewers will notice the Darjeeling chapter, where he tries to make a living as a Sherpa. It’s another story that the Darjeeling that Peedom tries to recreate on screen is largely forgettable. This episode is given only a few minutes of screen time.
Once the British expedition sets off, Tenzing becomes a different kind of film. Peedom made a string of climbing documentaries before this first fiction feature, and she knows exactly how to make altitude feel deadly. The film was shot in Nepal and New Zealand, with Stefan Duscio as cinematographer, and its high-mountain sequences are spellbinding — sheets of loose snow, sudden whiteouts and crevasses that open without warning.
The sound design deserves equal credit. Boots crunching on ice and every laboured breath in the thin air keep the audience on edge. When Tenzing hauls Hillary out of a crevasse, the scene is as tense as anything in a big-budget action film.
The make-up team also does fine work, ageing characters convincingly and leaving the cast looking as if they really did spend weeks exposed to biting winds.
At the centre of it all is Phuntsok, the film’s most valuable asset. He plays Tenzing as gentle, joyful and stubborn, a man caught between two camps. He is not quite one of the British climbers, and the Sherpa crew does not fully accept him either. So he has to keep the peace between a starchy leadership and porters who resent how they are treated. When talk turns to conquering the peak, his Tenzing answers: “I climb to know her better.”
Tom Hiddleston is well cast as Hillary, a plain-spoken New Zealander with no airs. He knows when to stay half a step behind his co-star. The friendship between the two outsiders rests on trust rather than rank, and it gives the final push to the summit its emotional weight. Willem Dafoe is enjoyably rigid as Colonel John Hunt, the expedition leader, who at one point declares: “It’s a British mountain.”
The film does not avoid the class lines that ran through the expedition. Tenzing has one condition for joining: he must be a full member of the climbing team. The Sherpas, quick-witted and under no illusions, note that the foreigners “get to pretend they are heroes”.
Not everything lands. Dawa and Jill Henderson, the expedition secretary played by Caitríona Balfe, have little to do beyond supporting the men around them.
These are small marks against a film of real scale and sincerity. Tenzing puts a pioneer back where he belongs in the story of Everest, and its final stretch is a reminder of how impossible that climb once seemed.