Tenzing
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: PG
Run Time: 2 hours 8 minutes
Stars: Genden Phuntsok, Tom Hiddleston, Willem Dafoe
Writers: Luke Davies, Jennifer Peedom, Ed Douglas
Director: Jennifer Peedom
In Theaters, streaming on Apple TV October 16
Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival
An adventure film without irony, agenda, or socio/political subtext, Tenzing is a viscerally thrilling, breathtakingly shot, emotionally enthralling saga of men pushing themselves to the savage limits of endurance for no reason other than to see if they can do it.
The notion of the whole world obsessing about a single mountain climbing expedition seems positively antiquated now. I’m guessing most kids go through 12 years of education never hearing the names of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first humans to stand at the summit of Everest, the world’s highest mountain. But in May 1953, the pair’s adventure was the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and the Moon landing rolled into one.
Multiple films, including a 1953 documentary, have attempted to capture the torturous effort involved in that first climb. Making her first narrative feature following a string of first-rate adventure documentaries (Sherpa, Solo, and Mountain among them), director Jennifer Peedom ratchets up the horrific, claustrophobic, vertigo-inducing, bone-freezing adventure while also providing breathing room for the characters: men with varying motivations for strapping on those boots and trudging away from base camp.
With an infectious smile and easy manner, Tibetan actor Genden Phuntsok plays Tenzing, who in the early 1950s had already risen to the ranks of the Himalayas’ most experienced climbers before Hillary & Co. arrived. His connection to Everest is primarily spiritual: To Tenzing and his fellow Tibetans, the act of climbing the mountain they call “Holy Mother” is the supreme act of devotion.
Worldwide media largely ignored Tenzing in the 1950s, focusing instead on Hillary (Tom Hiddleston) the dashing, tall, debonair New Zealander who made the final ascent with him. With typical ’50s racial profiling, Tenzing was generally portrayed as Hillary’s sherpa, when in fact he was a full-fledged member of the British climbing team. Hillary himself never considered Tenzing anything less than a more-experienced partner: The world-famous 1953 photo of a goggled man standing on Everest’s summit is not of Hillary, as many assume, but Tenzing. Hillary was the photographer, and he never even implied having wished the pair’s roles were reversed.
As Hillary, Hiddleston brings disarming charm and a shared sense of being, like Tenzing, an outsider: Everyone else on the expedition is English, and the leader, played with gregarious aplomb by Willem Dafoe, clearly favors his countrymen when it comes to reaching the top first. Only a failed attempt by an English pair opens the door for Hillary and Tenzing to make their ascent.
The photography by Stefan Duscio — before this known mostly for taut thrillers like Invisible Man and The Dry — is uniformly astonishing, ranging from sweeping vistas of infinite mountains to cheek-to-jowl human pileups inside flapping tents. The film was shot in Nepal and New Zealand, and we are assured the use of digital enhancement was minimal — an assertion I desperately hope is true when it comes to the opening shot: As a young Tenzing stands on a mountain ridge, the camera moves upward to reveal Everest rising beyond him, like a whale emerging from the ocean.
For the boy Tenzing, it’s an affirmation of Holy Mother’s beckoning call. For us, it’s a promise of perilous adventure to come. Tenzing delivers on both counts.
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