When newspapers, radio stations, and television news programs reported the first successful summit of Mt. Everest on May 29th, 1953, Edmund “Ed” Hilary, a New Zealand member of a spring expedition organized by the British, received prime, sometimes sole credit for arguably one of the greatest accomplishments in recorded human history. A knighthood followed Hilary’s success.
The truth, of course, was far more complicated than contemporary accounts showed. Hilary wasn’t alone.
He was part of a well-funded, 400-member strong expedition. He wasn’t even a member of the first team attempting to summit Mt. Everest that spring. He was, along with Tenzing Norgay, a 20-year mountaineering veteran, one of two, not one of one.
Western accounts, however, repeatedly emphasized Hilary’s feat at the expense of Norgay’s co-equal contribution or the supporting staff, the Nepalese-Tibetan Sherpas who literally carried essential equipment and supplies to the various base camps set up along Mt. Everest itself.
The aptly titled Tenzing, directed by Jennifer Peedom (Deeper, Mountain, Sherpa) from a screenplay credited to Luke Davies, serves as a necessary corrective to earlier accounts and Western popular culture that minimized, if not outright erased, Norgay’s essential contribution, both to the expedition and its logistics, and the final push to summit Mt. Everest alongside the otherwise justly celebrated Hilary.
As a biography, Tenzing leans cumbersomely towards hagiography, modestly deconstructing the myths surrounding Norgay before reconstructing them again in heroic fashion, presenting the title character, played by Genden Phuntsok as an adult, as singularly obsessed with climbing and summiting Chomolungma (“holy mother”), the Nepalese-Tibetan name for Mt. Everest. Chomolungma literally looms over Norgay, a distant sight that positively filled his vision for most of his young life.
But first, as a boy born to a poor, struggling family and later as a young man, still poor, still struggling, Norgay’s dream was fueled here by an unexpected, presumably fictional, encounter with the ill-fated George Mallory (Johnny Flynn), a British mountaineer who, along with his companion, Andrew Irvine, lost his life on Mt. Everest in the early part of June 1924. That encounter, fictional, imaginary, or both, turns the young Norgay’s dreams into a lifelong obsession that will result in either success and acclaim or defeat and possible death.
Peedom interweaves the various stages of Norgay’s eventful life, from the previous year’s failed Swiss expedition where Norgay and a Swiss mountaineer fell short of the summit, to Norgay’s humble beginnings, his deeply felt affection for a young girl-turned-woman, Dawa (Thinley Lhamo), from a different, higher social caste and class, their marriage and relocation to Darjeeling, India where Norgay, joins an earlier British expedition as a simple porter, carrying large loads of equipment and supplies on his back, and eventually, the fateful British expedition of 1953 which Norgay joins both as Sherpa Leader, and more importantly for him and the film, as a full climbing partner.
Tenzing introduces Hilary (Tom Hiddleston) as a slightly aloof, serious-minded climber, a semi-outcast on the expedition due to his New Zealand origins. To the other, mostly British members of the expedition, Hilary may look and (almost) sound like them, but he's otherwise lesser in some frustratingly vague, condescending way. A watchful, perceptive man, however, Hilary realizes early in the expedition that Norgay represents his best, possibly only, chance at summiting Mt. Everest.
A relationship born out of mutual need (Norgay can't climb Mt. Everest alone, needing a partner, too) gradually develops into a deep, long-lasting friendship that ultimately transcends their time on the mountain together. The extreme hardship (wind, storms), the clear, ever-present risks (avalanches, icefalls), and an unspoken recognition of each other’s worth, both as individuals and climbing partners, help the relationship solidify into something beyond mere expediency.
All of which Peedon, a documentary veteran with a long-standing interest in Nepal, Sherpas, and mountaineering, puts to well-choreographed, if sometimes telegraphed, good use, delineating the logistics of a complicated, months-long expedition like the 1953 British one without slipping into information overload or exposition dumps, foregrounding the central relationships (Norgay and Hilary, Norgay and Dawa), while giving the audience just enough detail to allow the secondary players to feel three-dimensional characters and not two-dimensional ones.
For anyone who’s trekked in the Himalayas, nothing beats being there and experiencing Nepal and the Himalayas first-hand. Admittedly, most can't, but Tenzing comes close, if only as a distant second. Much of the credit belongs to Peedom, Davies’ sleekly conventional script, winning performances by Phuntsok, Hiddleston, and Dafoe, and their supporting cast; and spectacular, on-location cinematography courtesy of Stefan Duscio.
Tenzing looks like no (or little) expense was spared to bring Norgay and his mountaineering experiences to cinematic life.
Tenzing opens today in select North American movie theaters, to be followed by a streaming release on Apple TV on Friday, October 16. Check the offical site for showtimes.