Stately and occasionally stirring, Jennifer Peedom’s “Tenzing” has an old-fashioned earnestness that’s gently disarming. The film’s real-life subject is Tenzing Norgay (Genden Phuntsok), the Nepali-Indian mountaineer who, alongside Sir Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), became the first person reported to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.
Neither a straight-up biopic nor a flat-out adventure yarn (its tone is too buttoned-up and British for that), “Tenzing” is instead a dramatic portrait of one man’s intense, all-consuming longing.
As a child in 1924 on the Tibetan Plateau, Tenzing watches, rapt, as the “men from away places” prepare to climb the mountain he knows only by its Tibetan name, Chomolungma. One of those men is the English mountaineer George Mallory (Johnny Flynn), who would die on that ascent and whose brief exchange with Tenzing ignites a dream that swiftly becomes an obsession.
Almost three decades later, that drive will secure Tenzing, now an experienced climber, a spot as head Sherpa on Hillary’s expedition. This places him in an awkward limbo: Neither a member of the British climbing team nor an ethnic Sherpa, he is viewed as an outsider by both groups. His intelligence and preternatural climbing ability win him a promotion and respect; but Peedom, throughout her first narrative feature (after several mountain-climbing documentaries), remains keenly aware of the expedition’s class boundaries and not-so-subtle racism.
Shot in Nepal and New Zealand, “Tenzing” brings a chilly majesty to Everest’s treacherous slopes, with Stefan Duscio’s camera confirming Tenzing’s belief in the mountain’s mystical power. But a screenplay (by Luke Davies) that over-relies on confusing flashbacks and insists too often on Tenzing’s spiritual connection to Everest can cause other characters to fade to near-irrelevance. (Hillary, a polite New Zealander, is so reserved I forgot at times he was even there.) Harder to overlook is Willem Dafoe’s Colonel Hunt, the expedition leader and a man who clearly bathes in starch.
Whatever your feelings about Everest’s current ruination, there is no doubt that Tenzing — who, with Hillary, pioneered the mountain’s popular Southeast Ridge route, the site of an infamous 2014 disaster — deserves this spotlight. And if its somewhat sentimental beam colors him as a little too saintly, Phuntsok’s performance is so modest and joyful that it’s difficult to mind. Whether trudging through a monsoon or hauling a grateful Hillary out of a nasty crevasse, this is a man who’s living his best life.
In any event, the film’s more worshipful tendencies are easily mitigated by its classical beauty and what can only be called its dignified — and occasionally breathtaking — handling of danger.
Tenzing may be on a spiritual quest, but the Sherpas harbor no illusions about their position or their militaristic overlords. Savvy and tart-tongued, they understand perfectly that their skills and discomfort are serving inflated foreign egos, men who “get to pretend they are heroes.”
“Tenzing,” in its quietly empathetic way, makes sure we know who the real heroes are.
Tenzing Rated PG. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. Watch on Apple TV.
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