Tenzing finally allows Tenzing Norgay to step out of Hillary’s shadow and tell his story on his own terms.
There are essentially two halves of Tenzing. The first is a traditional biopic that follows Tenzing’s life from his childhood through his preparations to summit Mount Everest. The second focuses on the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition that ultimately led to Tenzing (Genden Phuntsok) and Hillary (Tom Hiddleston, The Life of Chuck) reaching the summit together.
When Tenzing functions as a traditional biopic, it is about as formulaic as you can get. We meet Tenzing as a child, spending his days tending to his family’s cattle and watching the clouds roll over Mount Everest in the distance, dreaming of one day reaching its summit. However, after his family’s herd is wiped out by plague, they are forced to leave their home and move to the city. Along the way, Tenzing falls ill, and when his family eventually leaves him behind as he is placed in the care of Buddhist monks.
He grows up in the region, falls in love, and eventually finds himself struggling to make a living. He ultimately decides to become a Sherpa for mountaineering expeditions. Following the death of his wife, however, Tenzing struggles to find meaning in his life until he realizes that the best way to honor her memory is to summit Everest himself. While the story follows a familiar and often clichéd trajectory, it provides enough background and motivation to help us understand who Tenzing was and what drove him to climb Mount Everest.
However, the film really shines when it follows Tenzing and the British Mount Everest Expedition. This is where the film stops feeling like a conventional biopic and becomes an immersive survival story. Rather than simply telling us how brutal it was to climb Mount Everest, the film goes out of its way to make us feel that brutality for ourselves. It entirely immerses you in the hostile and unforgiving conditions of the mountain, turning Everest into a character in its own right.
Shot mostly on location, with New Zealand’s Southern Alps standing in for the Himalayan mountain range, the film does an excellent job of capturing the sheer scale and isolation of the environment. You feel every ounce of the mountain’s hostility. You hear the howling, the frosted winds tearing through the peaks, the distant rumble of avalanches and rockfalls, and then the almost unnerving silence that follows once the storm passes. There is a constant sense that the mountain could turn against these climbers at any moment. Even when nothing is happening, there is an underlying tension because you know that the smallest mistake could have fatal consequences.
The film also does an excellent job of making you feel the physical toll that Everest takes on the human body. You can almost feel the frosted bite of the cold through the screen as the climbers struggle to move through the snow and ice. With every step they take higher up the mountain, the air becomes thinner, and breathing becomes more difficult. The further they climb, the more exhausted they become, and the film never lets you forget just how physically demanding this journey is. These aren't people simply walking up a mountain; they are fighting against the environment with every single step.
The film also does an excellent job of making you feel the physical toll that Everest takes on the human body. You can almost feel the frosted bite of the cold through the screen as the climbers struggle to move through the snow and ice. With every step they take higher up the mountain, the air becomes thinner, and breathing becomes more difficult. The further they climb, the more exhausted they become, and the film never lets you forget just how physically demanding this journey is. These aren't people simply walking up a mountain; they are fighting against the environment with every single step.
It becomes a pure cinematic experience that doesn't simply show you the harsh conditions of Mount Everest but puts you directly into them. You feel the cold, the exhaustion, the fear and the isolation alongside Tenzing and the other mountaineers. By the time they begin their final push toward the summit, you understand exactly what they have endured to get there. It makes the eventual climb feel less like the inevitable conclusion of a historical story and more like a genuine physical and emotional ordeal that you have experienced alongside them.
While Tenzing may be a bit cliché at times, I am ultimately glad that this film exists. For decades, the story of Mount Everest’s first successful ascent has largely been told through the perspective of Sir Edmund Hillary, while the Sherpa who helped make that historic achievement possible have often been relegated to the background. Tenzing finally allows Tenzing Norgay to step out of Hillary’s shadow and tell his story on his own terms. More importantly, it serves as a reminder that climbing Everest was never an accomplishment made by one or two people alone. The Sherpa played an essential role in guiding, carrying supplies, establishing routes and helping expeditions survive the mountain’s brutal conditions.
Even when the film falls into the familiar rhythms and clichés of the traditional biopic, its depiction of Everest is so immersive and its central subject so deserving of recognition that those shortcomings become easier to overlook. Tenzing may not reinvent the mountaineering biopic, but it does something far more important: it gives a long-overlooked figure in one of mountaineering’s most famous stories the recognition he deserves.
Tenzing will be released in select theatres on October 9th before streaming on Apple TV on October 16th.
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