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The title tells you everything you need to know about this film. If you are familiar with the word for any reason other than it being a brand of energy drink then you’ll have assumed that this is aims to tell the story of one of the two people who were the first recorded to make it to the top of Everest, putting him front and centre before the white man whose name his has up until now always followed. You’ll suspect that this will go into his background and what drove him, while depicting that historical climb with some great location shots and stunning snowy cinematography. You might even predict that it won’t do anything particularly groundbreaking breaking as a biopic but that it is built around a story that pretty much tells itself. Yep, hear that title and, apart from maybe feeling a little thirsty, you are promised a solid, perhaps slightly old fashioned, movie about courage, resilience and good old human achievement.
Satisfyingly that is exactly what Tenzing is and there is no need for it to be anything else. It is surprising that we’ve not had this film before. There is a movie called Everest, about the ill fated 1996 expedition, but nothing that tells the tale of the famous and altogether more successful one in 1953. There was a documentary that included some dramatic recreations of events in 2013 called Beyond the Edge, that had the tagline ‘Sir Edmund Hillary’s Journey to the Summit of Everest’ so it’s hard to argue this account isn’t overdue. (To be fair that film was from New Zealand and so was Hillary so maybe we’ll allow some flag waving.)
It’s not as though Tenzing’s name has been wiped from history, I’ve known that the world’s tallest mountain was conquered by ‘Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing’ from a very young age. So young in fact that I thought Sherpa was his first name. There is a lot behind this story that I was not aware of though, including that fact that Sherpa still didn’t mean what I thought it did. I have checked (so as not to totally embarrass myself by admitting it here) and it is not just me that thought it was his job, when actually it was his ethnicity. All of this confusion of course only lends itself to the argument that he has been somewhat sidelined in his own story, at least in the mainstream media. (He has had buildings, airports and even a planet named after him, and of course that drink.)
It turns out that while Tenzing Norgay was not the driving force behind the 1953 expedition to the summit, he was on his own life long mission and there is a very strong argument that they’d not have been successful on that occasion without him. There is some suggestion that he wasn’t second to Hillary in terms of reaching the top as well. The famous photograph taken to mark this momentous accomplishment is actually of Norgay (which the makers of Beyond the Edge presumably knew when they put it on their poster of a film that purported to be about the other guy) but history records that Hillary got there first (and was the only one of the two who knew how to use the camera). It was actually Norgay who initially revealed this as for a couple of years the official line was that they’d stepped up together and this movie plays with this. What it does really well though is show that this is largely irrelevant; they got there together and wouldn’t have got there apart. The respect they have for one another is a big part of the narrative and is something that is entirely borne out by every account of the two men afterwards.
Verisimilitude is the order of the day here and it does all comes across as believable and genuinely authentic, not only through the use of amazing location shooting (in reality in the mountains of New Zealand where Hillary trained) but also in the performances. Genden Phuntsok and Tom Hiddleston are great as the pair and they are well supported by Willem Dafoe as exhibition leader John Hunt and Tenzin Jigmay as Sherpa Lassang (I’d also not appreciated how many others were on the mountain with them) as well as Samdrup Dorje Lama and Tenzin Dalha as the younger Tenzings and Lhakpa Tsamchoe as his wife, whose appearances stop this being too much of a boy’s own adventure.
Director Jennifer Peedom is no doubt also key to this last element. Peedom’s filmography has mostly been documentaries on this same subject and related areas so it is nice that she has got to tell this story here. She herself is a slightly overlooked authority on this particular mountain, just as her title character was.
Tenzing is not surprising in any way then but that is no criticism. It isn’t unmissable movie making but you should definitely watch it as there is a lot here to learn, even beyond the definition of certain words and the reason why there is a mountain on the can of your favourite raspberry and yuzo caffeinated soda.
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