‘Tenzing’ Apple TV Review: Willem Dafoe And Tom Hiddleston Support A Sober Mountaineering Drama That Finally Puts The Sherpa At The Center Of The Summit Story

One of the corrections Hollywood has made to epic historical dramas set in the Third World is to retire the Western protagonist, that savior-hero who travels to some distant land to free a political prisoner or live through harrowing adventures in a politically turbulent corner of the map. These days, the done thing is to honor the locals, the people who lived and suffered these stories from the inside rather than treating them as a bit of color before heading home. Beyond that, though, the narrative logic of these productions is much the same as it was in the 1980s. The relative weight of the characters has shifted. The kinds of stories being told, and the way they’re told, have not.

In another era, the story of the first ascent of Everest would almost certainly have centered on New Zealander Edmund Hillary, one of the two men who pulled it off. Or it might have taken in the whole team, a largely British affair. Jennifer Peedom’s film (she’s best known until now for her documentaries) focuses instead on Tenzing Norgay, the Nepal-born climber who reached the summit alongside Hillary and who was counted among the «conquerors» rather than relegated, as was customary, to the category of guide. Or «sherpa,» a word that names an ethnic origin but also doubles as a job description.

Played as an adult by Genden Phuntsok, Tenzing is introduced here as a boy, growing up in a village in view of Everest, the mountain locals called Chomolungma, and dreaming of reaching its top. It’s no easy road. Even within the sherpa community he’s an outsider, a member of a lower-ranked ethnic group. Abandoned by his parents, the boy (who as a child crosses paths with the legendary George Mallory, one of the first men to attempt the summit) grows up, falls in love and slowly works his way into the world of the sherpas and mountaineers devoted to that goal.

But the film doesn’t follow his life chronologically. Its backbone is the successful 1953 expedition and everything that happened on it, with Tenzing’s earlier life woven into the main thread, revealing bit by bit how he got to this moment: his efforts, his sacrifices, his triumphs and his sorrows. The mission itself begins with Tenzing’s difficult task of persuading the British expeditioners to count him as a full member of the team and not merely as a hired guide. Colonel John Hunt (Willem Dafoe), the expedition’s leader, isn’t sold on the idea. But he needs Tenzing, who had come very close to the summit not long before as part of a Swiss expedition, and agrees to bring him aboard.

The decision has its complications. It puts Tenzing in an awkward spot with the other sherpas, who for much of the journey regard him, and criticize him, as a kind of traitor. Caught in the middle, he tries to negotiate between both camps without letting either down, though he can’t always manage it. He does have a very good ally in Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), who, being a New Zealander, isn’t quite «inside» the very British group running the show either. As the climb gets higher and the risks and setbacks pile up, it becomes clear that these two don’t just deserve a place on the team. They’re better equipped than anyone else on it.

Alongside the ascent and its predictable setbacks, Tenzing slips in other themes, from the clash of outlooks on the mountain itself (for the British, climbing it is a challenge and a conquest; for the locals, it’s a religious experience) to the personal and racial tensions swirling around them. The flashbacks to Tenzing’s past surface every so often and, more than adding anything, sometimes get in the way. One gets the sense, from what’s missing and what’s summed up in a hurry, that what remains is only part of the story, a brief survey of his life leading up to this culminating moment.

Peedom doesn’t stray far from the playbook for this kind of story. It’s a tribute to Norgay, to his effort, his sacrifice, his talent as a climber and his knack for handling the pressures and tensions of the job. And Phuntsok conveys beautifully the mix of professionalism and innocence the character seems to carry. Hiddleston keeps a low profile as his partner in crime on the climb, while Dafoe turns Colonel Hunt into an ambiguous, complex figure, a prisoner of the prejudices of his time but also capable of recognizing that reason wasn’t always on his side.

Classical, noble, not particularly original (it has a National Geographic feel, in both the good and the bad senses) and a bit too long, Tenzing is one of Apple TV’s attempts to join the Oscar race. At first glance it doesn’t look like a film that can compete for the major awards, though CODA didn’t look like one either, and it ended up taking home Best Picture. What the film does show is that the platform remains focused on exploiting the mountaineering market (see its recent The Last First: Winter K2), a niche where it has almost no competition. Still, releasing it on a streaming platform poses a problem, since a living-room screen can’t fully convey the beauty, the immensity and the violence of the landscape where the story unfolds.

Tenzing moves between survival epic, sociopolitical drama and human portrait of its protagonist, and it does so soberly, honestly and with a fair amount of conviction. It won’t be a film that stirs up passions, as it lacks the soaring ambition to get there, but it undeniably conveys the experience of climbing the tallest mountain in the world. And it makes that feel like the feat it was.