> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://prior-arrangements.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Two Men on the Mountain: a Film Review of Tenzing - URL: https://prior-arrangements.ghost.io/two-men-on-the-mountain-a-film-review-of-tenzing/ - Published: 2026-10-17T22:15:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-21T04:43:55.000Z - Author: Kate Prior *From this weekend we can watch 'Tenzing' in select New Zealand cinemas for a week.* ![audio-thumbnail](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/media/2026/10/Prior-Arrangements---Tenzing-Review-audio-1_thumb.jpg) Prior Arrangements–Tenzing Review Audio 0:00 /462.08 1× You can also watch this beautiful story on Apple TV at *any* time...forever. But I strongly recommend seeing it on a big screen within the week if you can. Also I specifically address us New Zealanders here because, sure, with its international film stars, it’s a film targeting international audiences. But amongst viewers, I think some of its greatest appreciators could be us and our Himalayan whānau, who both grew up with our two men of Everest/Chomolungma in our national narratives. For us, who travel through South Island airports that host Sir Edmund Hillary on the wall, who have his face on our five dollar note and poems written about him, he was a great man. Yet we are also a colonial nation and Everest was a final stretch for the empire. So it’s an absolute gift, thanks to Australian director Jennifer Peedom, to finally be able to watch this story from the point of view of Hillary's partner and equal: legendary Tibetan climber Tenzing Norgay. In 1953, Tenzing was a man of the land. Not of our Queen. With his calm, deeply knowledgeable and leading position on the adventure, he would find a powerful partnership with Hillary. To summit Chomolungma. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Film-Images---Tenzing---Mountain-Scenes-12--Everest--1.jpg) Chomolungma/Everest. Photograph by Byron Coll who plays 1953 expedition photographer Alfred Gregory on **Tenzing*. The film follows the story of Tenzing through three phases of his life: a child who discovers Chomolungma and is deeply drawn and fascinated; the young man who discovers love and family and finds a way to walk closer to his maunga; the climbing adult who, having already neared the top six times, finally reaches the summit with Hillary. Because he makes a strong connection with him. Because they're both slight outsiders. Because they both could not give up. Director Peedom and writer Luke Davies (*Lion*) have created a fascinating picture of the world so many of us as New Zealanders have in our national narrative spines. While we’ve made our documentaries and singular narrative mini-series in Aotearoa, there has never existed a film of the scale required (ie. of the international funding required) to do justice to this story. What I really also appreciate is that Peedom’s background is in documentaries. This brings a scientific real-world precision. While the film contains the beauty of an almost romantic era landscape, there is not a comfortable studio set *anywhere* to be seen. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Film-Images---Tenzing---The-Base-Camps-28.jpg) On-set photograph on Aoraki, Aotearoa, taken by Byron Coll who plays 1953 expedition photographer Alfred Gregory on **Tenzing*. ## Sign up for Prior Arrangements Theatre and screen on the brain Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Perhaps it’s also a film that's been left to the right time. As a film of 2026, *Tenzing* is doing some work to rebalance the storytelling of 1953\. Davies infuses the script with an Indigenous understanding of land, emotive familial meaning, and a healthy critique of colonial engines. It was always ironic that this final significant 1953 achievement of the once great British Empire was secured by two outsiders in Tenzing and Hillary. The narrative clearly marks that Tenzing wasn’t born a sherpa from Nepal. He was from the high mountains of Tibet. And Hillary obviously wasn’t an Englishman like the majority of his team. He was a beekeeper from New Zealand. Both sit slightly outside their systems. Markedly, when they first meet in the film, it’s not through those in power, it’s next to a river. Tenzing’s grabbing a bucket of water. Hillary cleans his teeth alone. Here, between them, the energy that is in power is not their ‘nationality’ (or their Empire), it is the natural world. They survive and succeed because they listen to it. Again. And again. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Film-Images---Tenzing---The-Base-Camps-3-1.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Film-Images---Tenzing---The-Base-Camps-6.jpg) Left: Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing. Right: Tom Hiddleston as Hillary. Photography by Byron Coll who plays 1953 expedition photographer Alfred Gregory on **Tenzing*. As Tenzing, Genden Phuntsok plays with a calm strength; a certainty that underpins his action. He’s reliably watchable, with his intentions deeply embodied. The reasoning for part of that is certainly because these actors were in real action when on the mountain. Tom Hiddleston’s New Zealand accent is the strongest I’ve ever heard. Okay. He is a bloody good Hillary. And sure, I’ve written chunky [pieces](https://www.metromag.co.nz/arts/arts-film-tv/bankable-productions?ref=prior-arrangements.ghost.io) on the importance of building a New Zealand star system: building actors who have star power so we can actually play ourselves (like Ireland, with a similar population). But a new young Sam Neill, and more, is not in place just yet (thank you Sam). We need more work on that. So for now, it *is* just kind of wonderful watching a leading Englishman of high esteem play us. Quite hilariously. With our kind of flat, Pākehā vocal hiddenness, a sprinkle of no bullshit mate, and a New Zealand male admiration of his climbing partner. He is also just wildly close in looks and stature to our Hillary. I also can’t discuss performances without noting the brilliance of Tenzin Dalha who plays the younger Tenzing who discovers the British climbing parties. He holds a deep heart of the piece. Firstly, he finds his life purpose with this deep joy. Secondly, he certainly moves us to tears and holds the emotional weight of the film. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/IMG_7371.jpg) Production photograph of Tenzin Dalha playing younger Tenzing It’s been interesting reading some reviews, usually from white male writers, that speak to some kind of masculine need for fast visual and narrative excitement, for big vistas (possibly beyond reality) and deep psychological tension. The sport of the fight. This film clearly documents incredible moments of Tenzing and Hillary’s final struggle. The summit is reached in their way. But it holds a deeper goal. Through Tenzing, we get to sit with the feeling of earth as carer; as mother. In Tibet, the ancient word for their maunga, Chomolungma, means ‘goddess mother of the world’. Where Hillary was from, that’s not far away from the mother of the lands of Aotearoa–Papatūānuku. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Film-Images---Tenzing---Preparation---Journey-26.jpg) Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing and rest of company in Durbar Square, Kathmandu. Photography by Byron Coll who plays 1953 expedition photographer Alfred Gregory on **Tenzing*. Amidst a colonial race led by the power of empire, the film draws a picture of why Tenzing could hold fast to his very separate personal driver of climbing Chomolungma. His loss meets the land. And the land brings him a place to give thanks, give strength, to save and be saved. For us in Aotearoa, Hillary became a bedrock narrative. But as Hillary happily knew, he was only part of an equal team. As a New Zealander, it comes with a deep joy of necessary truth to watch Tenzing’s story. It holds a powerful emotive core yet also photographic dedication to the land, character detail and drive. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-18-at-9.49.36---AM.png) Ōtautahi/Christchurch domestic airport arrivals hall And as the film makes clear, our two outsiders came from a similar thinking. Hillary says it in words as he looks down at you while you wait for your bags at Ōtautahi airport: ***“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”*** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/e2/14e27656-c60a-42ab-a035-418dfe045343/content/images/2026/10/Tenzing---Final-Post-Images-9-1.JPG) Left: Tom Hiddleston as Hillary. Right: Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing. Photography by Byron Coll who plays 1953 expedition photographer Alfred Gregory on **Tenzing*. ## Sign up for Prior Arrangements Theatre and screen on the brain Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.