The climb: "Tenzing"

Given the film industry's general direction of travel in recent years, Tenzing might perhaps seem like an inevitability. Here's a lavish, streamer-backed period drama about the 1953 conquest of Everest - or Chomolungma, to give it its local name - as revisited not from the colonialists' POV, but that of Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese sherpa who made it possible. The director is Jennifer Peedom, who established herself as a big-climb specialist with her 2015 documentary Sherpa and its 2017 follow-up Mountain; together with Lion screenwriter Luke Davies, she's adapted Ed Douglas's 2003 biography Tenzing: Hero of Everest. As played by Genden Phuntsok with a soulful mien and floppy period hair that is eventually revealed to have narrative significance, this Tenzing is seen to have travelled this way before. A prologue dramatises the young Tenzing's encounter with George Mallory (a cameoing Johnny Flynn) on the mountain's lower slopes in 1924; his adult self, we learn, was part of the Swiss expedition who only just failed to reach the summit in 1952. The palefaces here are relegated to the supporting cast, from where they summon varying levels of colonial condescension. Willem Dafoe, with a chewy English accent, is the blustery Colonel John Hunt, insisting his men conquer the mountain for the new Queen before overseeing a vertical talent contest to determine which climbers will make it to the very top; a nicely relaxed Tom Hiddleston is Edmund Hillary, the Kiwi loner who comes to feel he has more in common with his Nepalese guides than with his English masters; and Catriona Balfe, embodying a recognisably mumsy upper-class type, is the Army secretary who packs her boys off on their way. It is, then, a film that has worked out something seasoned climbers will appreciate: a different yet no less rewarding line of approach, offering new sights, sounds and perspectives. Around half of Davies's dialogue is presented as subtitled Sherpa, and Peedom can now cut pointedly to Tenzing's face when the British ambassador declares Everest a British mountain, catching emotions most directors wouldn't have thought to film two decades ago.

What Tenzing can't quite shake, as it proceeds on this climb, is that familiar biopic sense of predestination. Peedom and Davies are simply updating an old adventure-movie template, after all, cross-fading between spectacular vistas, mocked-up cine-camera footage and dotted lines on interstitial maps. Partly, this is a structural issue: the ascent is interrupted by clockwork-regular flashbacks, filling us in on how the protagonist got this far. These sequences at least reveal how Tenzing was having to navigate not just the Brits' prejudices, but those of his own people: accusations he was a mere servant boy (and from a lower caste than sherpas were typically drawn), fears that a successful ascent would put paid to any future sherpa-ing work. (History and the mountains of litter now threatening to obscure Everest would seem to have proven those fears ill-founded.) The writing gets more haphazard the closer we get to the top: there are one or two false trails, while a late veer into pop psychology feels notably more "rousing Hollywood movie" than "lived Sherpa experience". Yet Peedom really does know how to shoot mountains: working with the Aussie cinematographer Stefan Duscio, she lights these rock formations as Josef von Sternberg once did Dietrich, and shows Everest looming over her players and stunt climbers as at once a source of fascination, a place of surreal, forbidding beauty and a challenge to which the smitten must rise. She locks down the physical aspects of mountaineering: the crampons and carabiners, the draining hard work of lugging equipment from one camp to the next in subzero conditions. But she also understands the spiritual implications: she's realised this ascent was a far bigger deal for someone who was tilling fields a few years before this expedition than it would have been for rich foreigners trailing all the equipment, training and resources in the world. Speaking of whom: it's a pity Apple aren't deigning to give Tenzing anything more than the most cursory theatrical push, for this is, in the end, a handsome, foursquare, finally stirring big-screen entertainment, not to mention an early frontrunner in the category of the year's Best Dad Film. There will surely be shakier and less satisfying ventures as we hike on deeper into awards season: you may want to stock up on Kendal Mint Cake while you have the chance.

Tenzing is now showing in selected cinemas, and will be available to stream on Apple TV from Friday 16.