Review: Mongol (2008)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                             MONGOL
                 (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

      CAPSULE: MONGOL is grand historical spectacle made
      on a budget.  It is the legend of the young warrior
      Temudgin in the days before he became Genghis Khan.
      This makes for a saga of blood feuds, betrayals,
      vendettas, and a lot of fighting.  In the style of
      the sagas of the era, the characters are not well
      developed, and the story not really complex.  The
      film is entertaining but more macho than intelligent.
      Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

  Director Sergei Bodrov intends to tell the story of the Great
  Khan in three films.  This at first glance might seem like it
  should be a huge and expensive project.  But with digital
  technology to help create spectacular battle scenes and with
  relatively inexpensive sets--how expensive is it to set up a yurt
  for the camera?--the film probably looks more opulent than it
  actually is.  The budget is rumored to be $20M, small by
  Hollywood standards.  This is a Russian/Kazakh/German co-
  production filmed in the Mongolian language.  Years ago it would
  have been risky to subtitle a film like this rather than dub it,
  but audiences, possibly conditioned by anime, are more tolerant
  of subtitles.  For the current release the subtitles are
  noticeably briefer than the speech they translate leaving the
  viewer frustrated at not getting the full story and leaving one
  to suspect that a dubbed version might have had a fuller or more
  nuanced story.  This story is mostly just a chronicle of feuds
  and fighting.

  Not much is known about the life of the historic Genghis Khan.
  Most of what we know or think we know comes from A SECRET HISTORY
  OF THE MONGOLS, an anonymous work written well after the fact and
  which is recognizably laced with folklore and self-serving
  interpretations.  Further, since Genghis Khan conquered a fifth
  of the world, in many countries he is still considered a great
  villain of history.  There are complaints that the film is as
  sympathetic to Temudgin as it is, but he is not far humanized.
  He is more just a perfect warrior, cunning, intelligent, brave,
  and thoroughly deadly.  He is a man with a personality as thin,
  sharp, and dangerous as a sword.  In at least two scenes he also
  seems to have magical powers.

  The movie begins by quoting a proverb: "Do not scorn a weak cub;
  he may become a brutal tiger."  It fits the film well.  In the
  twelfth century different Mongolian clans, led by khans (or
  rulers), struggled for power among the Mongols.  The story tells
  how the son of a murdered Khan, a boy who had mortal enemies from
  age ten, killed those enemies and rose to power as the greatest
  of the Khans.  The sensibility of the telling and even much of
  the plot is reminiscent of CONAN THE BARBARIAN.  That is no
  coincidence in the films, of course.  Temudgin inspired much of
  the script of CONAN.  Each tells the story of a young boy who
  loses parents and is yoked into slavery only to be strengthened
  by captivity to rise to become the meanest warrior of all.
  [Conan says that what is best in life is "to crush your enemies,
  see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the
  women."  That is John Milius and Oliver Stone borrowing a quote
  from Temudgin.]

  The story begins when Temudgin is a boy of ten being taken by his
  father, the Khan of his clan, to choose a wife from another clan.
  After choosing Borte, a year older than the boy, they promise to
  come for her in five years.  The father and son head for home,
  but the father never makes it.  He is murdered, leaving the son a
  young and weak Khan.  Other clans move in to steal from
  Temudgin's clan.  The boy is taken into slavery and put into a
  cangue.  (A cangue is a heavy yoke much like wooden stocks were
  in colonial New England, but smaller and more portable.)  But we
  know he will not stay there long.  Temudgin makes friends and
  enemies with equal ease.  He also knows how to turn friends into
  enemies, but cannot well turn enemies into friends.  He goes from
  one conflict to the next so that even his wife, once he
  eventually wins her, complains that he is never home.  He is
  always off fighting someplace.

  This is a film of blood and thunder.  The blood is frequently
  digitally created and floats around in globules like something
  from STAR TREK VI.  Thunder is also near and dear to Temudgin's
  heart as he is the one Mongol who has learned not to fear it.
  Writers Arif Aliyev and Bodrov could have given us a little less
  action and let us know a little more of who they think Temudgin
  was.  But unfortunately it would have been inventing.  All we
  really know about the historic Temudgin is a little of who he
  fought.  And even of that we are not sure.  MONGOL may be close
  to the myth of young Genghis Khan, but all we know is a little of
  who he fought.  I rate MONGOL a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or
  7/10.

  Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0416044/>



  					Mark R. Leeper
  					mleeper at optonline.net
  					Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper