Mongol (20 September 2007)
directed by Sergei Bodrov
starring Aliya, Tegen Ao, Tadanobu Asano, Ying Bai, Khulan Chuluun, Bao Di, Ba Yin Qi Qi Ge, Sun Ben Hon, Amadu Mamadakov, Honglei Sun
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MPAA rating: Studio: Andreevsky Flag Film Company, Kinofabrika, Kinokompaniya CTB, X-Filme Creative Pool Script: Arif Aliyev, Sergei Bodrov Music: Tuomas Kantelinen Running time: 126 minutes Tags: battles; Biography; China; Drama; Genghis Khan; History; horses; lightning; Mongolia; slavery; spears; swords; thunder Tactical strength: [6/10]
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for sequences of bloody warfare
Mongol provides a historical supposition about the life of Genghis Khan in his rise to power from a nine-year old boy namedTemudjin to a thirty-something uniting the Mongol people under his military rule.
As the movie starts, young Temudjin (Odnyam Odsuren), his father the tribal Khan, and a small band of guards travel into Merkit territory. Temudjin's father wants to create a peace with the Merkits -- a particularly fierce Mongol tribe -- by arranging a marriage between Temudjin and a Merkit girl. On the way, the party stops in a friendly village, and Temudjin, worried about knowing how to pick a bride, asks his father to set up a practice session. Instead of just practicing, Temudjin announces that he has selected Borte (Bayertsetseg Erdenebat) as his bride.
Temudjin's father has mixed emotions about Temudjin's selection, since he now cannot use the marriage to prevent war with the Merkit tribes, but he has pride in his son for choosing for himself and not letting circumstances pressure him into choosing someone he doesn't want. We see a lot of these tidbits of Mongol tribal protocol and tradition. Temudjin's father dies on the return trip to their tribal area because he refuses to break with custom and drinks poisoned milk. With the tribal Khan dead, the people loot the Khan's house. One of the Khan's advisers,Temulun (Ba Yin Qi Qi Ge), sets himself up as the new Khan. Only the Mongol tradition of not killing women and children keeps Temulun from killing Temudjin. So Temulun enslaves Temudjin and waits for the boy to grow into a man -- which apparently occurs when you grow taller than a wagon wheel.
Temudjin escapes from Temulun's camp and makes his way to the shrine of Tengri, god of the skies. Temudjin, still wearing as enormous wooden slave collar, prays to Tengri. We get the sense of some time passing, and that through divine intervention, Tengri frees Temudjin from the collar.
Pretty much this pattern of enslavement and freedom repeats in large and small forms throughout the film. On the run from Temulun's men, Temudjin crosses a frozen river, and we see him fall through the ice. The film cuts to a scene where we see Temudjin lying in the snow with no explanation about how he escaped from the freezing water. Again, probably implying divine intervention but might just representTemudjin's stubborn determination to survive.
We jump ahead to the adult Temudjin (Tadanobu Asano) once again escaping slavery and returning to Borte's village to claim his bride (Khulan Chuluun). Borte willingly goes through with the marriage, but within 24 hours, Merkit warriors nearly kill Temudjin and steal Borte. Temudjin convinces his blood brother Jamukha to go to war against the Merkit to retrieve Borte. The war party annihilates the Merkit band, and Temudjin finds Borte safe. Temudjin distributes the spoils of war among the warriors, which causes many of Jamukha's men to choose Temudjin as their leader. Jamukha goes to battle against Temudjin's small band. Temudjin sets up a blockade designed only to give the women and children time to escape into the mountains. The men fully expect to die. OnlyTemudjin lives, and then only at the insistence of Jamukha.
Temudjin ends up enslaved again, and sold into the Chinese slave market. The Chinese put Temudjin in a cell, probably as some sort of example to othe Mongols, but we don't really have much explanation. After several years, Borte helps free Temudjin from the Chinese, but after just a short time together, Temudjin rides off on his horse, determined to establish himself as Kahn of the Mongols. He makes another trip to the shrine of Tengri and promises to restore just rule to the Mongols. Next we see Temudjin leading a very large army against Temulun and his ally Jamukha (Honglei Sun).
Director Bodrov clearly wants to paint a different picture of young Temudjin than most people have from from reading about the savage Gengis Kahn. Mongol paints a picture of a stubborn, religious man devoted to his wife and determined to create a great empire for the benefit of all Mongol people -- 'even if half of them have to die for it.' We never see much of the cruelty or torture often associated in history toGengis Khan. Clearly he has enormous chrisma, or he couldn't have assembled such a huge army. We get a slight glimpse at why men choose to follow Temudjin, but we never see how he amasses an army with thousands of warriors. Also, we get the implication that Temudjin has brilliant battle strategy, but again we don't see much concrete demonstration of these skills.
We do see a lot of bloodshed, but only on the scale appropriate for cavalry or hand-to-hand combat. The Mongols use long swords and spears, so you see a lot of blood flowing from lengthy abdominal and leg wounds. And even though the Mongols don't kill women or children, they clearly don't spare the horses. I did like thatBodrov used a huge cast of extras to film his armies rather than the current technique of using CGI effects to copy and paste platoon after platoon of combatants across the battle field. Maybe I couldn't have seen the difference, but just knowing that every man in those huge armies was a real person and not a computer-generated image made the final battle scene much more effective.
