Mongol

Saw Mongol last night, and it’s another one of those movies that illustrates the at-times wide gap between interesting and merely entertaining. It was good to see once, but you wouldn’t want to sit through it for repeat viewings. Master and Commander, and Gladiator are two such movies that do qualify for repeated viewings (and it’s not because the both have Russell Crowe.) The former is without a single line spoken by a woman, while the latter has two women intensely involved in the hero’s motivations. So it’s not a matter of sex.

[SPOILERS ahead.]

Besides the huge narrative gaps in Mongol, it appears that even movies made in Russia now must be “Hollywood” movies. Apparently Genghis Khan conquered a third of the Earth’s surface because of a woman. His rise? It was all her idea.

And then there were those wide-as-the-steppes-themselves narrative gaps. One minute Temujin is wandering around the landscape (as he does a number of times after escaping stocks and cages, etc., once with divine assistance) and the next second he has a horde! Just like that.

Uniting the tribes is given a brief mention and his establishing of laws scanty lip service. Much more interesting would be how the uniting of the tribes came about in some more detail. Yes, a major rivalry is addressed ironically and climactically but a few of the earlier rivalries with leaders who did Temujin dirt were left unresolved. Nor was there any clear indication of what happened to his mother. If the researchers don’t know, that’s one thing, and they don’t have to speculate ahistorically. But some clear acknowledgment that perhaps being orphaned was a factor. This was not achieved if intended, since his inner strength could be traced to before he lost either parent. As it is Temujin comes off as a fairly one-dimensional character in a single-minded, and almost whipped, quest for Borte.  

And for all it’s slow-mo violence, the filmmakers chickened out on depicting the cruelty and barbarism of life on the steppe. No one gets nailed to the wooden horse to take a week to die. But the secret to Temujin’s success? Being kind to the families of dead warriors and orders not to kill women and children. Call it the feminization of the Great Kahn.

And for the big epic battle Temujin’s winning “tactics” amount to a squadron of double-sword wielding horsemen, straight from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a line of pop-up archers and again, divine intervention. The historical Ghengis’s accompishments along these lines are sold woefully short.

While the Mongol khannish wedding traditions were interesting, launch the story, and provide a nice little bookend, letting the viewer leave the theater giving all credit to Borte, who was having children by everyone but Temujin, was almost as bogus as having that teeny-booper helping Beethoven conduct the debut of the 9th Symphony from behind the oboes in Copying Beethoven. Almost.

For those historical film buffs and Mongol enthusiasts out there you’ll want to see this one. Hopefully they’ll do the sequel with a little more credit where credit’s due.

The worst part is that now that a big costly epic has been made of G. Khan’s early life, like Peter Jackson’s inept King Kong,  there won’t be another attempt in quite a while.