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Mongol
Reviewed by Rich Drees
The first in a proposed trilogy of films charting the life of the
warlord Genghis Khan, Sergei Bodrov’s film Mongol feels like
an echo of the great historical epics from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Mongol strips away the stereotypes often attached to Genghis
Khan, instead presenting a multi-layered leader whose iron will was
forged by the circumstances of his up bringing.
The film opens
with ten-year old Temudgin, the boy who will one day be known as
Genghis Khan, journeying with his father to select a bride from a
rival Mongol tribe, whom his father had wronged years earlier. On
the journey, they stop to rest at the camp of another tribe, where
Temudgin meets a young girl, Borte, and declares that he wishes to
marry her. Am used by his son’s bravado, he agrees, even though
having Temudgin take a bride from the rival tribe would cement a
peace with his own tribe.
On the way
home, Temudgin’s father is poisoned, dying in his son’s arms.
Although by Mongol tradition, Temudgin would become tribal leader,
the warriors refuse to follow the orders of a boy and desert
Temudgin’s family, vowing to return and kill Temudgin when he is old
enough to put up an honorable fight. To keep his family safe,
Temudgin flees, roaming the countryside, before being captured and
put into slavery. After many escape attempts over the years,
Temudgin finally makes his way to freedom and sets out to find Borte
and get revenge on the warrior who took his place as rightful head
of their clan.
Wide open vistas form the backdrop of this powerful tale of revenge
and conquest, inviting comparisons to the films of David Lean. And
while the film may recall vintage epic filmmaking, it also bears the
imprint of more modern blockbusters as well. The final battle
sequence features slow-motion action and an accompanying soundtrack
that possesses more than a passing resemblance to Peter Jackson’s
work in his Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
The film makes
many narrative leaps early on that at first may appear to be sloppy
storytelling. It is as if Bodrov can’t figure out a way to show how
young Temudgin made one of his escapes from slavery, so he decided
to just arbitrarily cut to him running through the snow. Later,
Temudgin is seen crossing a frozen lake, only to have his weight
crack the ice, plunging him into the freezing water below. The film
merely fades to black and then fades back up on the boy laying face
down in the snow, with no mention of what transpired between the two
incidents. But as the film further unspools, it starts to hint that
perhaps Temudgin is being watched over by his god Tengril, being
guided and protected. Temudgin’s divine protection and destiny comes
into play in the film’s climactic battle when a sudden change in the
weather favor’s Temudgin’s forces.
One narrative
leap that can’t be explained away as easily is the jump in time
towards the end of the film from when Temudgin was leading a small
group of warriors to the leader of one of the two armies in the
final battle. Although the final battle sees the completion of
Temudgin’s unification of the Mongol tribes, more of the process
would have been appreciated. |
