movies about mongols

Warrior charge on horseback in i of the many carnage-filled boxing scenes in "Mongol," nominated this year for the best foreign moving-picture show Oscar from Kazakhstan.

Mongols demand laws. I will make them obey -- even if I have to impale half of them.
--Genghis Khan

Sergei Bodrov's "Mongol" is a ferocious film, claret-soaked, pausing occasionally for passionate romance and more than frequently for torture. As a visual spectacle, it is all but overwhelming, putting to shame some of the contempo historical epics from Hollywood. If information technology has a flaw, and information technology does, it is expressed succinctly by the wife of its hero: "All Mongols do is kill and steal."

She must have seen the moving picture. That's about all they do in "Mongol." They exercise not sing, dance, chant, concur top meetings, have courts, chase, or (with one exception) even melt and swallow. They accept no culture, except for a series of sayings: "A Mongol does, or does not ..." a long listing of things, although many a Mongol seems never to have been issued the list, and does (or does not) do them, anyway.

Equally a result, the flick consists of one encarmine scene of carnage after another, illustrated by hordes of warriors eviscerating ane another while vivid patches of blood burst upon the screen. At the center of the killing is invariably the khan, or leader, named Temudgin (Tadanobu Asano), who is not yet Genghis Khan, but be patient: This film is the first of a trilogy.

The film opens with Temudgin at age 9 (Odnyam Odsuren), taken by his father to choose a bride from the Merkit clan. This will settle an old score. But along the style they happen upon a smaller clan, and in that location Temudgin outset sets eyes on ten-year-old Borte (Bavertsetseg Erdenebat), who informs him he should choose her as his bride. He agrees, and thus is forged a partnership that will save his life more than one time.

Years pass, the ii are married, and Borte (played as an adult past Khulan Chuluun) makes a perfect helpmate, but one hard to keep. She is kidnapped by another clan, bears the first of two children claimed by Temudgin despite reasons to doubt, and follows her man into a series of battles that stain the soil of Mongolia with gallons of blood.

It happens that I have seen another picture show about Mongols that suggests they exercise more steal and kill. This is the famous nine-hr, iii-part documentary "Taiga" (1995) by Ulrike Ottinger, who lived with today's yurt dwellers, witnessed one of their trance-evoking religious ceremonies, observed their community and traditions, and learned in neat particular how they procure and gear up food. At that place is also a wrestling match that is a good deal more than cheerful than the contests in "Mongol." But you do not have the time for a nine-hour documentary on this subject, I suppose, nor does "Mongol." The nuances of an aboriginal and ingeniously developed culture are passed over, and it cannot be denied that "Mongol" is relentlessly entertaining as an action picture.

Information technology left me, however, with some questions. Many involve the survival of the immature Temudgin. Having inherited all his father's enemies, he is captured more than once, and we actually see him being fed and then he can grow tall enough to kill ("Mongols do not kill children"). His neck and easily are imprisoned in a heavy wooden yoke, and when he escapes, he has the energy to run for miles across the steppe. On some other occasion, he falls through the water ice of a lake, and the movie simply ignores the question of how he is saved, unless information technology is by Tengri, God of the Blue Heaven. Yeah, I recollect it was Tengri, who also appears equally a wolf and saves him more than once. If you desire to be Genghis Khan, information technology helps to have a god in your corner.

Finally, Temudgin is imprisoned in a cell surrounded past a moat populated past savage dogs. No such system tin can hold him, of course, and he leads his clan into yet another serial of battles, equally gradually it occurs to him that this is no way to alive, and the Mongols need to be united under a strong leader who will enforce less anarchistic battle practices. Information technology's at about that indicate the picture show ends, and we reflect that Temudgin has to survive 2 more such films to become Genghis Khan. And we think our election campaigns run on too long.