“I am the punishment of God…If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” Ghengis Khan
Tadanobu Asano as Genghis Khan. Access via Igor Vereshagin
Well, after two hours and four minutes, this movie certainly felt like punishment to me. Mongol is the tale of the early life of Genghis Khan, or at least it claims to be which, I guess was my main problem with the film and where my criticism starts.
The film documents the childhood of the man who went on to conquer half the world in 1206 as leader of the Mongol Empire. Temudjin (AKA Genghis) is enslaved after his father is poisoned to death and the man who replaces him as leader vows to kill our young protagonist when he comes of age.
This much I can believe, sure, the Mongolians no doubt had a strong code of decency but from this point onward, the line between possibility and ridiculousness rapidly blur. Temudgin manages to escape way too many times and the baddy fails to kill him even when he is recaptured later in life. I couldn’t help thinking ‘geez, for an evil guy this man’s a bit lenient and hang on, are they saying this is a true story? Why is there a wolf manifestation of a God? What the..!’
I understand there was no reliable written history of Genghis Khan so my problem wasn’t that it was fictional but if the director, Sergei Bodrov wants to base the film on folklore, it shouldn’t be marketed as a biopic with the slogan ‘the untold story of Genghis Khan’. If an untold story just means it’s made-up, does that mean I’m free to defame anyone I like with a bunch of lies and call it ‘the untold story of Paris Hilton’?
Mongol was nominated for an Oscar award for best foreign film and Margaret and David both gave it four stars which makes me feel a tad uncultured and I do have to say the cinematography, the set and the action sequences were pretty stunning. Also some of the performances were very compelling such as the Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano who plays the adult Temudgin and Khulan Chuluun as his wife, Borte. But for me, it was really just too much bread and not enough spread.
Basically it was an epic that left me dry.
