Mongol was the big ticket Sunday night at the AFI Dallas Film Festival, as random schlubs with tickets and less random schlubs with badges battled for line position. The word on everyone’s lips as we shuffled into the theater was “epic”, as if that somehow guaranteed it would be good. It doesn’t, but Mongol is both epic and good… mostly.
Shot entirely in Mongolian and presented with English subtitles, Mongol is Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov’s attempt to turn the early life of notorious ravaging barbarian conqueror Genghis Khan into a heroic epic. He succeeds, mostly by making the Mongolian people Genghis must forge into his army out to be even more viciously awful savages than he is. Genghis isn’t exactly Braveheart, but compared to the gang of thieves and baby killers among which he was raised, he’s practically mother Teresa.
Born as Temudgin, Mongol tells the future Great Khan’s story from childhood to adulthood. It’s standard epic stuff. His father is betrayed and slain, he runs around in the wilderness praying to the gods to deliver his enemies, makes friends, makes enemies, and fights to save his family even when no one else thinks it’s worth the bother.
Visually it’s a well put together film, though somewhat limited by its setting. The Mongolia we see here is little better than a barren, muddy wasteland inhabited by nomadic peasants. It’s not what you’d call pretty. But the characters, Temudgin in particular, are compelling and the call to battle is occasionally interesting. The script, or perhaps it’s the editing that’s to blame here, is somewhat disjointed. Mongol doesn’t always manage to connect point A to point B. One minute Temudgin is a beggar without friends and family, the next he suddenly has his own private army. In one scene Temudgin’s wife is a penniless prostitute, in the next she’s a wealthy princess who shows up out of nowhere to bribe his way out of jail. Or one second he’s escaping from prison in rags, the next he’s a great Khan with thousands upon thousands of followers. Mongol doesn’t always explain the specifics what’s going on in between the big moments, and it might have been nice to know how this guy gets where he’s going, instead of simply having him show up.
Maybe that’s intentional. This isn’t really the story of how Temudgin gathered together the popularity and power necessary to raise an army big enough to rule the ancient world. The focus here is on the story of his survival, his struggle to keep living when everyone else repeatedly locks him and leaves him for dead. Bodrov attempts to tell a personal story while at the same time making a brutal, massive scale, epic war movie. You’re likely to leave wishing they’d just tossed aside all the personal stuff and gotten down to some decisive battling. Sometimes it works, sometimes it falls flat, a lot of the time it feels like it’s four hours long, but despite some flaws Mongol is generally entertaining and succeeds if nothing else, at being epic.
