Review of Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007) by S. G — 16 Aug 2009

Mongol is the first part of a planned trilogy following the life of the great Genghis Khan. It?s a pretty ambitious project, by any means, and watching the film you can tell that the budget has been pretty well spent. Being something of a history geek, naturally the film caught my interest, not to mention the fact that it starred Tadanobu Asano, an actor I have quite a bit of respect for after seeing him in one of my all time favorites, Last Life in the Universe.

*spoiler alert*.

I particularly enjoyed the first 20 minutes or so of the film, after which the film started gradually losing me. The problem I had with the film is that despite its format (the life of the Khan is supposed to be shown across three films, which means approximately 6 hours of film), it still retained the trademark jumpy/compacted nature of most biopics. Now, don?t get me wrong, I understand that jumping less smoothly from one event to another or from one stage of the protagonist?s life to another may be necessary in a film that wants to squeeze as much information as possible into a small amount of screen time. It?s the curse of biopics, especially if they choose to follow a more or less literal depiction of the protagonist?s life. The other issue is that of the historical accuracy. If you are trying to adapt someone?s life into a film, some poetic license might be necessary, and I often found that sacrificing some of the details in order to gain more in terms of feel is a good idea. However, if I had not known this film was about Genghis Khan, I would not have picked up on that from the film. In fact, I?d say Mongol is a film about a good natured, extremely lucky individual who by sheer chance manages to have his ass saved on several occasions by friends, his wife and clairvoyant monks. He also then happens upon an army, though we are not shown how, which instead of slicing him up and sending the various pieces to all those who wanted him dead, follow him into a battle that is won, again, by sheer luck (i.e. Temujin was the only Mongol who was not afraid of the thunder, so when it starts raining in the middle of the battle and he doesn?t take cover, the men immediately assume that something must be up with him and follow him with even more zest). Perhaps that?s not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps the film is supposed to be about the man and not about the historical figure. But if the film was about the man, I would have liked to know more of the whys and hows of his life, and not only witness the events happen. Like this, I can?t say that any of the characters in the film seemed real to me, with the vague exception of Borte, Temujin?s wife. Not even Temujin himself seems anything more than a puppet. We see little of his motivation, we experience little of his inner turmoil, we see little of his drive to become who he eventually becomes. Jamuka is a mere caricature, as is his younger brother. In the end it feels like the cast is wasted on underwritten characters.

If you want to slap it inside the confines of a genre, Mongol is not a bad film, but outside that, it has very little to show for itself. It has a decent score and good visuals working for it and it?s not unentertaining. It?s likely that my disappointment comes from expecting more than there was to expect, but such is life.