Or Mongol: The Unremittingly Unpleasant Childhood of Genghis Khan, in some
territories.
Basically, we follow the early life of Genghis Khan as he is serially captured,
enslaved, betrayed, has his wife kidnapped, betrayed again, enslaved again,
etc, etc. All of which seems to come to a head at the point where he realises
just how much it sucks to be a mongol, and decides to take over the entire
country and impose some laws. Which he does, in the last five minutes, in
spectacularly little detail. One minute he's one lone man saying "goodbye wife
I'm going to go unite the Mongols" and the next he's at the head of a thousands
strong army. Essentially, if you're interested in the early campaigns of
Genghis Khan, or how he united the tribes into a shiny big horde, you're out of
luck. The film is basically not about that, it's about the crap in his life
that led him to believe that was necessary.
So, how's that side of the film? Well, it's pretty good. It's very well shot -
beautifully so. If you've got any interest in seeing someone ride a horse
across the strange, varied and beautiful landscape of the steppes, then you're
in luck, because there's a lot of that. The leads, playing Temudjin, his wife,
his father, his brother, all give very powerful performances. It's very well
written; when all these betrayals come in, it's very sympathetic; no-one's seen
as particularly evil, it's just how life is when you live in primitive society
of lawless warriors.
There's a big "but", however, and that is, I am afraid to say, that the life of
a Mongol is not that interesting. They didn't have a lot of culture to speak
of, so really, we see a lot of sitting in yurts drinking out of wooden bowls.
That's what they did. That and riding horses around and nicking stuff off each
other. Whilst Temudjin's early life was undoubtedly tumultuous, it wasn't
actually very varied. His life isn't a story with a beginning, middle and end,
it's more a series of unfortunate events, where he's regularly knocked back
down into the mud.
So, in all, beautiful, well-performed, but not a little repetitious, and often
lacking in drama.