Also - Carol, I loved your review. You could have complained MORE and I would have loved that, too! I watched for the background stuff, which I liked.

I’m realizing - and will likely post about - the thing that bugged me most about the Mongol movie, which is the old canard that indigenous people can’t do things of their own volition; there must be an outside impetus (he attacks the Tanguts because he was caged there; hearing how ‘civilized’ people describe the Mongols as dogs and thieves decides him on creating the laws for which the empire was famous). Just like the business with people who think aliens or refugees from Egypt must have shown the Maya how to build pyramids.

Except for a couple of dear amigos on my LJ — they weren’t bothered by what has sorely disappointed us.

Love, C.

I did love the scenery and glimspes of everyday life, and those parts reminded me of the Mongolia I lived in, the small things such as the gers they lived in (it annoyed me they called them yurts in the englisg translation, I have always known them as gers), their love of horses and the importance they play in the daily lives of Mongolians (still today, in rural Mongolia they are the main form of transport, and I never met one single Mongolian who could not ride), and their love of meat!

So there were good parts, just not the plot. It could have been much better!

Mongol: The Movie

Or:

When you have a perfectly awesome real story, why not totally mess it up with completely idiotic plot elements and unrealistic made up shit?

Wow. Did I hate this film, or what?

And I kept thinking: why why why? How could anyone possibly think the bogus plot was somehow necessary to make the story work as a film?

Let me just throw out a few points:

1)
In a harsh environment mothers typically tell their nine year old sons to “save yourself” and then not see them again for, oh, I dunno, YEARS. Oh god. This is especially aggravating when one of the key elements of Temujin (Genghis Khan’s) ACTUAL story is how his mother raised him and his brothers and sister and half brothers after the death of her husband. She was one tough woman. But perhaps they did not want to include the episode where he kills one of his half brothers while still a child.

2)
This weird idea of endless captivities and solo suffering (no, he was never held prisoner in a city; wtf) as the motivator and impetus for All That Comes After is so very bizarre that I genuinely don’t understand it. Yes, Temujin was captured one time by another tribe, and not evidently for very long, and when he was by then a youth (no longer a child, not yet quite a man). It matters in his history mostly because the family that helps him escape later is rewarded when he becomes great khan; also, the episode shows how he thinks even as a youth and how he uses his observation of people’s behavior and his own persuasive powers to get people to help him.

To me, the way the film devised the plot of endless captivity trivialized the process of complex hostilities and alliances that existed in these inter-related tribes, and the way the size of the local armies of various chiefs and khans diminishes or expands according to their fortunes and successes (or losses) and their other alliances.

3)
Two swords on horseback suicide charge? I don’t think so, Tim.

It’s late, fortunately for you, or I would go on at length on how much they got wrong.

What was good? landscape: beautiful. details of daily life: cool, but in the background. great faces.

Otherwise, mind-bogglingly dumb plot set atop a choppy narrative.

Oh, the disappointment.

I am twiddling on the side with a novel in first person–my first–and it’s a challenge to avoid I I I I.

I really enjoy sitting right inside a character’s skull. When I twiddle with third-person stories on the side, I always end up feeling about five miles out of town.

btw, we should make a date for Denvention!

Indeed, so! It would be great to see you.

Carol

The writing is better. Much, much better. Characters that previously faded into the background come on strong. Fuzzy description has gotten a much closer shave. Symbolism and metaphor have been worked in quite well, both for book 1 alone and to set the stage for later books. I am quite pleased. And yet…

It’s like the magic isn’t there. The original draft–horribly written though it may be–has a certain manic excitement, an inexperienced earnestness that grabbed hold of you. While I don’t want to show off inexperience, that feeling of honest excitement was what propelled me into continuing into the story in the first place. I’ve become much more analytical and professional since I first started writing this, and much less spontaneous… The more I learn about writing, the more little facets I know to keep in mind, and the less I can just write from the heart.

So, I’ve decided I must rewrite much or all of book 1, a second time. But I would like to know… does anybody have any ideas how to get it back in the groove? How to maintain high literary standards while letting my muse take me, as it were? Has anyone else had this sort of problem? I was so focused at how much better I’ve become at most things, it never occurred to me that I might become WORSE at others!