Anyways, let’s not make our brains invade this history as TRUE!!!

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.

Mongolia was an awesome place to live. Ulaan baatar is not very nice (grey russian style concrete city) but the country side was amazing, as were the people. When my hubby came out to live with me (he was still finishing his degree when I went out) it was winter so I had no field work and was working in the office. Poor Shawn was kinda stuck in the apartment coz of the minus 30 C weather and found it hard to get work. My work sent us to Oz during the cold cold winter where he picked up work and stayed, when I went back to Mongolia…but I didnt renew the contract which is why I left. It would be amazing place to go…I recomend it highly, esp in summer! I love the tibetan buddhism that is everywhere. Never have I felt my spirit so free, as in Hurengol, in the Altai mountains.

Anyway, back to Mongol…I want to see it tomorrow night, hopefully its still on in Perth! Then I’ll let you know my perspective.

Mongol opens here this weekend, but it will be Sunday at least before I could hope to go. Would have loved to go with Spouse before he heads out again on Saturday. oh well.

I don’t get why the filmmakers needed to “motivate” Temujin in such an awkward way (captivity and revenge, eh). Since when did old fashioned megalomania cease to be good enough? It isn’t enough that he got started conquering and didn’t feel like stopping??? *wry g*

Kate has been illuminating many aspects in the discussion at my LJ. Others don’t agree with us, necessarily either, thinking this was a perfectly acceptable first installment to a trilogy.

But what most interests me about this film project is that it isn’t about US, or anyone other than the Russias and Central Asia, according to the director. It’s about revising the image of Genghis Khan, to make him a unifying figure of all of the Russias and Central Asia. So there is a deep political-geographical-cultural aspect to this as well.

Though this is supposedly a bio pic, like any movie bio pic, um, liberties were grabbed.

Love, C.