Mongol (2008) - Review by Kayden Trudgen

History of the Film:

Russian film director Sergei Bodrov went through lots to try to break the image that the

Mongolians have in Russia. So he made it his mission to try to break the image through the scenes and sequences of the film. He did get some good actors however the two leading roles were not Mongolian. For example, the actor that was Genghis Khan (Tadanobu Asano) was Japanese and Sun Honglei who played the secondary protagonist, and the main antagonist was Chinese. However, in the movie, they still spoke Mongolian and had lots of other characters who were Mongolian. The movie has epic battle sequences always featuring Genghis Khan (who is called by his name in the movie, Temujin) as a stone-cold warrior but he's also a compassionate lover of his wife and family. It has him go through brutal challenges; overcoming being a slave and becoming a general and an eventual emperor. It is based on a true story and

represents him as a strategist but also represents he had a compassionate side with him deeply caring for his friends just as much as his family. Though it's riddled with inaccuracies it still manages to hit the mark on some of the most important events of the early to middle years of Genghis Khan. This film didn’t do the best in the our side of the world with the movie not reaching stardom in North America so it didn’t have much impact on our society however it did have huge impacts on Russia where it became a major success. With it going as far as winning lots of awards during the 2008 Nika awards. It also allowed Sergei Bodrov to rise in fame and gain some media attention. It was his goal to try to change the minds of Russians that the Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan was some bloodthirsty savage barbarian but rather a strong warrior and strategist that loved his family as much as leading his empire.

Historical Analysis of the Film:

The movie Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan has had some criticism from people from

Mongolia claiming that it has a lot of scenes and images that are in the movie that didn't happen. This raises the concern that it may have gotten some of the historical accuracies wrong. Delving deeper into the film's plot was correct, one of these was how Mongolians were portrayed as only wanting to raid and pillage. This isn’t how Mongolians' way of life was and there plenty of time when Mongolians would do celebrational dances and other gestures that did not show up in the movie. The movie however did have an accurate soundtrack with them having pieces of throat

singing mixed with central Asian instruments playing in the background. The clothing was also accurate on how they would dress and look and the tents themselves were also reflective of the actual Mongolian lifestyle. In the movie we also witnessed one of the tribes moving which is also reflective of how the Mongolian tribes had to move to find better habitable locations. Throughout the movie, we also witnessed Ghenghis Khan praying to Tenger who is one of the central gods of the Mongolian religion. The movie’s plot itself tries its best to follow The Secret History of the Mongols with it getting some accurate events of the book in the movie. Without spoiling there are still things that were wrong for example the ideas of religions and other small details were different in the book. Though in all of its glory the movie still represented the Mongolians as savages who only wanted to steal and raid it did try to also show that only Ghenghis Khan was some sort of compassionate person.