Mongol (2008) - Review by Kean Loucks

The movie Mongol: Rise to power of Genghis Khan, was an academy award nominee and a movie that sought to show a different side of Genghis Khan. The interesting part of the making of this movie is who made it, Sergei Bodrov, a Russian director took on the challenge of attempting to provide a more human understanding of this historical figure. The fact that the director came from Russia is the most interesting part of how this movie came to be made. In an interview with Cinema Blend, Sergei Bodrov explains that in Russia, Genghis Kahn is an extremely unpopular historical figure because he had conquered and ruled Russia, and even to this day Russians blame the Great Khan for some of their struggles. The Soviets kept the area thought to be the burial ground, the area the Mongols called the ‘Great Taboo’, away from the Mongolian people. As well as making the book ‘The secret History’ near impossible to obtain. The Soviet Union was scared of Mongolians uniting against them under the banner of the Great Khan. This was where Sergei Bodrov came from and yet, despite the feelings of the people in his homeland, Bodrov attempts to make the portrayal as accurate as he could with the information he had. Large parts of the movie were filmed in Mongolia with largely Mongolian actors. Sergei Bodrov and his crew did their best to make a historically accurate representation of Genghis Khan, one of the few large screen portrayals of the great Khan that does not demonize him.

The movie focuses on Genghis Khan before he acquired that name. It is clear that the director valued the story he was trying to tell and took great care to create a realistic depiction. The film does an excellent job depicting the people living on the Mongolian steppe. The costumes were accurate, the portrayal of the nomadic culture is well done. Where the movie struggles in remaining faithful to the history regarding the character Temujin himself. The problem that they faced is that not much is known about the person before he became Khan. This caused the director to create a character that seems infallible. Temujin, as with all historical figures was neither fully good or bad, but lived in a shade of grey, and this movie does not accurately show the nuance of a man of his time. Sergei Bodrov used the facts he had with Mongolian life to create an accurate depiction of the world Genghis Khan came from, but when the facts were not clear he created an infallible character that lacked nuance.