FILMS/
MONGOL
World Cinema
Germany/Kazakhstan/Russia/Mongolia, 2007, 124 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sun, Apr 27 / 9:15 / Kabuki / MONG27K
Wed, May 7 / 2:15 / Kabuki / MONG07K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Sergei Bodrov
- prod
-
Sergei Selyanov, Sergei Bodrov, Anton Melnik
- scr
-
Arif Aliyev, Sergei Bodrov
- cam
-
Sergei Trofimov, Rogier Stoffers
- editor
-
Zach Staenberg, Valdis Oskarsdottir
- mus
-
Tuomas Kantelinen
- cast
-
Tadanobu Asano, Honglei Sun, Khulan Chuluun, Odnyam Odsuren
- source
-
Picturehouse Films, 9000 West Sunset Blvd, Ste 1204, 90069 Los Angeles, U.S.A. FAX: 310-279-1052.
Sergei Bodrov’s historical epic about the pivotal early years of Genghis Khan measures the human qualities against the legend, coming to a provocative conclusion. Namely, you don’t marshal disparate tribes and conquer more land than any warrior before or since by being a brute, but rather by being a visionary and, to some degree, a mensch. Therein lies a tale arrestingly filmed on Mongolian steppes as barren and forbidding today as they were in the 12th century. Part one of a proposed trilogy, Mongol has all the pleasures of the genre (including the guilty ones, like artful spatter). Tadanobu Asano, the popular Japanese actor (Zatoichi; Last Life in the Universe), plays Temudgin (as he was known before assuming the title “khan,” or tribal leader) in a spirit of indomitable, pensive forbearance. The nonprofessional actress Khulan Chuluun, comfortable in the role of a strong-willed thinker, plays his wife, Borte—guileless when it comes to love, crafty when it comes to survival. Other local non-actors people the film. Bodrov has considerable experience directing young people—Freedom Is Paradise and I Wanted to See Angels (SFIFF 1990 and 1993, respectively)—and the scenes in which his principal characters are children remain in many ways the most absorbing. Hunted by traitors following the death of his father, the boy Temudgin is spared a similar fate only by the law of tradition: Mongols do not kill children. Later on as an adult, and fair game, he will impress enemy soldiers with simple principles of his own on the path to becoming khan of all the Mongols. But you saw that coming.
—Judy Bloch
Presented in association with the Asian Art Museum. West Coast Premiere. Sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
