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Friday 9 January 2009

Saved by the horses

Mongol
15, Nationwide

I’m not sure we ever get into Genghis’s head, understand what motivates him. Further, Mongol is 120 minutes long, during which time I don’t think I felt a single thing. I admired the landscapes and I admired the horses and I was interested in the old customs and rituals and the tottering piles of yak dung, but I didn’t feel anything. The great leaps in narrative don’t help, with the main players all but jetting in for the big moments, without any concession to the quieter moments that might have joined A to B. In one scene Börte is a penniless prostitute and the next she is a wealthy princess able to bribe her husband out of jail. What? How did that happen? One minute Genghis is a caged prisoner dressed in rags with skin flaking off like peeling paint, and the next he’s a great Khan with a massive army of warriors and a complexion so dewy he looks as if he’s fresh from an Eve Lom rescue mask. Maybe this focus on the decisive events is intentional, but when I go to the pictures, I like the full picture, thanks very much. Apart from anything else, if it is otherwise, it just isn’t value for money.

Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains) says that the portrait of Genghis is based on ‘leading scholarly accounts’ but, still, you do have to wonder. Remember, this is the man who went on to conquer a fifth of the earth’s land mass but here he is loving husband, playful father, tender and just. Your mother would like him if you took him home for tea. ‘What a lovely boy,’ she would say. ‘Aside from the butchery on horseback. I can’t be doing with that.’ After one victorious battle he insists his warriors split up the spoils amongst themselves; unheard of at the time. In fact, even if you were to the right of this Genghis Khan, you would still be on the left, if you get what I mean.

So, stunning to look at, but as an engaging, illuminating, convincing piece of cinema? No, not really. And Bubbles is with me on this, all the way. Or would be if he hadn’t just found Samantha sprinkled into his bowl along with his fish food. ‘Be off, Samantha. Be off. You’ve had your moment, now shoo!’

More articles from: Deborah Ross | this section

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