Temújin (Asano Tadanobu) and Bórte (Chuuluny Hulan) in Mongol
Sergei Bodrov’s 2007 blockbuster Mongol is notable, in that it managed to court controversy in two very divergent directions even by being made. According to an interview with the director, Mongol was an unpopular project in Russia because the Mongol yoke is still remembered with a significant degree of bitterness. There may be good grounds for this bitterness, as the Russians were an oppressed subject people under the Yuan Dynasty. But Bodrov wanted to push back on the perception of Shyńǵys Han as a monster. On the other hand, as his film was being shot on location in Mongolia, ethnic Mongolians staged protests against the film as they thought it to be profane to show Shyńǵys Han as anything less than a hero or anything less than a god. Bodrov’s answer to both of these one-sided views of the man and his legacy, was to show the man first as a boy, Temújin.
The early part of the film dwells on two aspects of Temújin’s early life. The first is his physical vulnerability. Bodrov amply uses the filmic language to allow his audience to meditate on the scale difference between the vastness of the bleak steppe and this child (Odnyam Odsuren) who barely fits in a saddle on his father’s horse, even though we see that he might someday belong there. Even though Odsuren plays the part of young Temújin nearly deadpan, he is not devoid of an emotional life. We get to see his attachment to his father Esýgéı Baatýr (Ba Sen) – even as he disobeys him by choosing a bride not from the Merkit tribe as his father agreed, but instead from his mother’s Qońyrat tribe. We see his closeness with his mother Óelýn (Ai Liya) as well as his enmity with his father’s lieutenant and usurper Targutai (Amadu Mamadakov). His vulnerability is accented not only by these relationships, but also by the fact that he spends much of the early film either on the run from, or at the mercy of, his enemies. He is spared only by the fact that ‘Mongols don’t kill children’. We also see another childhood vulnerability: Temújin’s early attachment to the Qońyrat girl Bórte (Bayertsetseg Erdenebat), which leads him to disobey his father and choose her as a bride. His father ultimately approves – ‘A real man should choose his own wife,’ he says.
There are two instances in which we get to see Temújin as anything other than a victim of his circumstances. The first is when he runs off into the hills by himself, and prays to Tengri, who appears to him in the form of a grey wolf. The second is when he first meets Jamuqa (Amarbold Tuvshinbayar), with whom he swears blood-brotherhood. But these moments are fleeting in the film’s broad sweep, even though both have profound impacts on the life of Temújin.
These childhood memories are, in fact, all shown as flashbacks as an adult Temújin (Asano Tadanobu) is being held prisoner by the Tangut Kingdom of Xixia, cruelly exposed to the public in a guarded cage: driving home the fact that Temújin’s harshness and ruthlessness in his later life were in large degree a result of a harsh and ruthless upbringing. Despite the odds and – as we are led by the film to believe – on account of God’s intervention, Temújin does grow to adulthood. He claims his bride (now played by a stunning Chuluuny Hulan), who is almost at once kidnapped by avenging Merkits. He goes to Jamuqa (Sun Honglei) and convinces him to help in getting her back, even though Jamuqa first offers him three brides in her place and tells him ‘Mongols don’t go to war over women.’ When Temújin finds Bórte again, she is heavily pregnant – but she has already slit the throat of her Merkit ‘husband’ upon learning that Temújin had come to rescue her.
A wedge is driven between the two blood-brothers as Temújin is shown to divide the spoils more evenly among his own men than Jamuqa does for his. This leads several of Jamuqa’s men to defect to Temújin (along with some of Jamuqa’s horses); and when Temújin refuses to return them – ‘Mongols have the right to choose’ – the blood-brothers become foes. Ultimately, Temújin’s smaller band is hunted down and defeated by Jamuqa’s, though not before (in defiance of tradition) he orders the families sent into safety in the mountains. Temújin is spared by Jamuqa, but sold into slavery among the Tanguts.
Bórte bribes her way to Xixia on a merchant caravan with her body (becoming the caravan master’s wife), and uses all the means at her subsequent disposal – money, threats, even violence – to rescue Temújin from his cage. By this time, Bórte has two children, both of whom Temújin adopts as his own. She brings Temújin back to their own land, but informs him that the Mongols have grown ever more lawless, killing and stealing and not sparing women or children. Temújin tells her he knows how to handle Mongols – with simple laws, enforced harshly. But he still goes back to the mountain he had visited as a child and prays to Tengri for guidance. Thus he is set on the path of conquest, though despite his superior tactics he must rely on Tengri to succeed against Jamuqa and his much-larger army.
The influence of Temújin’s early life on his actions as the conqueror Shyńǵys Han are obvious to the viewer, just as Bodrov seems to have intended. When two of Targutai’s men bring him Targutai’s corpse, hoping to be rewarded, Temújin instead puts them to death for having betrayed their khan. The implication is that Shyńǵys was remembering Targutai’s own earlier betrayal of his father Esýgéı. Temújin also strictly enforces the strictures against killing women and children. On the other hand, Temújin willingly allows Jamuqa to go free when he is captured, which Jamuqa admits that he would not do in Temújin’s place.
The cinematography, production design, costumes and art direction are all as breathtaking as one might expect from a project like this. They went in hard for authenticity in their depictions of both mediæval nomadic-pastoralist life and the historically somewhat ill-attested Tangut Kingdom (which was indeed wiped off the face of the map by the Mongols), and the ambling pace of the film – even if it does drag here and there – gives us space to enjoy both. We already know that Sergei Bodrov, Sr does scenery really well, and there’s plenty of lopped heads and pink spray in the lushly-violent battle scenes. Stylistically, though, it’s a sucker punch (pun intended) to the gut of Zack Snyder and his Hollywood and comic book studio ilk; the odious 300 had been put out the previous year. Bodrov insisted that all of the action be performed by real actors and real horses, without the benefit of green screens or CGI. The result is a film that feels solid in a way that many modern Hollywood war films, superhero flicks and action blockbusters simply no longer do.
Acting-wise, Bodrov managed to provide a master-class roster from five different countries, with actors from China (Ba Sen, Ai Liya and Sun Honglei), Russia (Amadu Mamadokov), Japan (Asano Tadanobu) and of course Mongolia (Chuuluny Hulan, most of the child actors in the flashbacks). The kids are all super-cute, and they clearly worked hard to get their childhood versions of the main characters correct and believable. Tadanobu brings the perfect blend of sang-froid and intensity to his performance as the Great Khan, and Chuuluny Hulan has a deceptively-sweet steel-honeysuckle charisma and an undeniable chemistry that makes her Bórte credible. I like Sun Honglei, and his prior work in Chinese gangster films does him some credit here, but somehow his mannerisms feel a bit too modern and he doesn’t quite manage to pull Jamuqa off.
Ideologically, this film and the sympathy it evinces toward a very human Great Khan, are directly influenced by the Eurasianist historiographical ideas of Lev Gumilyov. Bodrov had read Gumilyov’s book on Shyńǵys Han, Legend of the Black Arrow, which in its reliance on the Secret History of the Mongols seeks to portray the rise of Shyńǵys Han as a result of the fractious and uncertain political environment of Mongolia, as well as the personal affronts he suffered during his Tangut captivity. The love story between Temújin and Bórte in Mongol is an embellishment on this history, but far from an unwarranted one, given Shyńǵys Han’s historical recognition of Joshy as his own son and the honours he bestowed on his first wife.
Bodrov is very much so a Russian filmmaker, but the story he tells here is one which bears greater resemblance to the subtler Chinese and Kazakh understandings of the life and legacy of Shyńǵys Han than the mainstream Russian and Western understanding. The attitudes of the peoples that fell under his direct rule are far more ambiguous and multifaceted than those who faced him at the height of his power. That said, this film is decidedly more sympathetic than, say, Snow in Summer with its emphasis on Mongol corruption, or Otyrardyń kúıreýi with its depiction of the Great Khan as an inscrutable and implacable alien menace.
Bodrov seems a bit too taken with the ‘coolness’ of the conqueror for the mediæval Chinese and Islâmic critiques of Mongol rule (let alone the Russian Orthodox ones) to carry much weight with him. That doesn’t stop Mongol, however, from being an awe-inspiring film which rides roughshod over you, and does it with flair.
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