Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan

A film about the early life of Temüjin, before he became Genghis Khan. It begins in childhood. His father takes him to choose a bride from another tribe; the boy picks Börte himself. On the way back the father is poisoned. After that the family is cast out. The tribe takes the herds and leaves a widow and her children on the steppe. From there the film is one long series of captivities. He is put in a wooden collar, escapes, is caught again, sold, held in a cage in another country, and escapes again. Two people hold the story together. Börte, who is taken by a rival tribe and returns, more than once, and finds ways to get him out; and Jamukha, a blood brother from childhood who becomes the enemy at the end. What the narrative is interested in is not conquest but law: the film says what made him different was rules, that soldiers do not loot without order and that the men who kill their own leaders are executed rather than rewarded. The battle scenes are large but not the point; the middle of the film is captivity and the steppe. The landscape work is the real achievement. It was shot in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Inner Mongolia, in real weather, and the wide shots are not built in a computer. Tadanobu Asano, a Japanese actor, plays Temüjin. Sun Honglei plays Jamukha and Khulan Chuluun plays Börte. Sergei Bodrov directed. The film was submitted by Kazakhstan and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was planned as the first part of a trilogy and the other parts were never made. Who it is for: anyone who likes historical epics with real landscape. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the conquests; the film stops before the empire and the history is loosely handled.