The movie Mongol – the early years of Genghis Khan – has already left the Esquire Theatre. So you may have to wait for the DVD.
I thought it was excellent – though there was gratuitous blood in the many battle scenes. I’m not saying it wasn’t reality-based, but really every swing of the sword did not require a major spray. I often felt like ducking.
The story itself was well told, and squares with what I already knew from the several biographies and books on Genghis I’ve read. Temujin, Genghis’ name as boy, lived a very difficult and just plain hard life, and spent many of his years as a slave and a prisoner, always observing and measuring everthing going on around him.
His searches for his betrothed, Boorta, who is kidnapped twice, show the mettle and hardness of the man. The Chinese town where he was kept in captivity until rescued by Boorta was simply obliterated from the map when he returned.
Late in the movie, he makes a vow at the mountain of the sky god that he will bring the Mongols under law, if he has to kill half of them trying. He succeeds, at nearly that great a cost.
Mongolia, high on my list of places to visit, is a vast and gorgeous and desolate place. That beauty is very evident in the film.
Genghis and his sons and grandsons ruled all the known world except Western Europe by the time of his death. Some of the energy and beliefs driving that empire are still at play in our world.
This is a movie worth seeing as the power balances on the planet shift.