Mongol

We subscribe to Netflix, which gives us access to a staggering range of movies, liberating us from the standard Hollywood new releases. We’ve been enjoying classics (“Donovan’s Reef,” “We’re No Angels,” the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby road movies), as well as foreign gems like Mongol, a 2007 Russian epic that is the first of a planned trilogy on the life of Genghis Khan.

I was not expecting much, assuming we’d get Eastern European angst, washed-up Soviet realism, and third world production values. But we were blown away by this movie. Straight, fast-moving, visual story-telling (it’s in Mongolian with English sub-titles, but you hardly need them). Magnificent cinematography, capturing the vastness of the steppes in beautiful photography. Battle scenes that put Hollywood play-fighting to shame.

The movie is based on historical records, showing a young man’s rise from a series of betrayals, abandonments, and defeats–including a low point of being a slave–to becoming the conqueror of one of the vastest empires ever. Through it all is a loving marriage. Also exotic cultural details, from throat singing to barbarian good manners. I think a lot of you would like it, though it’s not for the kiddies, showing as it does what fighting with sharp steel would do to human bodies, though, oddly, not in the sadistic gruesome way that Hollywood is now favoring. (The second film of the series, “The Great Khan,” is supposed to start filming this year.) Here is the trailer: