Oh yeah? Well I'm descended from King David. Biatch.
Last week I saw Mongol, the 2007 biopic about Genghis Khan. It was the first movie from Kazakhstan
it sucked. Trust me. The biggest surprise for me came after the film was over, when I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and found out that 88% of critics liked it.
How can 9 out of 10 experts be wrong? Some, like me, would say that a) the experts are actually morons and b) Homunculus is never wrong. But I think this is also a case of a foreign-film bias at work. With Hollywood coming up empty so often, critics are desperate for films to praise; foreign films fit the bill. First, and most significantly, only the best movies from other countries make it over here in the first place, so foreign films are inevitably better, on average, than our own. Also, though, foreign films are foreign, and when we think of the words "foreign film," we think of smart guys with elbow patches writing peer-reviewed essays about decontextualized sapphic undertones. We think of Bergman and the French New Wave, Fellini and Kurosawa. Black-and-white. "Non-narrative" structure.
Yet most foreign films, even the ones that make it over here, are just slightly better versions of our own indie films. Mongol isn't even that; it is just a slightly better version of our own shitty big-budget epics. The director, for all his skill with action scenes, basically comes off as a film-geeked-out adolescent with a hard-on for blood and medieval weaponry. My suspicion is that he's seen Braveheart a few too many times.
Here is a plot synopsis:
Rumor has it the film's producers intend to turn it into a trilogy. If they do, they might want to check out Wikipedia. I had remembered reading something once about how some ridiculous percentage of Asians are descended from Genghis Khan. So when I got home, I looked up ol' Temujin on the web to see if I could find anything about that. Sure enough, the Wiki came through, as always. According to Zerjal et al [2003] (my favorite Central-Asian microbiological genealogists, incidentally), "about 8% of the men in a large region of Asia (about 0.5% of the men in the world)" carry a Y-chromosome link to "male-line descendants of Genghis Khan and his close male relatives." According to Homunculus, that's about 15 million mini-Khans running around the Steppe (plus about 15 million more Genghis-ettes). Not bad. The dude must have been like Warren Beatty, Wilt Chamberlain, and Warren Jeffs rolled into one. (Homunculus, for his part, would love nothing more than to have 8% of the Western world in 2853 A.D. composed of little Homunculi. Ladies?)
The film, needless to say, turns Genghis into an uxorious romantic. (In its defense, Mel Gibson's teeth in Braveheart were anachronistically well-polished, as was Russell Crowe's chest in Gladiator.)
I think we can all agree on that.
Seriously, this dude was one of history's all-time badasses, right up there with Napoleon, Vlad the Impaler, and that guy who tackled a shark from behind and gutted it. For the filmmakers to characterize the Khan as a philosophizing family man, as opposed to the warmongering firestarter he actually was, is a bit of a stretch. It would be like casting, say, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.
Oh.
[WARNING: Spoiler Alert!!]
it sucked. Trust me. The biggest surprise for me came after the film was over, when I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and found out that 88% of critics liked it.
How can 9 out of 10 experts be wrong? Some, like me, would say that a) the experts are actually morons and b) Homunculus is never wrong. But I think this is also a case of a foreign-film bias at work. With Hollywood coming up empty so often, critics are desperate for films to praise; foreign films fit the bill. First, and most significantly, only the best movies from other countries make it over here in the first place, so foreign films are inevitably better, on average, than our own. Also, though, foreign films are foreign, and when we think of the words "foreign film," we think of smart guys with elbow patches writing peer-reviewed essays about decontextualized sapphic undertones. We think of Bergman and the French New Wave, Fellini and Kurosawa. Black-and-white. "Non-narrative" structure.
Yet most foreign films, even the ones that make it over here, are just slightly better versions of our own indie films. Mongol isn't even that; it is just a slightly better version of our own shitty big-budget epics. The director, for all his skill with action scenes, basically comes off as a film-geeked-out adolescent with a hard-on for blood and medieval weaponry. My suspicion is that he's seen Braveheart a few too many times.
Here is a plot synopsis:
- Little Genghis gets into trouble, gets caught by his enemies, escapes.
- Teenage Genghis gets into trouble, gets caught by his enemies, escapes.
- Young-adult Genghis gets into trouble, gets caught by his enemies, escapes, starts war, loses war, gets caught by his enemies, escapes.
- Adult Genghis gets into trouble, gets caught by his enemies, escapes, starts war, wins war, becomes emperor of the Mongols.
Rumor has it the film's producers intend to turn it into a trilogy. If they do, they might want to check out Wikipedia. I had remembered reading something once about how some ridiculous percentage of Asians are descended from Genghis Khan. So when I got home, I looked up ol' Temujin on the web to see if I could find anything about that. Sure enough, the Wiki came through, as always. According to Zerjal et al [2003] (my favorite Central-Asian microbiological genealogists, incidentally), "about 8% of the men in a large region of Asia (about 0.5% of the men in the world)" carry a Y-chromosome link to "male-line descendants of Genghis Khan and his close male relatives." According to Homunculus, that's about 15 million mini-Khans running around the Steppe (plus about 15 million more Genghis-ettes). Not bad. The dude must have been like Warren Beatty, Wilt Chamberlain, and Warren Jeffs rolled into one. (Homunculus, for his part, would love nothing more than to have 8% of the Western world in 2853 A.D. composed of little Homunculi. Ladies?)
The film, needless to say, turns Genghis into an uxorious romantic. (In its defense, Mel Gibson's teeth in Braveheart were anachronistically well-polished, as was Russell Crowe's chest in Gladiator.)
Mongol also spurred a memory I had of a quote I read a long time ago from the Khan about what really turned him on. I googled "genghis khan quotes" and -- voila! -- found what I was looking for:
WOTE's (as-Fun-as-a-Quote-Can-Be) Quote du Jour
"The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters."
I think we can all agree on that.
Seriously, this dude was one of history's all-time badasses, right up there with Napoleon, Vlad the Impaler, and that guy who tackled a shark from behind and gutted it. For the filmmakers to characterize the Khan as a philosophizing family man, as opposed to the warmongering firestarter he actually was, is a bit of a stretch. It would be like casting, say, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.
Oh.
Labels: history, man vs. shark, movies, the press
posted by Homunculus J. Reilly at 4:59 PM
1 Comments:
This is seriously funny and clever, as most of Homunculus's blog entries actually are.
From an anonymous and unbiased fan.
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