I just discovered that TOR linked to my blog from their site, and I suddenly have traffic.
So, now that you’re all here, I have a movie recommendation for you:
See Mongol. It’s out on DVD now, so I’d imagine there are any number of ways you can procure a copy.
If you know nothing about Mongol, it’s a two-hour martial epic about the lost years of Genghis Khan, and is (hopefully) the first film of a trilogy. The director, Sergei Bodrov, displays an unexpected ability to portray a medieval culture without it feeling terribly anachronistic. It also feels very non-Western, though the fact that Bodrov is Russian makes this no surprise.
If you can’t deal with subtitles, go back to watching what’s-his-face smolder in Twilight. If you can, you might like this one. It’s got an old-school sensibility, which means it depends on storytelling and manpower (and womanpower — wait until you meet Temudgin’s foil) to do its thing. If you let it, it can lead to thinking on the nature of nationalism, and also of the ancient struggle between civilization and the sort of anarchy that comes when one is near to a state of nature.
Go rent it, or buy it, or download it (legally, of course), before I get into any sonorous pondering. 
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: mongolia, Movies, sergei bodrov, tor.com
