Genghis Khan

I have been a " Genghis Khan amateur " for a couple of years now and I have seen this documentary on Discovery Channel some days ago.

This documentary stands out from the other war docs. It has good acting by totally unknown actors ( my bet would be that they are experienced Mongol actors ), they speak their mother tongue ( although it is both narrated or subtitled ) and the costumes are great. There are some great scenes involving Genghis and Jamuqua. The bad point with this documentary is the fact that they seemed to put too much money on it at first and lacked the budget after the part where Genghis attacks China. Then, it skips right to the later years of his life and then he practically dies ten minutes later. There seems to be a miscalculation of spending of money here by the crew and director, in my own opinion.

What everyone needs to know is that there is a book written by Mongolian historians titled " The Secret History " which is mainly used in this documentary. However, this book was written way after Genghis Khan died, by Kublaï Khan's people at the height of the Mongolian occupation. Very little is true in this book for it was mixed with romanticism and imaginary tales to " impress " those who did not live at Genghis Khan's time. Truly, if the whole point of this documentary was to teach what was Genghis Khan's life, then it failed miserably. Being historically accurate is extremely difficult with Genghis Khan's life, especially his childhood, because he did not have much historians with him until his later years. I believe they did a great job although they should have made some more research to see what was true or wasn't ( there are 2 or 3 other main books by renown historians which seemed to be ignored there ).

I believe the story of Genghis Khan is yet to be discovered by many - especially where I live, in north America. I truly believe there is an incredible potential for a big budget movie about him. What this documentary has tried was to do this very movie, but it lacked the funds and the whole thing suffered from it.

A wonderfully evocative film, swiftly paced and vivid like its subject. It is only a pity that it could not be lengthened to include the Mongols' savage incursion into Persia and the (terrifying for the West) foray into Russia and Europe. The history continues to resonate today in this sensitive area of the world. The firm hand of James Chambers as historical adviser (unfortunately uncredited) can be felt in the clarity of Genghis Khan's tactics as demonstrated in the film and the military lessons that would later be drawn by modern generals, not least by the blitzkrieg master Guderian in WW2. For reasons of staging these are paradoxically often a weak feature of war films, but here on the Steppes and northern China they are magnificent. For further reading people should go to James Chambers' excellent biography of Genghis Khan and the balanced account of the dynasty in his The Devil's Horsemen.

It's a very interesting film. But it's worth saying here that the name "Mongol" until 17th-18th centuries meant belonging to a political community, and wasn't the ethnic name. While "the name "Tatar" was the name of native nation of Genghis Khan, he and his tribesmen didn't speak the language, which we call now "Mongolian" (orientalist V. Vasiliev, 19th c) - this is confirmed by many data of the ancient and medieval sources. Read about hidden real history of Tatars and other Turkic nations in an e-book "Forgotten Heritage of Tatars" (by Galy Yenikeyev). You can find it in the Internet, on Smashwords company website. There are a lot of previously little-known historical facts, as well as 16 maps and illustrations in this book.

Actually there is a full length TV series (30 episode) on life of Genghis Khan made based on "Secret History of Mongols". You can find a clip of it here on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUwKspSZwfo). This is produced by a film company in Inner Mongolia with a Mongol cast. Dialog is in Mandarin, the clip on Youtube has English subtitle so I am sure the version with English Subtitle exist. I am watching it online right now in Chinese. I am pleasantly surprised by the production value, how faithful it stick to the "Secret History of Mongols". I was initially skeptical of a TV series about Genghis Khan made in China since I have seen many Chinese film and TV series where the depiction of non-Han Chinese people are wanting. But this one was really different, even though they were speaking Chinese, I realize that the actors and directors are probably Mongols. When I did some back ground research, and found out that it was indeed a Mongol cast and produced by a film company based in Inner Mongolia.

The Chinese character for Genghis Khan is "成吉思汗", You might find the DVD for sale on the internet.

One of the best documentaries I've seen and I mean that in the way it was made. It was a Braveheart of documentaries. Director, actors, costume designers and the rest of the crew did a great job to make it look authentic. There are really just two things that I didn't like. The first one is that it was to short, it should have been made into a series so we could learn more about the man and his life. The second one is that they "praise" him to much for my taste, after all he was a psychopathic megalomaniac who destroyed everything and everyone in his way. It's certainly worth a look, even more so if you don't know a lot about this part of the human history.