Growing up Mongol

Saw Mongol yesterday, a recounting of the youth of Genghis Kahn. Here's what I learned about the requirements for growing up as a successful Mongolian male: a) ride a horse well; b) love fur hats; c) be ready to fight any one of a random number of enemy clans at any time; and d) choose a good wife (make sure she has strong legs). You should also be prepared to be enslaved, tortured, run long distances, and find someplace to get those fur hats.

The film has plenty of blood—swords slashing, long sharp impaling things impaling, etc., etc.—but it seemed so stylized that it didn't make me cringe or even feel any squeamishness. What the movie does have in great quantity is loads of magnificent scenery, each landscape different than the last, all photographed beautifully. The land is so large, so vast, that the human figures look small and insignificant by contrast. Maybe that feeling of inconsequence in comparison to their surroundings was what made the Mongols so fierce . . . I did laugh, though, at the name of one of Khan's enemy clans, the Merkits. All I could think of was that Animal Planet show, Meerkat Manor.