On Movies: Conquering the epic life of Genghis Khan

'You know that Genghis Khan is one of the most unpopular names in Russia," says filmmaker Sergei Bodrov. "We Russians spent 250 years under Mongolian rule, so we still blame Mongols for all our problems. I read about Genghis Khan, of course, in my school books, and he is portrayed very badly. He is an evil warmonger, and so on.

by Steven Rea, Inquirer Columnist | Columnist

Published June 22, 2008, 3:01 a.m. ET

'You know that

Genghis Khan

is one of the most unpopular names in Russia," says filmmaker

Sergei Bodrov

. "We Russians spent 250 years under Mongolian rule, so we still blame Mongols for all our problems. I read about Genghis Khan, of course, in my school books, and he is portrayed very badly. He is an evil warmonger, and so on.

"But I became suspicious, because I didn't think he was born as a monster, and I found interesting stories about his childhood, and the young years of his life."

Those stories - the early years of the man born with the name Temudgin in 1162 - are the stuff of

Mongol

, Bodrov's big, dazzling historical epic. Shot in inner Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and tracking the childhood and young adulthood of the infamous conqueror, the film represents a chunk of the Russian director's life.

"The physical production took two years," says Bodrov, who turns 60 on Saturday, on the phone from New York recently. "But it was almost a year writing the script, research, preproduction, and another year in postproduction. More than four years of my life."

The $20 million

Mongol

, which opened Friday at the Ritz East, stars a charismatic Mongolian youth,

Odnyam Odsuren

, as the kid, and Japanese actor

Asano Tadanobu

as the grown-up Genghis. Bodrov had a crew of 600 (including two directors of photography) and sometimes as many as 1,000 extras and stunt riders. Some locations were so remote that they had to build roads to get there.

"We were shooting in inner Mongolia, in China, and north of China, these huge regions in Kazakhstan. It was the old Mongolian empire."

With its horses thundering across snowy high country and jagged plains,

Mongo

l evokes the wild, wide-screen landscapes of

John Ford

Westerns, and Bodrov is happy to acknowledge the influence. He was so impressed by the settings of some of Hollywood's classic Westerns that he went and bought land in the high desert of Arizona.

But Bodrov says he's not sure exactly where to call home these days. "The last four years of my life I spent in Mongolia, in China, in Kazakhstan, and in Germany. And I can still call each of them home, because I still have some suitcases in each country. But I have a place in Moscow, and I am working there, and I have my favorite place in Arizona."

And he has plans to continue with the

Mongol

saga, too.

"People ask me, 'When is

Mongol Part 2

?' And definitely the story is not finished for me. . . . There is more to tell about his life."

'Wall-E' man.

It's a given that animated films, and particularly computer-generated animated films, take years to make.

But

Wall-E

, which hails from Disney's Pixar wing, and which opens Friday, has to hold some kind of record. According to

Andrew Stanton

, the movie's director and cowriter - and the Oscar-winning hand behind

Finding Nemo

and

A Bug's Life

- the "sparks of the idea" flew around at the time he and the then-fledgling Pixar gang were getting into gear with the first

Toy Story

"I don't want to further the illusion that we get these full-formed ideas that drop from the sky, and we just sit on them," says Stanton, on the phone from Los Angeles the other day. "Almost every idea we've ever had was the beginning of something, and then it was this multi-year archaeological dig to figure out if there truly was a full-fledged thing worth uncovering.

"So, the start of that dig, for

Wall-E

, was all the way back in 1994. And it was the simple statement, that ironically has become the best tagline for the movie: 'The last robot on Earth.'

"That was the initial conceit, the idea of this machine being left on Earth and doing the same thing that it was programmed to do forever, and not knowing that it was a waste of time. It was just the saddest situation I had ever heard of, and the ultimate definition of futility."

The saddest situation . . . the ultimate definition of futility.

What kind of family-friendly cartoon romp is that? Was Stanton concerned that

Wall-E

- with its vision of 28th-century Earth as a dystopian, eco-disaster wasteland - might be too grim?

"No, because Wall-E is such a bright little light," he says, speaking of his battered, boxy mechanical hero - a hero who falls in love when a sleek, hovering modern robot, a very Apple-esque Eve, drops down on Earth.

"I keep going back to that first sentence, our initial idea:

the last robot on Earth

. . . . And I think that's why you like him. You like him because of the context, because he's this little ray of hope and desire to understand life against such bleak circumstances."

New fest in town.

The Philadelphia International Film Festival - screening in smallish Northern Liberties venues and outdoors at Liberty Lands Park - makes its inaugural bow Thursday, with four days/ nights of local and global shorts, docs, experimental pics, hi-def, low-brow, animation and whatnot.

Among the more intriguing offerings:

Mind Flesh

, labeled "Buddhist horror" in the fest schedule;

Able Danger

, a 9/11 conspiracy noir (from Lower Merion High School alum

Paul Krik

) starring

Elina Lowensohn

;

If You Break the Skin

, a documentary about Philadelphia photographer

Zoe Strauss

; and the giant-screen

Bob Marley & Friends

, featuring "lost" concert footage of the late reggae superstar plus performances by

Peter Tosh

Ziggy Marley

Ky-Mani Marley

Stephen Marley

Tracy Chapman

Third World

Wyclef Jean

Lauren Hill

, and

Dubmatique

For complete PIFF info, check out:

, or call the PIFF box office at 215-592-1059.