Orda

This movie was paid for by the church so that the basic plot holds itself true to the living of saint Alexius of Moscow. Still the director managed to make the best out of it, to pack it together with a lovely tale about an overlooked page of Russian history: the impending collapse of the Golden Horde. And rotting it starts from the head, with the uncouth assassination of khan Tini Beg by his brother Jani Beg.

This is a refreshing view for historical cinema. Hitherto the Horde was never given any lines of dialogue. You might have seen Andrey Rublev by Tarkovsky: they raze a city to the ground and ride away. In Eisenstein's Nevsky they're also shown to be an amorphous sinister outside force which can intervene on someone's behalf in Russian politics but is never doing anything on their own. They've been hitherto shown as unspeakable savages, as the Borg, as the zerg but never as dramatic characters, as yet another wave of brutal Russian statesmen, akin to the Bolsheviks or to Ivan the Terrible's thugs. The movie dispels the myth the Tatar Yoke was felled by the Russians in the Grand Standing on the Ugra river. You're shown it instead has removed itself, decades in advance, in a painfully similar manner to so many other political entities on the Russian soil.

An interesting moment lost on foreign viewers is usage of language in the film. It is amusing to see some obscure Central Asian language being the prestige dialect, the lingua franca, to all of the Russians. Today it's the other way round.

Are you sure you are well enough informed about all "historical value"? have you any idea about mongol-tatar yoke over Russia (more than 200 years)? So what exactly attitude you expect, when describing this particular period? Well, maybe Mongolian version is better and more different, it is... well understandable. But it's Russian history and Russian film. There are so much historical sources about how Russian were killed in a most cruel ways, thousands of them, families and towns. There was almost no life at all, how you expect all this feelings in every soul - fear and anger - to be shown? And yes, it the almost beginning of Christianity in Russia, with all passion and exaggеration, but also with all self-sаcrifice, specific for the period. So for me portraits of Mongolians are interesting and even soft... Or you expect always Russians to be bad, no matter who is opposite, Goebbels or Mongolians of the Horde, or etc. Time was full of cruelty, hatred, collision... and it is shown. I don't say the film is brilliant. But it is easy to fill your review with "interesting" phrases like "paranoid, hyper racist anti Asian propaganda", "KGB/orthodox church sponsored rubbish", "Goebbels anti Jews propaganda"... They are attractive and welcome for haters. But understanding is something different.

a religious film. that is the point who, I suppose, explains it in a wise manner. not as manifesto against Mongols, not as a story about Russia. only as story of sacrifice and faith. sure, it is only a point of view. sure, it is a too subjective film and that is not a real surprise. because the cruelty, the week leaders, the powerful women, the story of Alexey and the moral victory are pieces of a portrait who defines way for assume the past. looking historical accuracy it is bizarre work. because the atmosphere, the tale, the mission of an hierarch are only important things. and, sure, the victory of Orthodox Church against an ambiguous evil. a film who could be useful for understand Russia out of definitions.

I stumbled upon it today on Netflix while eating lunch. I watched it for about a half-hour, but found it to be a waste of time and quit after 30 minutes. It's evident that there's some great acting and direction at work in this production, but it totally failed in the storytelling department. I think it's a good thing for the screenwriters to be from the "show", not "tell" school of film making, but more exposition would have helped. It seemed like Game of Thrones without enough back story. Maybe something got lost in translation since it is dubbed.

I found the depiction of the Mongols to be totally misleading. As a history buff, I understand that the Mongols ruled the largest and most diverse empire in the history of the world for more than 200 years. However, I don't think that feat was done by what this film depicts as the most boorishly brutal group of "hillbilly" Mongols this side of Urals. It's as though the director had studied some isolated tribes in Mongolia and grafted his impressions onto his depiction of the Mongol ruling class. For all their ruthlessness, the Mongols of the Golden Horde were more worldly and diplomatic than the bunch depicted in this film. Some historians consider the Mongol Empire the first multinational corporation. If the movie Mongols had ruled Russia, I doubt that they would have been able to hold onto power for a decade instead of a few centuries. If the Russians had allowed themselves to be conquered by this sorry group, it does n't really make the Russians look too good either.

I give one snot to the reviewer here who claims to be a history buff. You really need to spend more time reading. I indeed found this to be a true depiction of the declining life of the Tatars (a.k.a. Golden Horde). They had already climaxed as a civilization and were just a short time from total defeat by the Russians. Thank goodness for that! What a perfect time to tell the story of a priest and his journey of faith. I found the writing of this screenplay to be amazing in its depth and the film itself visually striking. One of the best films I have ever seen out of Russia. A big hit at the Moscow film festival, you just cannot stop watching.