Orda

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.

The movie is a tough sell. Whom will it appeal: History buffs, religious people or Eastern movie fans? Maybe none of them, maybe all of them. It seems to try to appease a lot of people and might find itself not working for the majority of them. It's an historical epic picture alright, but does it engage the viewer? That's for you to decide.

The action scenes are alright, the pathos/religion aspects of it are bearable too. The performances are really good and the sets/locations are just amazing. Which also brings us to the cinematography. The movie really looks good. But due to the scope of it, it might run a bit too long for some. The pacing seems alright, but might feel to slow to some. It's a tough one to watch at times, but interesting nonetheless

If you are an American,as I am, you know then, that our knowledge of Russian history is lacking, unless you went for an advanced degree at some college. Therefore, I found the film to be totally engrossing. The cinematography, costumes, including the jewelry, the sets,and the translations from Russian and from what I gather, the Mongolian language, were all very excellent. I am not familiar with this director who is merely trying to convey a moment, or a slice of historical commentary,in a stylized way. I don't think meant for the Western Hemisphere either. As visually stunning as "The Russian Ark" and easier to follow the dialogue.

Only 5 reviews so far? Contrary to what some reviewers would have you believe this is a film that is clearly well made. The sets, costumes and period detail is exceptional. The camera work and direction, at least to my untrained eyes, appears to be top notch. While the story was unfamiliar to me it was interesting and well paced. Whether these accounts are historically correct or are depicted without bias is utterly irrelevant to the average movie goer. If you like well conceived, believable, detailed dramas about other lands and peoples then this is worth a long look. The acting is excellent, especially the role of the Mongolian matriarch played by Roza Khayrullina. Her authority and air of nobility is palpable. There is very little action in this film. However, there are numerous portrayals of brutality and violence as these are really unavoidable. Why is there no bluray?

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.