ARAVT

One of the better side effects of the streaming age is that all these different services – desperate to attract subscribers and starving for content – often provide wider access for foreign films that otherwise would never have been seen outside their homeland.  Streaming on Prime, Aravt is a Mongolian film – and by that I mean an actual Mongolian film – not just a film about Mongols.  This was made by Mongols, starring Mongols, and was shot in actual Mongolia, providing a degree of authenticity and verisimilitude that is a pleasure to see just by itself.

Set in the 12th century, during the reign of Genghis Khan, this is a story about a unit of soldiers – an aravt or what is sometimes called an arban.  This was the most basic unit of Mongol military organization, consisting of ten men who lived and fought and rode together.  Ten aravts made a zuun, ten zuuns made a mingghan of a thousand men, and ten mingghans made a tumen, sometimes called an ordu, from which comes the word “horde”.

So rather than a story about massive armies clashing on the battlefield, this is more like a squad-level movie, where the aravt is sent off to find a renowned physician to deal with a spreading plague on the orders of Genghis Khan – though neither said plague nor the khan are shown onscreen.  The rest of the tale consists of them trying to carry out their mission in the face of the menace of a rival clan, recently defeated by the Khan, who are still rebellious and determined to fight.

The cinematography is first-rate, and they take great advantage of the vast, primal landscape of Mongolia, while not restricting themselves to open steppe.  We see hills and forests and foggy mornings, as well as the sweep of distant mountains and the endless horizons.  The costuming is pretty much flawless, and while the prop weapons don’t always look the best, they are better than what we usually get in films like this.

The cast is actually quite good, and despite it sometimes being difficult to tell actors apart under their very similar outfits, everybody does good work here.  The spoken Mongolian adds yet another layer of authenticity to this, and even if the subtitles are sometimes not great, actual mongols speaking actual Mongolian, riding real steppe ponies across the genuine Mongolian steppe is still a thing to see.

The pacing of the movie is the part most likely not to sit well with a Western audience, as the script is slow, and sometimes is a bit of a slog.  The film spends a lot of time developing the characters, but sometimes you are wishing for a bit of action rather than yet another fireside conversation.  The movie is surprisingly talky, and rather than a story with action peppered along the way, it is mostly building up to a big, final battle.

Once said battle arrives, then the film shows off some rather good choreography, with a lot of visceral impact.  It’s not a very bloody battle, and what blood there is, is mostly CG, which looks a bit rough.  The riding and stunts are really good though, making the battle exciting even if the action is not always as clear as it could be.  The script suffers from a case of there being too many factions and too many characters with their own agendas, and sometimes you can’t tell what people are doing or where, and you see plot elements introduced that never really pay off.  That might be a result of editing, as the cutting can be choppy in places.  Important things happen and you don’t see who did them, and they don’t seem to be given enough weight.

Anyone interested in Mongol history should check this out, as the degree of accuracy is off the charts compared to what you usually get in movies about the Mongol Empire.  Also, it is cool to see a story set in this time and place that is not about Genghis Khan himself, and not about some massive invasion or huge stakes.  This is much more the kind of plot you use for a Sword & Sorcery story, as it is a small group of men pitted against both the environment and implacable enemies, all in a quest to satisfy honor and seeking death before disgrace.

The Burning Mountain

 

 

The day was dark as night, without moon or stars, only the glow of the mountain where it lay ripped open and bleeding fire.  Jaya stood on the bow and looked at it, smelling the burning smoke, seeing the thick layer of ash drifting on the sluggish waves.  She had heard tales of the mountains of fire, but she had never seen one, and had never dreamed she would see one this close.  The pillar of smoke rose up and up until it blotted out the sky, and violet lightning lanced from the cloud to the mountainside and the sea where it churned below.

Bastar steered them north, keeping them on the edges of the burning darkness, following the current to where he said it met another that flowed from the west.  The winds were slow, but uneasy, and Jaya scented a storm.  If the winds turned on them, they would be buried under a cloud of death, choked like the dead birds that floated on the oily waves, their eyes blind and blank.

They drew nearer to the black shore, and steam boiled up from the sea where it touched the land.  Jaya saw trails of dark fire flowing over the rock, the edges of the rivers glowing bright as a steel-forge, the surface blackened and rippling, smoking as they ran down.  Where the rivers touched the water, steam roared upward, making pillars of haze as dark as the smoke.  It made a bitter, blood scent on the air, and the Ekwa and the slave girls coughed and choked on it, washing the ash from their skins and sweeping it from the deck.

They rounded a point of rock and Jaya saw the low, dark form of a ship drawn upon the shore, and she went back to the afterdeck and pointed it out to Bastar.  “There,” she said.  “Is that the War Eagle?”

“Too small,” he said, adjusting the cloth over his face.  “That must be the wreck Logor said was here, the one Lozonarre came to plunder.”  He pulled out a glass and squinted through it.  “Looks like a merchantman from Achen.  Not gold then, but things like powder and shot, silks or sailcloth.  Provisions for another slave raid.”

“Bring us closer,” Jaya said.  “We should see if he was here or not.”

He looked at her sidelong, and she knew he was thinking of the cloud of death looming over them.  If the mountain blew apart they would all be wiped away.  She waited to see if he would argue with her, but he did not.  He grunted and spun the wheel.  There was not much wind, and what there was backed and gusted uneasily.  Jaya heard thunder, but did not know if it was the voice of the mountain.  She looked at the dead sea and closed her eyes for a moment, calling on Arang.  Show me the path to my vengeance.

Cast A Deadly Spell

 

This one is a little outside my usual vibe for this blog, but it’s a personal favorite that not a lot of people have seen, so I am making an exception.  Cast A Deadly Spell dates from a lost era in TV history, when HBO was still just kind of testing the waters on original content, and when fantasy and SF subjects were still considered a little bit odd, not mainstream like they are now.  This was years before HBO invented the “prestige” miniseries with And the Band Played On and other award-winning stuff.  This little 1991 movie stands out as an experiment.

You get the premise on a title card just as the movie opens: “Los Angeles 1948.  Everyone used magic”, and that’s all the explanation you get for it.  There are context clues that make it seem like maybe, in this world, magic really became a thing after the war, but it’s not made specific.  What you have is a film that replaces the fears of technology taking over with magic being the game-changer, with some people riding the trend and some people bucking it.

What’s surprising, for a movie, is how much they committed to the worldbuilding.  You get lots of little throwaway gags, like people lighting cigarettes with magic flames, kids blowing out tires by chanting curses, and waiters using magic to levitate glasses while they pour martinis.  A lot of work went into filling the background with these little details that help sell the setting, and it works surprisingly well.  A lot of these gags are essentially throwaway jokes, but they show that the filmmakers thought about their premise beyond the obvious.

A good cast helps immeasurably to make this work.  Fred Ward is at his craggy, straight-man best as H. Phillip Lovecraft – an ex-cop and private eye who is known for refusing to use magic in his work.  David Warner is pitch-perfect as the wealthy client who hires him to retrieve a book called the Necronomicon that was stolen from him.  Clancy Brown (who looks so young in this) is oily and thuggish as Lovecraft’s former partner-turned-gangster Harry Bordon.  Julianne Moore gets to wear a succession of fabulous gowns as Lovecraft’s ex and Harry’s current moll Connie Stone.  The screenplay goes hard with the period slang and getting the rhythm of the fast back-and-forth style of dialogue in those classic noir films.

The movie gives some great moments to lesser-known and character actors as well.  The late Charles Hallahan plays Lovecraft’s old boss, Detective Bradbury, Arnetia Walker is a delight every second she is onscreen as Lovecraft’s landlady Hypolite Kroptkin, and longtime character actor Raymond O’Connor is brilliant as Tugwell – Harry’s deadly, dapper, white-suited sorcerer hitman.

The overall plot is not as smart as the dialogue, and it is pretty much just throwing every noir fiction trope into the mix and seeing how it plays out with magic added, which is admittedly pretty fun.  There are some twists and turns along the way, but not that many.  The effects are often cheap-looking, as this was made in 1990, before the era of digital effects, and was reportedly made for just $6 million – a bargain-bin budget even in those days.  Director Martin Campbell (later to go on to Mask of Zorro, Goldeneye and Casino Royale) does a lot to keep things well-shot and well-paced, but even he can’t overcome the guy in a rubber suit playing a gargoyle and the extremely cheap-looking monster at the end.  This is a made-for-TV movie, and it looks like it.

The racial and sexual politics are not great, though not bad for the time.  The movie kills the hell out of its gays, but it does not treat them as punchlines or objects of revulsion.  Most of the black people in the movie are zombies imported from the Caribbean, except for Lovecraft’s landlady and her all-too-briefly seen lawyer brother Thadius Pilgrim.  It is weird to see a Los Angeles with no Hispanics in it, but rather par for the course at the time, as the movie is more interested in portraying LA as it appeared in movies than as it actually was.

Cast a Deadly Spell is pretty much the definition of a cult film, as it was broadcast on HBO, released on VHS, but was never put out on DVD except in PAL format in Spain of all places.  So the fact that it is up for streaming on HBO Max means it is finally possible for a lot of people to see this neat little movie.  If you have an interest in Lovecraftiana, Film Noir, or genre-mixing, I highly recommend it.

A Sign of Fire

 

Jaya smelled it on the wind long before they sighted land.  It was late afternoon, and the sun was blazing down behind clouds ahead of them.  Tatters of rain drifted above them, and the air was humid and dense.  The Ekwa were taxed to coax any speed at all from the sluggish breeze as it shifted restlessly from quarter to quarter, teasing them with the promise of cooler weather after dark.

At the prow, Jaya kept a watch ahead, looking out for the landfall she had been promised.  They had seen more ships the past few days, first as white specks against the deep blue, and then as shadows over the waters, close enough to see the men as they moved on deck.  It made her uneasy to see so many of the enemy ships, and she realized she was going to a place the giants had made for themselves, and the prospect did not please her.

The waters shallowed, and she saw it turn from deep midnight to a paler shade, and she could make out the flitting shapes of fish as they schooled in the Hunter’s shadow.  Reefs jutted up from the seamounts where the sun shone, and she signaled Bastar so he could steer around them.  Small islands dotted the far horizons, and she smelled green growing things and flowers again; she knew they were close to land.

The sweet smells of the jungle were not what warned her, it was a stink she had never tasted before – the smells of smoke and sweat and human shit all mixed together.  She flinched from smells of rot and strange perfumes, and she squinted to the southwest and saw there the dark blur of an island, and she knew they must be near to their goal.  The island called Rau.  It meant something like “scorched”, and so she did not think to find it an impressive place.

“Land!” she called back to Bastar, pointing the way, and she saw him wave in answer and then she felt the ship turn.  The Ekwa trimmed the sails as they shifted to a more northerly course.  He had told her they would pass the north shore of the island, and there find the harbor where the place called Arwan was to be found.  Rain spat down on the deck, and the winds shifted again, bringing another wash of that reek to her.  She coughed and went back to the afterdeck where the wheel stood, and she looked at Bastar, trying to imagine what kind of village men like this would build.

“I can already smell this place,” she said.  “It smells foul.”