In 1962 J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) brought Nikolai Gogol’s Russian masterpiece Taras Bulba to the silver screen with a cast that included Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner. Of course the Hollywood version of Taras Bulba was only loosely based on Gogol’s novel so a few decades later (2009 to be more exact) Ukrainian writer/director Vladimir Bortko decided it was time to give the story back to the Russian people.
Taras Bulba, which was renamed The Conqueror for this release, tells the story of Taras Bulba and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap, join the Cossack uprising and goes to war against Poland. Throw in a subplot where Andriy falls in love with a beautiful and rich Polish woman and must choose between her or his father and his people (which is where comparisons to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet come from). Anyone familiar with history will know that things don’t exactly go very well for the Cossacks.
Bortko’s film upset Ukrainian audiences who saw itas blatant Russian propaganda. The fact that the Russian Ministry of Culture financed the film or that the script was based on the 1942 version of the novel, which was stripped of its pro-Ukrainian themes, should have made that obvious.
Controversies aside, The Conquer (or Taras Bulba if you prefer) does feel like propaganda, but so does Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump or The Patriot. I would have liked to have a better understanding of the time period and the politics involved. This would have helped me better understand what was at stake as well as aided in pointing out when the xenophobia was out of hand. It might have also made the script a little more coherent as it jumps around the narrative timeline. The use of a narrator from time to time suggests that there might have been issues in the editing room that couldn’t be resolved.
Performances are a bit stiff and feel too formal. The cinematography is decent but rarely extraordinary. All in all The Conquer is a mixed bag that might interest history buffs and those interested in the state of contemporary Russian cinema but those looking for a great action epic will surely be disappointed.