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TOKYO—Any actor planning to play Genghis Khan in a
big-screen film had better carry himself with more than
just a hint of presence. Historical records on the
12th-century Mongol warrior are sketchy, but there’s
enough evidence to suggest he possessed a pretty severe
megalomaniacal streak, his armies marauding across vast
tracts of Asia and the Middle East.
Screen
presence has never been a problem for Japanese actor
Tadanobu Asano. His brooding good looks and athletic
physique stand out in a country that seems to throw out
a stream of pimply, skinny actors. At 35, he has played
more than his share of ready-to-pop-off weirdos and
homicidal maniacs in a busy acting career that has made
him one of the most sought-after actors in Japan’s indie
films.
Yet in
the Oscar-nominated Mongol, which just recently
landed in US theaters, a classical epic showered in
geysers of blood, Asano portrays the future conqueror of
Asia as a mumbling love-struck loner. Although he
eventually shows he can swing a sword like a baseball
slugger, Asano’s Khan spends most of his time trying
simply to survive the cruelty of his enemies. The
greater days of scheming to unite the tribes of
northeast Asia and mount invasions across the rest of
the continent (what Genghis Khan’s Wikipedia entry
understatedly calls “an aggressive foreign policy”) lie
ahead.
“People
probably have an image of him as a strong man who showed
his emotion and power,” says Asano, now shorn of the
long, lank hair that gives his Khan a Christ-like
ghostliness. “I didn’t know much about him at all, but
when I read the script, I saw him as a deep thinker, a
quiet type who didn’t waste energy and always knew where
he wanted to go.”
Asano’s
portrayal has received widespread critical praise, as
has the movie, which played the festival circuit, picked
up an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film
and finally got a US theatrical release on June 6.
Directed by Russia’s Sergei Bodrov, Mongol
suggests a Genghis Khan reluctantly drawn to a life of
battle. His Rosebud was the beautiful Borte, a girl from
a neighboring tribe whom he spotted during a
wife-hunting tour with his dad as a nine year old and
who became his soul mate. They are connected even when
enslaved by others. For her, he musters armies and goes
to war.
Bodrov
sought out Asano for the role, and the Japanese actor
prepared for it not only by learning to speak his lines
phonetically in Mongolian but also by learning how to
ride a horse. “Mongolians are a tough people,” Asano
says. “Even now they ride, they hunt. They have an
instinct to fight. Mongolians have much more of a wild
sense than Japanese people. We are used to easy living
in big cities.”
No one
can accuse Asano of coasting. He has acted
professionally since winning his first TV role at 14, a
move he admits was originally motivated largely by his
family’s need for money. His movie count now runs to 46,
and he has directed a couple more. Music is a competing
love: He’s married to a musician, still plays drums and
bass in rock bands, and does some DJing in Tokyo techno
clubs. He paints. He designs clothing. “No one gets rich
in the Japanese movie industry,” says his father and
life-long manager, Yukihisa Sato, who says his son has
movie roles booked for the next year and a half. “You
have to take every role that’s offered.”
Still,
there are some who say Asano hasn’t had to extend
himself in his film work for a while. “He has a natural
talent, so there are people who say he’s blessed by the
movie gods,” his father says. Sato blames complacency
for Asano’s failure to land a part in Clint Eastwood’s
Letters From Iwo Jima. “He didn’t want it badly
enough,” his father says of his son’s audition. “He’s
found it so easy to be successful for so long that maybe
he wasn’t able to show enough enthusiasm.”
Asano
says Iwo Jima wasn’t his kind of film and isn’t
heartbroken about having missed it. But he does not deny
that his career was in need of fresh challenges when
Bodrov called about the lead in Mongol.
He
expresses frustration with the formulaic handcuffs of
the Japanese entertainment industry, which is controlled
by massive talent agencies exercising a degree of career
control over their star system that would make Louis B.
Mayer blush. The agencies develop the stars from a young
age, slotting them into TV roles and pop-idol bands that
fit with each star’s cookie-cutter image.
“Our
artists are not good at expressing themselves,” Asano
says. “Ever since grade school we have been taught to
all behave the same way. It’s comfortable; you’re pretty
much protected in that world. But to be successful, you
have to be different. And I was lucky that my father and
my mother encouraged me to be my own person.” Asano says
he would take a good Hollywood role if it was offered,
though he declares that “right now, no one recognizes me
in Hollywood.” The US intrigues him. His maternal
grandfather was a Navajo from Kentucky who met his
grandmother, while serving in the US military in Japan.
He abandoned the family, returning to the US, where he
died.
But
Asano also sees great opportunities in the rest of Asia,
where there is money to make movies and so many stories
to tell. Mongol was a pan-Asian movie-making
exercise: a Japanese leading man, a Russian director and
a cast of Mongolians and Chinese supported by buckets of
money from Kazakhstan’s government film agency.
“Asians
have started to feel more like comrades,” Asano says.
“National borders haven’t disappeared. But there are
many young people in the field who want to work with
other good people wherever they are from.”
He finds
the prospect energizing. “I want to work on movies that
I can appreciate,” Asano says. “I didn’t always think
that way. I wasn’t always confident in myself. But I’ve
changed. I found that what I had done was not enough.
“Mongol
is the movie that made me think, made me realize that I
want to do great movies,” he says. “I’ve now become
greedy.” |
