ORDA

Watched last night Andrei Proshkin's Orda [The Horde] (2012), a story of the fourteenth-century conflict between the fledgling Christian Muscovites and the Muslim Tartar "horde," when Metropolitan Alexius is requested to come heal the eyesight of the Tartar queen mother. In many ways it feels like a standard "saint" film, a Christian vehicle to explain the reasons for beatification of an important religious figure, a film that likely wouldn't have been made or supported by the Russian state only a few decades ago. And as well a historical/mythmaking of the origins of the state. I don't know how accurate the filmmakers were in recreating the Russian world of this age, but it felt "right." I suspect the portrayal of the "barbarians" and their lifestyle may be biased, but I really don't know much about the time or region. I wasn't overly impressed with the acting or plot, but it was still interesting.