The Horse Thief


The Horse Thief is a 1986 Chinese film by director Tian Zhuangzhuang. It follows one of Tian's favorite topics, Chinese minorities, a topic he touched upon in 1984's On the Hunting Ground and would return to in 2004's documentary, Delamu. Like these other films, The Horse Thief shows Tian's fascination with China's ethnic minorities, and in particular the Buddhist ceremonies that these peoples practice.
Film director Martin Scorsese listed the film as the number one film of the decade on the television show Roger Ebert & the Movies. Since Ebert's partner Gene Siskel was being honored that year in 1999, Ebert decidedly invited Scorsese as a special guest to share his top ten list. Scorsese commented that adding the film was slightly cheating as he wanted to pick a film from the 1980s to be his number one film for the 90s decade. The Horse Thief was produced by the Xi'an Film Studio.

Plot

The film follows the titular horse thief, Norbu as he struggles to support his family in Tibet. After his son dies, however, Norbu strives to change his ways. At the end of the film, he decides to resort to stealing horses again to support his family. He is caught and tells his family to escape back to the village where they will be welcomed while he fends off the owner. He is eventually killed at the end of the movie, though the scene is not made visible. Mirroring the starkness of the landscape, the film is nearly free of dialogue, with only the occasional terse exchange between characters.

Cast

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Horse Thief has an approval rating of 100% based on 9 reviews. Derek Adams from the magazine Time Out gave the film a good review, stating: "It offers the most awesomely plausible account of Tibetan life and culture ever seen in the west. It's one of the few films whose images show you things you've never seen before." Janet Maslin from The New York Times gave it three out of five stars, concluding: "The Chinese film The Horse Thief is best watched as pure spectacle, since it unfolds almost entirely without benefit of dialogue. What little talk there is tends to be plain and to the point. However, from the scenic and ethnographic standpoints the film is often quite arresting." Jonathan Rosenbaum writing for the Chicago Reader praising the film, saying: "Tian's originality and mastery of sound and image communicate directly, beyond the immediate trappings of the film's slender plot and regional culture, expressing an environmental and ecological mysticism that suggests a new relationship between man and nature. Tian had said that he made this for the 21st century, yet even today it's a film of the future."
In 1988, The Horse Thief won the "Distribution Help Award" at the Fribourg International Film Festival. In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.