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(aka "Horse Thief" or "The Horse Thief" or "Dao ma ze")

 

Directed by Zhuangzhuang Tian, Peicheng Pan (co-director)
China 1986

 

When he made this bold CinemaScope feature with a Tibetan setting 20-odd years ago, the director—-for me, the best and most important of all the “fifth generation” Chinese filmmakers who entered the Beijing Film Academy after the end of the Cultural Revolution and began to have access to a wide range of films from abroad—said he’d made it for the 21st century. The plot concerns an occasional horse thief who is eventually expelled from his clan for stealing temple offerings, and part of what Tian must have had in mind is that because of its Tibetan subject and possibly its style as well, the film hardly showed in mainland China at all; only 11 prints were made (in contrast to the 200 to 300 prints made of most Chinese features at the time), and even before it was released, it suffered two kinds of censorship. One of these was an addition rather than a subtraction––the date “1923,” which flashes on the screen before the first image, thus locating the action in a specific period rather than making it more timeless, which was the director’s intention. The other form was the elimination of corpses from the first of three separate “sky burials” in the film, when human bodies are fed to carrion birds. We do in fact see these birds feeding on flesh–-they appear at the beginning of the film, in the middle, and again at the end––but evidently the original version was more explicit.

The most versatile, unpredictable, and iconoclastic of the major Chinese filmmakers, Tian has subsequently directed such features as The Blue Kite (1993), Springtime in a Small Town (2002), and The Go Master (2004), all of which have been much more widely shown, as well as the gorgeous 2004 documentary Delamu (about a spectacular Tibetan trade route, and named after a particular donkey) that has been seen and shown even less than The Horse Thief. For me, Tian is, along with Jia Zhangke, China’s greatest living filmmaker, and The Horse Thief shows you why.

Excerpt from Jonathan Rosenbaum's review at DVDBeaver located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Release: September 18th, 1987

Reviews                                                                                                       More Reviews                                                                                       DVD Reviews

 

Review: Diskino - World Cinema Library (#19) - Region FREE - Blu-ray

Box Cover

Distribution Diskino - World Cinema Library (#19) - Region FREE - Blu-ray
Runtime 1:26:20.375        
Video

2.35:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray

Disc Size: 41,080,550,651 bytes

Feature: 28,121,524,224 bytes

Video Bitrate: 37.99 Mbps

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate Blu-ray:

Audio

LPCM Audio Tibetan768 kbps 1.0 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 16-bit
LPCM Audio Mandarin 768 kbps 1.0 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 16-bit
Subtitles Simplified Chinese or English (for the Tibetan track) Simplified Chinese or English (for the Mandarin track), None
Features Release Information:
Studio: Diskino - World Cinema Library (#19)

 

2.35:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray

Disc Size: 41,080,550,651 bytes

Feature: 28,121,524,224 bytes

Video Bitrate: 37.99 Mbps

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video

 

Edition Details:

• UK Television Introduction to Daoma by Tony Rayns (1988) (3:13)
• The Movie Fofr the Next Century (40:58)


 Blu-ray Release Date: February 15th, 2019
 Transparent Blu-ray Case inside hard cardboard case with two booklets (Chinese)

Chapters 12

 

 

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

Diskino have chosen their 19th World Cinema Library edition to be Zhuangzhuang Tian's The Horse Thief for another Special Edition Blu-ray package. It's on a dual-layered Blu-ray in 1080P with a max'ed out bitrate. Like their #15 Red Sorghum Blu-ray, reviewed HERE, there is a Group Buy option (HERE). 

It is in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and looks as though colors may have some embellishment and it may be from a second-gen source (softish) but in-motion on my system it provided and impressive presentation. Kudos to cinematographer's Yong Hou and Fei Zhao. The image is imperfect but very watchable and highly impacting if you don't look under a microscope.  

The audio is transferred in linear PCM in the option of Tibetan or Mandarin. There isn't an abundance of dialogue with the film's majestic landscapes speaking volumes. The only effect I noticed is wind or horses. The film features a score credited to Xiao-Song Qu and there is some chanting. The audio quality is, likewise imperfect, but decent enough. There are optional English or traditional Chinese subtitles, for both tracks, on this Region FREE Blu-ray.

There are two video extras. Firstly, there is a UK Television introduction to Daoma by Tony Rayns. This short intro was made for a screening of the film on the Channel 4 in 1988, where it was part of a Chinese film season curated by Rayns, who also is part of the accompanying 40-minute documentary entitled The Movie For the Next Century made in 2019 directed by Pengyuan Gu. There are also two booklets (Chinese text - one has photos) and some title cards in the handsome package.

Well, what a pleasure to finally see The Horse Thief - and in HD. There aren't many films that I can think of that centers on devout Buddhists - there are important themes of redemption, isolation, survivalism with stark but beautiful landscapes, vultures, prayer wheels as a window into a fascinating less-addressed culture. The Blu-ray transfer is really the ability to see the film in its best home theatre appearance. I did appreciate the Rayns supplements as well - thank you Diskino! Cinephiles should try to nab this while they can. It has the distinction of being ranked #1 on Martin Scorsese's personal list (TOP of the 90's although made in the 80s).

Gary Tooze

 

Menus / Extras

 

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Box Cover

Distribution Diskino - World Cinema Library (#19) - Region FREE - Blu-ray


 


 

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