The Horse Thief

ok, since it seems clear that no one is going to answer this I am going to reprint Jonathan Rosebaums capsule review for anyone that might be interested:

"Tian Zhuangzhuang's 1985 second feature (after On the Hunting Ground), set in the remote wilds of Tibet with a cast of local nonprofessionals, is a breathtaking spectacle in 'Scope and color, perhaps the most personal of all the "Fifth Generation" Beijing films to have emerged from the People's Republic of China (at least until Tian's subsequent The Blue Kite). Tian's originality and mastery of sound and image communicate directly, beyond the immediate trappings of the film's slender plot (a horse thief expelled from his clan) and regional culture (Buddhist death rituals), expressing an environmental and ecological mysticism that suggests a new relationship between man and nature. Tian has said that he made this for the 21st century, and it is certainly a film of the future."

I've always had a real problem with the "official art" quality of most of the major fifth generation films. Even as I'm impressed by Tian's films, and by Raise the Red Lantern and so on, they seem stultifying, a bit oppressive, demanding to be called "masterpieces." Their style actually harks back to the Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s, or the better Soviet films of that same period--I wonder if this has something to do with what was shown at the Beijing Film Academy when it reopended.

It's always been funny to me that most of the fifth generation films have been greeted by many Western critics as covert attacks on the Chinese government, when that's hardly the case. I don't want to posit too simple a model of the relationship between the Chinese authorities and the country's major filmmakers though, not really knowing all the specific intrigues and controversies.