The Horse Thief
“The Horse Thief” is a movie of scenery. Beautiful vistas,
grand landscapes in saturated colours and exotic culture. There is not much of
a story, but with scenery like this, do you really need anything else?
Dorbu (Rigzin Tseshang) is a young man on the Tibetan plateau,
presumably in 1923, who supports his family of wife (Jiji Dan) and infant son
through some thieving. When he steals what appears to be treasures for the
temple, he is banished from his village with his family. Life is hard on their
own and with an animal plague ravaging the country, life is even harder. Their
little son gets sick and dies. The villagers refuse to let him back and in
desperation Dorbu steals some horses so his wife and new child can get back to
the village while he sacrifices himself.
And that is about it.
This is a story told in a very slow pace with a lot of
tableau scenes and extremely little dialogue. The most persistent sounds are
not those of speech but the wind howling and the hum and chant of Buddhist
monks. Very little is explained, so understanding what is going on is often
through inference or by waiting for some later revelation. If fact, I get the
feeling the story is not that important. It is the impression that is the
intend here and we are left with plenty of impressions.
Foremost, this is an impression of landscape. Of big, brutal
and beautiful landscape. The kind you can really only find in Tibet and it is
breathtaking. This alone is enough reason to watch this movie. It helps tremendously
that the images are created with an eye for capturing the grandeur. Long panoramic
shots, small people in large landscapes, openness and saturation. There is not
a single scene where the landscape is absent. Even tent or monastery scenes let
in the bigness outside. It is a shame that the same skill is not evident in the
filming of what the characters are doing. Ineptness is a harsh word, but when
you have just watched as master class shot of landscape, it is disappointing to
watch the slashing of a knife as the initial movement and then the result, but
nothing in between. That is just cheap. But nevermind, that matters little in
such a movie.
The second notable impression is that of Tibetan culture.
This is a deep dive into the visuals of Tibetan culture. The monasteries and
their monks in particular, the life of villagers, struggling with the harshness
of their environments, animal herding, worshipping and dealing with the
criminal Dorbu. Given the official Chinese attitude to Tibet, it is difficult
not to see some accusation in this depiction of a seemingly medieval, superstitious
and brutal culture. This is Tibet before the Chinese moved in (to save them
from themselves, mind). But there is also admiration in this depiction. The Tibetans
are not vilified, and the camera loves them and seems eager to preserve for
posterity something that may be disappearing. In any case, this is a window
into a very different world than what we in the west are used to.
From an outside perspective, it is a clever touch to
downplay elements so deeply culturally rooted as narrative and dialogue and
replacing them with large, universal impressions of loss and struggle. We may
not understand exactly what is going on, but we do understand that. Who is not
moved to tears by Dorbu standing in the snow with his dead son in his arms?
The result is a movie that works a lot better than it
sounds. I am not certain it would have worked on most other locations, but for
the Tibetan plateau, this seems like the right movie.
If you ever dreamed of going to Tibet, but it never really
panned out, this is as good a substitute as you will ever get.
This ends 1986 for me. I am ready to move on to 1987.
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