I read a review on here saying that he was no Scorsese or film student and generally a cineaste. In other words, he thought that one could only enjoy the film if they analyse and explicate it as opposed to absorb it. I respect that he flouts it for a lack of entertainment, but generally speaking this film doesn't need a large overlook or analysis (though that can explain elements such as the sheep mask and the way in which they 'insert swords to pasture the sheep). What we must remember is that we're entering another world that is foreign to those in the western world.
The film warrants a high score anyway. Supposedly the year and period is set in 1923 as the prelude purports, but actually this was stipulated to be set in the time frame. Tian says that there's no necessity for a time period and that the film should be seen as a film without a period, as though it's pervasive. But taking this into consideration the film uses an old style; it's shot on celluloid, it's very visual compositions along with superimposition's and montages, which almost resemble the Rocky series, so the film is definitely a product of its time. But the truth still remains about the narrative within.
The main character (it says his name is Luobur on my DVD, but this site says his name is Norbu, but either way he's the focal character) has a son, Zhaxi, who in the beginning of the film has already died to due to illness and then gets devoured by birds, as a formation of religious men bat a ball as though it's a chime and his body gets taken up into the ether; this scene proved to be heavily controversial in China, but fascinating over here. Then we go into a descent of this landscape, where Norbu has to fend for himself and eventually cuts the strap of a horse to sell for his own needs. The film has a ponderous lapsing, such as when the tribal chief's father dies, and it's in this instance that the film absorbs us and shows us how the human condition affects the spectre as it sacredly goes in the sky... Norbu has to look after his other son and we see how he raises it by the little drips of water he picks up from the rain and how they bathe in the water to overcompensate for the fact they have no bath. Dolma (on my Chinese DVD, it says a different name wholly, but I'll disregard this) starts to fend for herself as the silhouetted world shows. Sometimes the film chronicles the incandescent lighting and ambient naturalistic light that creates an unknown dynamism in film.
One of my favourite parts is when he looks over the tribe as they chant. Now being unaccustomed to the Tibet traditions, I became increasingly interested in the way they looked at things, masquerading their faces with what either seems like sheep, calf or, appropriately, a horse. It's the emotional intensity that gets me with these moments that transpire. Tian tends to soar his score in for dramaturgical effect or better yet use the sounds of the people around to break it. For example, when Norbu comes to take a body into the water, he gets stoned along with the body and though he doesn't die, it leaves a rather perplexing effect. It can either be a negative energy or a positive energy.
There's actually only one graphic moment craning on a sheep getting slaughtered while the bereft Norbet lies out there in the cold shunned. It could be looked at as dispensable and graphic, but I look at it as a day in this individuals life. Tian, as has been said, was avant garde in making a documentary-esque film set to the backdrop of tumultuous times and beautifully lit mountains with lots of sacred iconography, which end up becoming too breathtaking with its superimposition's and the lost hope into the abyss of time.
The film is slow (a caveat and to reference the beginning of this review), but wholly overwhelming. It sometimes can inundate you with drama and melodrama that proves to be insignificant, such as when the chief's Father dies and so forth. But in the end, I felt like being in the eyes of a film maker in progress. It sometimes feels meditated at times as well. A cultural film that can be ignored (only by those not interested in film-making) or can be looked at as a textbook at the instigating film.
Tian said it was more about image then plot, character and story and though this may be a defect to the country he's in (In 1993, he made Blue Kite, which put him in exile for a decade, so... his images certainly were omnipotent anyway), it still sprawls over to a new culture like Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji or Akira Kurosawa; it just demands that you have the temerity to speak it with such vision. A scary insight into an eerily harrowing landscape that I have never entered, but can look at through this well done film.
The film warrants a high score anyway. Supposedly the year and period is set in 1923 as the prelude purports, but actually this was stipulated to be set in the time frame. Tian says that there's no necessity for a time period and that the film should be seen as a film without a period, as though it's pervasive. But taking this into consideration the film uses an old style; it's shot on celluloid, it's very visual compositions along with superimposition's and montages, which almost resemble the Rocky series, so the film is definitely a product of its time. But the truth still remains about the narrative within.
The main character (it says his name is Luobur on my DVD, but this site says his name is Norbu, but either way he's the focal character) has a son, Zhaxi, who in the beginning of the film has already died to due to illness and then gets devoured by birds, as a formation of religious men bat a ball as though it's a chime and his body gets taken up into the ether; this scene proved to be heavily controversial in China, but fascinating over here. Then we go into a descent of this landscape, where Norbu has to fend for himself and eventually cuts the strap of a horse to sell for his own needs. The film has a ponderous lapsing, such as when the tribal chief's father dies, and it's in this instance that the film absorbs us and shows us how the human condition affects the spectre as it sacredly goes in the sky... Norbu has to look after his other son and we see how he raises it by the little drips of water he picks up from the rain and how they bathe in the water to overcompensate for the fact they have no bath. Dolma (on my Chinese DVD, it says a different name wholly, but I'll disregard this) starts to fend for herself as the silhouetted world shows. Sometimes the film chronicles the incandescent lighting and ambient naturalistic light that creates an unknown dynamism in film.
One of my favourite parts is when he looks over the tribe as they chant. Now being unaccustomed to the Tibet traditions, I became increasingly interested in the way they looked at things, masquerading their faces with what either seems like sheep, calf or, appropriately, a horse. It's the emotional intensity that gets me with these moments that transpire. Tian tends to soar his score in for dramaturgical effect or better yet use the sounds of the people around to break it. For example, when Norbu comes to take a body into the water, he gets stoned along with the body and though he doesn't die, it leaves a rather perplexing effect. It can either be a negative energy or a positive energy.
There's actually only one graphic moment craning on a sheep getting slaughtered while the bereft Norbet lies out there in the cold shunned. It could be looked at as dispensable and graphic, but I look at it as a day in this individuals life. Tian, as has been said, was avant garde in making a documentary-esque film set to the backdrop of tumultuous times and beautifully lit mountains with lots of sacred iconography, which end up becoming too breathtaking with its superimposition's and the lost hope into the abyss of time.
The film is slow (a caveat and to reference the beginning of this review), but wholly overwhelming. It sometimes can inundate you with drama and melodrama that proves to be insignificant, such as when the chief's Father dies and so forth. But in the end, I felt like being in the eyes of a film maker in progress. It sometimes feels meditated at times as well. A cultural film that can be ignored (only by those not interested in film-making) or can be looked at as a textbook at the instigating film.
Tian said it was more about image then plot, character and story and though this may be a defect to the country he's in (In 1993, he made Blue Kite, which put him in exile for a decade, so... his images certainly were omnipotent anyway), it still sprawls over to a new culture like Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji or Akira Kurosawa; it just demands that you have the temerity to speak it with such vision. A scary insight into an eerily harrowing landscape that I have never entered, but can look at through this well done film.