Martin Scorsese on his favourite movie of the 1990s: “This is what life is all about”
The 1990s were a feast for the eyes when it came to cinema, and few directors were as prominent during the decade as Martin Scorsese. The Italian-American filmmaker released several excellent motion pictures in the final moments of the 20th Century
They include the mob movies GoodFellas and Casino, the psychological thriller Cape Fear (all three starring his frequent actor Robert De Niro), the historical epic Kundun and the period drama The Age of Innocence.
Both Scorsese and one of the greatest film critics of all time, Roger Ebert, once named their favourite movies of the 1990s. Arriving at the top of both men’s pile, we see that Scorsese’s top choice is an interesting one because it wasn’t actually made in that particular decade.
“Well, it was actually made in 1986,” Scorsese began explaining, “but it didn’t really become widely known in the United States until the early nineties, which is when I saw it for the first time. It’s called Horse Thief, and it was made in Tibet by the mainland Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang.”
Going on to describe the film’s narrative, Scorsese said, “The story of the film is as simple and elemental as the lives of the people it depicts. A man is ostracized from his tribe for stealing horses. His living conditions become so severe that his son dies. He repents and is accepted back into the fold but is forced to steal horses again to keep the second child alive.”
The director went on to explain that it’s the simplicity of the film that allows one to understand its initially seeming strange culture. “I have a great interest in anthropology, and Zhuangzhuang takes you inside a culture that initially felt as distant to me as the surface of the moon,” he said. “Because he stays so simple and so specific, the point of view becomes universal. This is what life is all about. Struggling to keep your family alive.”
Roger Ebert also offered his opinion on Zhuang’s film. “It’s about people who are hungry and cold, who are walking around in the snow barefoot,” he said. “His choice is to be a horse thief or be dead. Be a horse thief, or my child starves, and he’s already lost one child. He’s up against the absolute extremities of economic desperation.”
Check out The Horse Thief by Tian Zhuangzhuang in full below to get a feel for why Scorsese considers it the best movie of the 1990s despite it actually being released in 1986.
