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I cannot help thinking that Tian Zhuangzhuang is not only the least appreciated of the great contemporary Chinese directors, but also the least talented - his films (that is, the three that I have seen) made a lesser impression on me than, let's say, the works of Jia Zhangke or the nineties' output of Zhang Yimou.

"Lan feng zheng" (The Blue Kite), a socio-critical portrait of life in Communist China, seems a bit too static in its quiet, sober realism, with the director's continuous effort to charge Maoism tending to veil everything else ; only in the last segment the movie became truly touching for me.

In "Xiao cheng zhi chun" (Springtime in a Small Town) a couple of characters are, zombie-like, dragging past ornamental decorations of dilapidating claustrophobic interiors, or alternately walking on ruins of an ancient city wall ; I found this hardly anything more than a rather boring, banal quasi-Chekhovian étude.

The last - in fact, the oldest - of the three, "Dao ma zei" (The Horse Thief), is quite different. Minimalistic in plot and dialogues, it might be described as a sort of ethnographic documentary with touches of folk ballad : lyrical cinema close to some works of the Armenian Parajanov, albeit, to my regret, lacking his emotional power. Tibetan nature is the vamp of the movie, local religion + magic its core. The former I do savour, the latter I struggle to grasp, owing to the fact that my knowledge of it is considerably limited.

The last reason why I don't praise "The Horse Thief" as Scorsese did, may lie in the quality of the Chinese region-free disc (gzbeauty). Nevertheless, the non-anamorphic image from an old print, dirty and scratched, is better than I expected. It can be zoomed to proper OAR 2,35:1 on my player, though there's no room for subtitles then. For second viewing, they are not necessary anyway.

For those who liked "The Horse Thief" but felt deprived of the epic/action element, I would recommend "Kekexili" (Mountain Patrol) by Tian's compatriot Lu Chuan.

God knows what made the Broadway actor/director Edwin Sherin shoot this modest revenge western which I enjoyed immensely as a boy, next to George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", Martin Ritt's "Hombre" and Sydney Pollack's "Jeremiah Johnson". All four have more things in common than solely the title heroes' sky-blue eyes ; I would like to mention only what impressed me most (and still does), i.e., the final shot belonging in the gallery of the most memorable ones in the history of western.

"Valdez Is Coming" is schematic and not very believable, but it has its strengths, too : for instance some fine laconic dialogue in the vein of "The Magnificent Seven", or mostly fine actors with Lancaster in the lead. (It may be a personal prejudice, but I always found the old circus artiste more convincing in roles like this one than in those in Visconti's frescoes.) I enjoyed especially Barton Heyman as charismatic El Segundo, despite the reservations of colleague R.J.Maxwell (which sound justified to me).

Remarkable is the participation of the veteran Hungarian cinematographer Gábor Pogány ; his camera-work here is nothing like as spectacular as in, let's say, "Il Cristo proibito", yet there are moments when the viewer's eye rejoices, even given the mediocre non-anamorphic transfer of the MGM's PAL disc.

As opposed to the prevailing opinion I happen to like every new movie of Terrence Malick more than the previous one ; that applies also to "The Tree of Life", the director's least epic and apparently most subjective work so far.

The film, relevant in content, mostly brilliant in form and deeply affecting in both, undoubtedly has its flaws (cardboard characterization and bombastic finale, for example). But these are not of such proportions as those who marred some of its similarly ambitious contemporaries, let's say "Melancholia" by Lars von Trier. Malick holds his standards even in the pseudo-biblical sequence of Creation, where he does not shrink back from playing games a la Stan Brakhage in frames reminiscent of Godfrey Reggio's opuses, and, right next to it, from introducing CGI dinosaurs, an already stale attraction of mainstream cinema. In this respect "The Tree of Life" represents an intellectual exercise in style - there are references not only to other movies but to works of world literature, and, if I'm not wrong, also to particular European painters, classical and modern. But of course that's not in what the movie's strength and charm lies. Unfolding in perfect accord of image, sound and feeling that underlies and carries the former two, "The Tree of Life" is straight and simple, one is tempted to say anti-intellectual. Through the director's eyes we see his (ingeniously cast) hero as both his and our alter ego in search of happiness, truth and meaning in life ; at every moment we are there, taken in account, allowed to feel what he feels ; none of the beautiful images, none of the accompanying music pieces seemed ciphered, forced, too manipulative, clichéd or cheesy to me .... Malick, painting his story of coming of age and ageing in the United States between a hyper-authoritarian father ("Nature",surprisingly) and a nearly-angelic mother ("Grace")is both less and more than American poor man's Proust - for his medium is modern cinema and he is one of its masters.

Times when abstract art was misunderstood and scorned are long gone. Many of us delight in lyrical poetry. Some got used to find pleasure in lyrical fiction, too. It seems we still have to learn to appreciate lyrical cinema. Malick is one - maybe the greatest - of the few American movie makers who are pushing the audience in this direction, and "The Tree of Life" is a true cinematic poem of life, light, love and loss ; for me, clearly a masterpiece.