The film's ending is one of the most memorable in cinema, and achieves an eerie grace, consistent with its almost unique tone - allusively Biblical and allegorical, yet resistant to specific meanings and interpretations. The plot is a narrative of human cruelty and escalating despair, but always with enough mystery in the motivation to ward off easy condemnations; and perhaps even to indicate divine guidance. Throughout, Wiazemsky seizes on the donkey as a symbol of transcendence(her mother calls it a saint in the end); it's formally christened at the beginning and undergoes something approaching a formal funeral, all of which gives its life the contours of a spiritual journey of discovery. The narrative encompasses both revelations (the interlude in the fair; new tortures like the mean old man who starves and beats him) and retrenchment; both life's austerity, its roots in servitude, and its enormous potential dignity. Never was a donkey filmed so evocatively - but as always with Bresson, the simplicity is thrilling too - there's no false artistry here; no dubious anthropomorphism. A necessary film, and I'm amazed that I'm the first one to be commenting on it here.
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allyjack24 August 1999
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peter_lawrence6 February 2008This is a very important film. It makes you look into yourself and examine your own worth.
The world is not a fair place to live in. It has its own social structures and with each their is a certain perception of worth. Robert Bresson displays these perceptions from the bottom up.
Much like Vittorio DeSica's Umberto D, this film intertwines the relationship between man and beast. But who is the beast? It's society.
With images shot in crisp black and white Robert Bresson reveals the sordidness of the human soul, how cruel, selfish, pathetic, and unjust it can be. Au Hasard Balthazar is not an easy film to watch, but its honesty and approach towards society's injustices make it a must see. -
dbdumonteil14 September 2004During the nineteenth century ,the comtesse de Segur wrote a novel for the children called "memoirs of a donkey" .A very pious writer,she chose the donkey as a symbol of humility...as Robert Bresson did I suppose.The very first pictures of the movie,with the children,"christening" the donkey ,might be a nod to the writer whom the young Bresson,like all his generation must have read when he was a young boy."Au hasard Balthazar " is an updated version of "les memoires d'un ane" ,but a very austere story:although Bresson's work enjoys a very high rating on the site,I must say that it's not for all tastes.I cannot imagine,say, a "matrix" fan getting enthusiastic about it.
Bresson's actors are non -professionals -with the exception of Anne Wiazemski,but it was her debut;then she became the par excellence intellectual actress,for the likes of Godard,Tanner and Garrel,all directors that easily make me yawn my head off-,but do not expect a "natural "performance.I hope the non-French speaking who wrote a comment saw the movie in French with English subtitles.Dubbed in another language ,Bresson's works lose a lot of their originality.Because the actors speak in a distant voice,in a neutral style as if they were reciting Descartes's "the Discourse on Method".They never show any emotion,even through their darkest hour (not even after the heroine's rape).
Bresson films his human characters as if they were Martians ,and his sympathy for the donkey is the only pity he has to give us.This beast of burden seems to carry on its back all the sins of the world,and his route is a calvary.A woman says "this donkey is a saint" .
Bresson showed us the Beast in Man and the Man in Beast. -
aliasanythingyouwant16 August 2005The star of Au hasard Balthazar is a donkey, a trained animal that has been led, goaded, into what passes, in an animal sense, for a performance. Of course there is nothing new about this - animals have been stars since Rescued By Rover - yet there is something unique about the performance of the donkey in Au hasard Balthazar, something that strikes one sort of funny if one gets to thinking about it. It has to do with the approach of Robert Bresson, a director whose way of working with actors was, shall we say, unusual. An auteurist in the purest sense, Bresson believed, zealously it seems, that the director should be the sole creative force behind a film, the one person responsible for the movie's tone, its meaning. The problem with most movies, if you look at things in a Bressonian way, is that stubborn habit of actors to sometimes change the meaning, the texture of a scene by how they play it - that irksome tendency of actors to take the creative reins themselves, and slip things into scenes that aren't meant to be there. Bresson's solution to this problem? Rehearse your actors to death, make them do take-after-take until the words no longer mean anything to them, until they have lost the ability to be spontaneous anymore, to do anything but what their director tells them to - in short, break them like animals. The people in Bresson's films perform their actions with the same hollow, mechanical absence-of-will one perceives in a circus elephant rolling a ball, and this is exactly as Bresson wants it, for it allows him to carry out his cinematic plans without fear of their being subverted by an actor who has some contradictory notion in their head of what a scene is supposed to be about, who their character is. The human actors in Au hasard Balthazar, stripped of their emotional tools, their tricks, occupy exactly the same plane as the donkey Balthazar, who is, as they are, a trained animal, an element in a composition.
The first scenes are an idyll: the foal Balthazar, new-stripped from his mother's teat, becomes the favorite pet of a group of kids spending the summer together on a farm. This is a time for frolicking, for amorously carving names into benches - but alas the childish harmony is doomed soon to end. Bresson conveys the fleetingness of youth, cutting quickly through a series of tableaux depicting carelessness and joy slightly darkened by the presence of a sickly young girl; then without warning we're presented with the realities of grown-up existence, embodied most cruelly by the image of poor Balthazar, now grown, harnessed to a salt-wagon (salt having ironically been his favorite treat during his care-free younger days). It's here that Bresson gives us an indication as to the donkey's more-than-animal nature: Balthazar, having been mistreated, rebels against his owner, tips the wagon and, about to be set upon by a mob of men with pitch-forks, flees. Some instinct - or is it conscious will? - leads Balthazar back to the farm, which has been taken over by a former schoolteacher whose daughter, Marie, once one of Balthazar's playmates, still resides, her existence a lonely one. This would seem the beginning of a new happiness for Balthazar, but the donkey's fate is alas still clouded with gloom. Marie becomes the object of the juvenile delinquent Gerard's amorous attentions; for obscure reasons the jaded miscreant is resentful of Balthazar, and avails himself of every opportunity to torture the poor beast.
Tenderness and cruelty live side-by-side in Au hasard Balthazar, and seem equally the product of an almost mindless instinct. Nowhere is this embodied more purely than in the character of Gerard (Francois Lafarge), the angry sadist who becomes Balthazar's chief tormentor. Gerard is capable of being gentle, as demonstrated by his wooing of the poor farm-girl Marie (the Pre-Raphaelite beauty Anne Wiazemsky), but he's equally capable of unfeeling viciousness, as when he ties a piece of newspaper to Balthazar's tail and sets it alight. Is Gerard a good person or a bad one? Does he hate Balthazar, does he love Marie? These questions seem of little concern to Bresson, who views human affairs in terms of irresistible internal forces. Bresson, in a mysterious, vaguely irreverent way, blurs the line between human and animal, brings human behavior into the animal world while elevating Balthazar to the quasi-human. There's an awareness to Balthazar that's more than you would expect from your average quadruped, and it's through this hint of sentience that one begins seeing the saintly qualities in Balthazar, the patient endurance of hardship, the radiance of spirit.
It's an amazingly delicate piece of work by Bresson, an audacious idea carried out with the utmost discretion and skill. Perhaps only Bresson among all filmmakers could've made this idea work, because only he had mastered the art of rendering existence nearly abstract while at the same time achieving powerful emotional effects. If the film were merely symbolist it would be irrelevant - Balthazar can of course be seen as a symbol for a lot of things, but it doesn't seem right to reduce him to some emblem of suffering, some Christ-like trope. Balthazar is above all a character, a protagonist in a drama, but of course in Bresson there is never any sense of conventional drama, of easy emotion. As a storyteller Bresson was efficient but patient - his scenes never go on longer than they need to, yet you wouldn't call the pacing urgent. There's something about Bresson's cutting that keeps the story flowing briskly while never engendering a sense of hurry. He moves from one character to another, one situation to another, with an unfussy ease that shames most conventional directors with their dependence on transitions, devices and segues. The film's very pace helps convey Balthazar's saintly nature, his perseverance. It's a work at once touching, bold, enigmatic and stirringly human. -
mmmopens9 December 1999No matter how much one may love the cinema, purity is something that we rarely find on the screen. Wonder, yes. Spectacle, emotion by the bucketload, but purity, very rarely.
And Au Hasard Balthazar is the zenith of purity in the cinema. Through this matchless masterpiece, Bresson has shown us what the cinema might have been if it did not have the crushing obligation to make money.
For many years I regarded this as the greatest film ever made - and it still could deserve that epithet. What is certain is that with Balthazar, Bresson entered a form of expression in cinema that is so profound that it almost burns you to watch it.
Of course it's not about a donkey, but the sins of the world. And it is a measure of Bresson's staggering achievement that at the end of the film you can actually believe that you have witnessed the sins of the world. And it leaves you not shocked, nor angry - though both emotions are entirely appropriate - but numb with a desperate sadness.
On top of all of this, it is also the film which is the subject of probably the finest piece of film criticism in the English language - Andrew Sarris' long and wonderful review of it in The Village Voice on its initial New York release. That ends, 'it stands alone atop one of the loftiest pinnacles of artistically realised emotional experiences.'
And so it does. -
Xstal15 December 2022Born into a world of despair, pain and fear, with a back to carry allsorts on and two eyes to fill with tears, abused and often put upon, never knowing where things might have gone, but conforming to the stick and whip, while no one hears your prayers.
Poor old Balthazar doesn't know which way to turn, on occasions folks are kind and free, at other times they let him burn, but why are they so changeable, what makes these people tick, is it natural that their spirit is to hurt, with pain inflict.
The hazards of being a young woman growing up in rural France and the challenges of a donkey with the same backdrop, both brilliantly performed by the donkey and Anne Wiazemsky, who leave you under no illusion of the suffering they have to endure. -
alice liddell29 March 2000For all its formal brilliance, this is one of the least watchable films in the world, despite its enchanted opening and fairy tale elements. Seen through the eyes of a much-abused donkey, we are treated to a litany of corruption, legal (a man is accused of fraud), social (provincial France has never seemed so pinched, arid, spiritually void, with its inhabitants leading lives, in Joyce's words, of 'quiet desperation'), criminal (a gang of violent teenage smugglers), and personal (the leader of said gang rapes, with his cronies, his girlfriend, then locks her up naked), as well as a murder and suicide. What makes this possibly bearable is the limpidity and formal beauty of Bresson's style, and admirers refer to his pinpointing spiritual grace in human suffering, but I wouldn't count on it.
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Norwegianheretic17 December 2003Bresson's finest work is the result of completely giving up, even the chance at freedom -- because freedom, as the donkey and the girl might have known, is an illusion of joyousness. We see a movie about suffering, of giving in to suffering because to fight it would make you as wrong as the people who are perpetrating the suffering.
Au Hasard, Balthazar is an inspiring reassurance of the existence of God by the lack of even the slightest miracle or good fortune. What is not seen, the saving grace, is made more real and believable in its absence. (This is what the real essence of the Catholic church once was {when it accurately recreated Christ's gift}and what illuminates Robert Bresson's personal spiritual path in the otherwise deeply perverted church of today).
The story, that of a donkey's life, is, on the surface, absurd. But what Bresson can bring to it through the patient austerity of his camera work, the martyr like surrender of his characters (including the donkey Balthazar), is as transcendent and enlightening as a private epiphany. What is amazing is that he is able to project so much depth into an audience so unsuspecting.
Finally, and perhaps what makes this film and all of Bresson's work so illuminating is that he had an unrelentingly objective film sensibility quite like that of Luis Bunuel. And because Bunuel was clearly an atheist, the fact that Bresson would be as naked as Bunuel and still move us is the proof that there was something to his faith. -
gatotsu9114 April 2012I recently watched this movie for a film course, and scrolling the user reviews on IMDb out of curiosity I came upon Flavia's review, "Unjustified Criticism", from back in 2010, and laughed my ass (get it?) off on the spot. Congratulations, sir or madam - you are the very image of the snobby, elitist pseudo-intellectual cinephile! Yes, of COURSE the only reasons some "primitive" commoner might dislike "Au Hasard Belthazar" is because they would rather be watching "The Matrix" or because it gives them boo-boo feelings in their hearts. Of COURSE. You even made sure to point a finger at "society", that vague, eternal enemy of the masturbatory would-be intelligentsia. Good on you, mate!!
Well, having seen the film knowing of its adoration among critics and intellectuals, and been subsequently underwhelmed by it, allow me to share my own assessment, in hopes that Flavia may find my criticisms more "justified" than the plebeians who came before me.
I could hardly call "Au Hasard Belthazar" a "bad" film. It more or less succeeds at being what it wants to be - a bleak, muted, melodramatic little parable of fatalism and misanthropy. I admit I don't entirely get the accusations that the film is incoherent or obtuse (at least in its meaning; its plot is another story, as I will address below) - as art films go, this one is ridiculously straightforward. Its core message, simplified and paraphrased by way of popular idiom: "Life's a bitch, and then you die." Not rocket science, and certainly not Kant.
I possibly (probably) lack the formal background in film technique at present to properly explain what is so remarkable about its cinematography, editing, etc. - none of it particularly stood out to me, one way or the other - but with so many gray-haired film critics in agreement over its aesthetic genius, I guess I'll just take their word for it until further notice.
But just because the film is "good" from a strictly artistic standpoint doesn't mean I have to like it. And I sure as heck didn't. I didn't HATE it, or even really think that poorly of it overall (in the pantheon of pretentious art films, there are countless far more obnoxious specimens more deserving of my distaste) but there are an awful lot of things about it I didn't like. I didn't like its deliberately obtuse, choppy and incomplete "plot" "structure". I "got" it, but I didn't like it. I can't believe there was no way of communicating the theme of Belthazar's ignorance ("innocence") of the greater world around him without all but taunting the viewer. I didn't like the dour, mechanical manner in which it goes about its business, with only a single scene (the circus) suggesting anything resembling a sense of humor or liveliness, and that being gone as quickly and abruptly as it arrives. I didn't like the stilted, disaffectedly gloomy acting and dialogue, presenting human beings as mere two-dimensional figures in a cosmic diorama rather than independent entities with believable thoughts, feelings and behaviors operating within a web of existence larger than themselves (the essence of great tragedy, in my opinion). I didn't like the way it grasped at images of suffering and abuse for easy pathos - the final scene was powerful, yes, but even as I felt saddened by it I also felt manipulated. And I didn't like the way it contrived the worst possible outcome for every situation, just as a heavy-handed means of proving its point about how life is suffering and human nature is deeply corrupt (did you know Bresson was a hardcore Catholic?).
Anyone in touch with the real world outside of the hermetic sphere occupied by artists and intellectuals shouldn't have much difficulty guessing why the average viewer probably won't care much for "Au Hasard Belthasar". It's dour, it's muted, it's impossible to follow on any level beneath that of pure allegory, it doesn't have much insight to impart to any world-wise person that they don't already know, and yeah, it's not very entertaining. Some may appreciate the message or the craftsmanship, and I can respect that. But to claim that disliking "Au Hasard Belthazar" could only be a result of some deep-seated deficiency on the part of the viewer is pure self-servicing nonsense. -
"Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished," Jean-Luc Godard once said, "because this film is really the world in an hour and a half." Robert Bresson's 1966 masterpiece defies any conventional analysis, telling a story of sin and redemption by following Balthazar, a donkey, as he passes through the hands of a number of masters, including a peasant girl, a satanic delinquent, and a saintly fool. Perhaps the greatest and most revolutionary of Bresson's films, Balthazar is a difficult but transcendentally rewarding experience, and the director is better able than in his previous work to put his philosophy of cinema into practice, that is is to say, the filming and meditation of that which is concealed. This is a gorgeous Criterion DVD with and excellent digital transfer, and it includes some fine supplemental material such as a French television program which includes commentary from such notables as Godard, Malle, and Bresson himself, speaking about the film. Never to be missed.
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FilmLabRat5 December 2003Perhaps one of the only films with a live animal in the lead role, this Bresson film is profound art. Excellent acting, masterful direction, decent (new) translation ... French is a little more descriptive and poetic, as usual. The camera follows the winding life span of a donkey in rural France. Used for noble and ignoble, legal and illegal purposes at times, the donkey changes hands repeatedly, at times abused and other times shown loving care and attention. Akin to the style and tone of pre-War French Poetic Relism, despair grows as the setting opens with hopeful simplicity and deteriorates as dreams fade, hearts harden and people die. In the end, the donkey who has witnessed much becomes not only a pawn but a victim. Le pauvre. Funny I didn't see a notice at the end of the film: "No animals were harmed in the making of this film." Anyway, well worth watching more than once.
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Its restraint is its strength- beautiful monotone images, silences, gestures all laced with a a simple piano sonata that underscores the mood of the film perfectly. Trancendental and sometimes joyful, the film (in typical Bressonian style) eventually gives way to an unbearably sad vision of 'life'. As always, this film's style and content are a product of Bressons Catholic beliefs (As a hardy atheist- Bressons films are about as trancendental as my life gets...) But thats enough about style.
The content matches the style in its ingenuity and simplicity. Godard called this film 'life in 90 minutes' and it does seem to be complete in the sense that this is not 'about' anything specific- but the journey of life- which applies to us all without exception. It is this simplicity of focus on life that makes 'Balthazar' stand out as a work of cinematic art, and enables me to label it above all other films that I have seen as: my favourite. As a subjective (this must be noted) and highly moving interpretation and meditation on life, Bresson's vision is essential to anyone with a pulse. -
bw9211617 August 2006Film school students should be required to watch this. It's an encyclopedia of concise, efficient storytelling methods. A distraught man rolls over on his bed - and those five seconds tell you everything you need to know - other filmmakers would take a five-minute scene to get the same message across. After watching this film, most Hollywood-made films seem excessively loaded down with words. The mantra in film schools is always "show, don't tell," but they rarely practice what they preach. Usually they end up having a character say out loud a main plot point. Robert Bresson is the master of "show, don't tell," and any aspiring filmmaker should be required to watch this and some of his other films.
My complaint about this film is that the story is contrived and unrealistic. It focuses almost entirely on cruelty, crime and suffering, at the expense of anything else. This film depicts human life as constant misery, even for the "successful people." It ignores the other side of life - that good things can and do happen, sometimes at the least expected time. Film critics like to claim that Bresson never manipulates the viewer's emotions, but that's baloney. As you sit there and watch one awful thing after another happen on the screen, how can you feel anything other than bummed out and depressed?
The end result is a warped view of human life on Earth, which is presented to the viewer without editorializing, and the viewer is supposed to draw his/her own conclusions. But the evidence presented is so heavily biased towards misery that the conclusion is embedded within the evidence. Discount the story and watch this film only for its style and technique. -
jeremyglick12 November 2007Au Hasard Balthazar will generally elicit reviews from two types of people: those who consider it an incomprehensible piece of art-house crap, and those who marvel at the genius of Bresson.
I, however, fall somewhere in the middle. I'm aware that Bresson's movie is filled with symbolism and layered with subtext, but his approach turns me off. Bresson's mantra is this: no acting under any circumstances. Step 1 is to hire non-actors. Step 2 is to direct them not to emote. Step 3 is to keep reshooting the scene until the actors give up emoting. It was common for him to do 30 takes of even the simplest scenes. He doesn't do this to be cruel, but because he sincerely believes the truth of the material cannot be revealed until the people saying the lines stop thinking about the fact that they are saying lines. A kind of brute force method of ensuring that no one on his set is attempting to craft a performance. He definitely gets what he's after, but whether or not it's worth seeing is questionable.
As a movie viewer raised in the spoon-fed post-Spielberg Hollywood era, I find it tough to get through Bresson. I disliked Balthazar, but not because I think it's crap. Bresson made his film inaccessible so it would be hard to understand, but because it's so pretentious I didn't WANT to understand it. -
che-297 February 2000It took me years to track down a video copy of this rare film. It was definitely worth searching for. It's my favorite of Bresson's films. A very intense and dark drama about the quality of human and animal life on the face of the earth. This film will definitely bring you to your knees.
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ksie_1524122 August 2005A truly unique work in cinema. It is simply amazing that a story that is, on the surface, mostly about the life of a donkey can cause you to ponder the mysteries and ironies of life and fate. Bresson created here a model of how to say more with less. The final scene of this film is illustrative of this in its extraordinary ability to deeply move the viewer with only a bare minimum of directorial touch.
The plot lines of Au Hasard Balthazar at times seem forced, sometimes confusing the viewer, and often leaving the characters' motivations unexplained. This matters little, however, because they all follow the same theme that one's actions, explainable or not, are often just a reaction to the environment within which we are placed. The human characters and the donkey are one. Just as Balthazar must succumb to the whims of his owners, so are we humans often just surviving, and submitting to, the actions of those who control us. The film is in many ways a rumination about the free will actually afforded us in life. A key scene is between Marie and the miserly farmer (winemaker?), where the latter expounds upon his philosophy. Money and self-confidence are the keys for him because they allow a certain autonomy that lets him do as he pleases. Money, or the lack thereof, is depicted in several instances as often replacing true morality or spirituality in the characters' lives.
Another scene that mesmerizes (there are several) is when Balthazar is pulling the circus-animal feeding cart through the cage area. The soundless shots of the donkey making eye contact with the other animals is brilliantly done (again with little camera flourish). They seem to be communicating silently with only their gazes, which say "here we are, this is our fate". Extremely affecting, and staggering in its simplicity.
This is a film to be watched again and then again, and then again. In one of the DVD extra features, film scholar Donald Ritchie states that he has seen Balthazar many times, yet he still cries during the ending. I believe this and understand it. Credos to Criterion for resurrecting this classic, and for again doing such a fine production job. -
this is the most beautiful movie i ever seen in my life.
A perfect sinthesis of elegance, technique, simplicity. The use of the theme of a sonata of schubert for piano is also a way to suggest the lonelyness of our souls on the earth, the simple and melancholy melody its the perfect expression of the donky balthazar. I could say many things about the donky in the Bible, but if you are a believer this movie is also an experience for your soul..its a way to think about the meaning of life..after you see such a movie, your attitude toward cinema changes..and there is a beauty in each single photo, an elegant, essential beauty: the girl naked, the donky on a street...the silent and unsignificant life of a donky and its desperation and sufference, its wisdom and patience, its perfect sanctity. -
Quinoa19847 August 2006Maybe I'm not as completely overwhelmed with the work of the immensely revered director Robert Bresson as others are, and I almost wish I was more so. I do know from the other films I have seen of his- Pickpocket and A Man Escaped- that he is one of the superior craftsmen of his time in France, a veritable storyteller with a very precise, original craftsmanship and way about telling his stories that shows compromise is nowhere in sight. However I don't think, try as I might (and I do love other films that do evoke religious connotations and metaphors like with Dreyer and Rossellini's films, which perhaps aren't as heavy-handed), to soak into all of the allegory of it all.
When it comes down to it, Au hasard Balthazar is a kind of fable, and it is successful even as some of the Christian connections are lost on me. It is strongest at being a dramatic look at two lives where drama doesn't need to be put to highest heights or given a shot of adrenaline. There's almost something very worn down about the characters- as well as the donkey Balthazar- that is the best part of what Bresson does try to draw parallels to. His direction might be un-easy to get along with, but it is rewarding in a cathartic way too.
Much has been written about Balthazar being a kind of saintly figure, or Jesus, who suffers all of his life and then at the end dies a sorrowful death for, perhaps, everyone else's sins. But if that side of reading into it isn't really suiting, and you're looking for just a really well-told story (which is really all a fable can do), the donkey's- and Marie's (Anne Wiazemesky) story does take on a neo-realist side to it too. It's the everyday things that count in this world, and act as burdens that don't give people the kind of life and enjoyment they could have.
While Bresson maybe doesn't have his great strengths in much of the dialog, his direction of the actors, which involved multiple takes to the point of (as with the donkey) beating the life out of it, is quite unique. Like with Pickpocket, you can tell something is so suppressed with them, even with the careless young man who Marie falls in love with- and later leaves- and the unfortunate drunk who 'takes care of Balthazar for a while, that it's no wonder nothing happy ever really comes to any of them. Also, the body language is so distinct and powerful that it really makes the uncomplicated nature of the photography and editing work that much more so. Turn the sound off and it might not even make a difference (what with lack of music)
Two of my favorite scenes might likely be two of the best scenes I've ever seen from the few Bresson films I've seen. One is when Balthazar has a brief stint in a circus, and it's interesting to see how the simplistic nature of the story reaches, for once, an almost ironically amusing point in this scene. For a moment you're pulled into that illusion of a Disney movie- where an animal is meant to be more like us, but then once reality comes back in it wipes that all away. The other scene is during a dance in a bar, where everyone's bopping away to a jazz song, and the young man mentioned before, throws bottles and causes a ruckus, but no one seems to stop dancing at all.
Are they too, who should be having a good time, that numbed by their lives to not be shook up by the disturbances around them? It is a film that really does get you thinking once it ends, about how small-town society treats things in very set ways that make some like Marie want to just get out. There's an undercurrent in the story of money being an integral- and hurtful- part of the world, where pride and suffering gets mixed up in it too. But most striking when watching the film are the scenes with the donkey, who punctuates the un-wavering methods of those around him (who very rarely are actually kind and happy around him, aside from the kids early on). These scenes display Bresson utilizing his storytelling and skills with poignancy that, if you can identify with the innocent(s) of the story, is kind of mind-blowing.
Even if the film is possibly imperfect, it nevertheless left me feeling I had seen something special. Few filmmakers can get away today with putting together a tragic story and pulling parallels between a worker animal and a misguided young woman and how others out there try to live every day. It's a brave movie more often than not that might hit (and has hit) other viewers both young and old alike. Grade: A -
Cosmoeticadotcom18 October 2008The greatness of Robert Bresson's 1966 black and white film, Au Hasard Balthazar (which, translated, means something like Randomly Balthazar or By Chance Balthazar), comes not from only one aspect of it, nor even just a few. Virtually every aspect of the film reeks and resonates greatness, although, despite this being the near full consensus opinion of film lovers and critics alike, it is one of the most poorly understood films I've ever read the criticism of. This is because so many aspects of the film are based upon its most superficial qualities, rather than those deeper and more essential, even as the film achieves this depth in only 95 minutes. This economy occurs because the film focuses not on the superfluities of living, but only those things with resonance and meaning, the important and poetic moments that distill all else. And, oftentimes, those things with meaning are not the expected architectures of the human face, but those of other parts of the human body, like hands, backs, and human postures; all of which evoke connections and depths that would likely be unthinkable to cogitate on in films by other directors.
But before I get into this film's essence, let me synopsize the narrative. The film is a picaresque 'animal film,' and I am an animal lover, so I am emotionally inclined to be favorable to any such film. Yet, when I write this fact of the film's nature, I do not mean it in the way a film like My Dog Skip (a great 'animal' film aimed at children) is an 'animal film.' Au Hasard Balthazar goes above and beyond even that high level of art, for many reasons; yet one of the most manifest is that it is shorn of all sentimentalism, even that sort which is meant in a positive sense. The film follows the life and death of a male donkey in the French countryside. Named and christened Balthazar by his first owner- a young girl named Marie, the donkey grows up, changes owners several times, and eventually ages, and bleeds nearly to death, seemingly dying on a hilltop, surrounded by a flock of sheep, after being accidentally shot at night, when he is stolen by the film's villain, to transport illegal good across the French border. But, before that denouement, we get to see many slices of life: that of the donkey, its owners, and the people that are around it in the small village; even those things that are beyond the purview of the beast's impassive eye....Au Hasard Balthazar is nothing short of a masterpiece; a work of art of the highest order; amongst the greatest dozen or two films ever made, and on par with the same highly ranked works of art by the greatest writers, poets, playwrights, musicians, and painters. It also points out convincingly why art is better than religion or philosophy in dealing with the 'big questions' in life, for art has an economy neither of the other two pursuits possess- witness Balthazar's death. How many words would be spilt in a religious text or philosophic tract to distill what the mere sight of a dying donkey amidst sheep does? Art is models of the real that encode and decode the real while elevating the very process of that encoding and decoding. Art (and especially film and its even more abstract cousin, poetry) can penetrate far more deeply, and with far less distraction than any other human media, into the essentials of existence. Art can elucidate these matters with eloquence and profundity; and art, and only art, can do so in the hands of a great artist.
I give you Robert Bresson. -
SAMTHEBESTEST13 November 2020Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) : Brief Review -
French cinema uses a mistreated donkey to show the reality and cruelty of human world, wow.. Au Hasard Balthazar is known as one of finest work of Robert Bresson although in first viewing you don't get it. Even i had to pause and re-watch some scenes and then read about it on internet to understand deep meaning of it. Now when i am done reading and re-watching i can say it confidently that, yes Au Hasard Balthazar is indeed one of the finest work of Bresson. The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. It involves all shades of characters like shameless, motiveless, arrogant, useless, greedy, inhuman etc. which make you feel disgusting that are we really watching a tale of saintliness or a crime film. Jokes a part, the main motive is to show the cruel face of human world and it comes from a Donkey's point of view. How he is mistreated and abused by humans and how do human abuse and slaughter each others. The film has very negative factors when it comes to pivotal roles as we see Marie being happy in abusive relationship and almost living like a who** leaving a kind hearted guy for it. On the other side continue roasters from male characters make it look very disturbing and negative film until you realise the fact that it has to be seen from Donkey's eyes who is enduring this since long time. Needless to say that the film is very realistic and compassionate so the pace is slow. Though, it worth the wait if you really understand subtle pointers and artistic filmmaking. Robert Besson could have made it little aggressive because it deals with abusive and vulgar topics too but he kept it in his own style trying to make it different from other filmmakers. Well, his overall efforts have paid off. Au Hasard Balthazar is made for classes and no matter how slowly but it reaches the destination.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest -
writers_reign26 June 2005This film belongs right up there with Citizen Kane and it's impossible to rate any film higher than that. Both should be mandatory viewing in every film school in the world where they would serve, with luck, to deter the average and inspire the gifted. Between them they represent everything that is good about the art and/or craft of making films. Citizen Kane chose to say a very simple thing - money can't buy happiness - in an extremely clever and sophisticated way; Au Hasard Balthazar chooses to say something open to a hundred interpretations in just about the simplest way possible. Au Hasard Balthazar is at once as simple as a glass of water and as complex as a snowflake. Above EVERYTHING it is both Beautiful and Heartbreaking and long after scholars, academicians, theologists and their Uncle Max have exhausted the debate from every permutation of metaphysical, metaphorical and allegorical mathematically possible its simplicity and beauty will remain etched in the memory. Not even Vincent Cassell at his worst inspires more hate and contempt than Francois Lefarge who swaggers through the film like a dysfunctional rooster, taunting, beating, setting fire to Balthazar's tail as the fancy strikes him and not even Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (who can do no wrong in these eyes) has done simplicity and decency better than Anne Wiazemsky, the only person in the entire film who feels any love for or shows any love to Balthazar. Like many people who love film I sometimes despair as the sea of Robocops, American Pies, Matrixes and worse threaten to grow to tsunami proportions and engulf us all in a tidal wave of mediocre merde and all I can say is that next time YOU feel like that slip Au Hasard Balthazar into the DVD and renew your faith in all that's best about film-making.
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planktonrules3 August 2006I think this movie is probably one of the most beloved films of groups like PETA. This isn't meant as an insult, but just stating that animal rights lovers will no doubt think this is a marvelous film, as it shows the repeated neglect and mistreatment a poor donkey must endure--only to end in a very inglorious and sad fashion. However, for the average viewer, the movie will still have impact--just not quite as much.
The film's central figure is the donkey and he's just an ordinary animal in every way. However, the story also shows snippets of the lives of the people that own the animal as it is passed from person to person. Each, it seems, is ultimately selfish and most are particularly vile people. In fact, because all people are ultimately BAD in this film, I could definitely see it being used as propaganda by animal rights advocates--whether or not this was the intention of the producers of the film.
Technically, the film was competently made and only mildly interesting. However, to me, it didn't seem GREAT or deserving of all the accolades, as it was just a very good movie and that is all. -
manjits15 May 2008The films of Robert Bresson have a special place in the history of cinema for their sheer poetry unmatched by any other director past or present. The films are austere and precise in the extreme. Even the emotions have been deliberately drained out; histrionics are non-existent and use of music minimal. Like poetry, it's not everyone's cup of tea. However, for those who develop the taste for it, the impact is indescribably beautiful.
Au Hasard Balthazar is the pinnacle of his artistic achievement (followed closely by Mouchette).
It's the story of human exploitation and cruelty to animals as well as to other humans. The protagonist is a donkey at the receiving end from his various owners, ranging from sadists, drunks and money-minded. The only one who has some soft spot for him is a young girl, who herself is a subject of exploitation and cruelty by some of the same people. The last scene of death of the donkey among a flock of sheep is among the finest in the history of cinema. -
john-24483 January 2007I just want to toss out an interpretation or two that I didn't see elsewhere.
Balthasar is a donkey and is presented as a blank slate. This allows others to interpret and decide on his role. For Marie, he is a companion offering comfort. For Marie's father, Balthasar is an embarrassment, representing backwardness. For Gerard, the donkey is a sort of antagonist and offers a chance to vent his anger. At the circus, Balthasar becomes a source of entertainment and mystery to the spectators. For most of his other owners, Balthasar is merely a beast of burden designed for work and given little thought. Arnold seems to have more sympathy for B-, perhaps seeing him as a fellow outcast. Maybe the message to take from this is that the world we see is a reflection of that which is inside of us.
Another idea I had is that Balthasar can be thought of as a stand-in for the viewer. We are passively watching the film and have no control over the events unfolding. If the director wants to make us suffer through watching a donkey's tail set on fire, we have little choice but to endure it. For the duration of the film, the director is the unseen god of the world we are immersed in.
Otherwise, I was at times bothered by the zombified acting and listless line readings. The lack of emotion and response from the people in the film made their lives appear similar to that of an animal. In the big picture, circumstance, chance and ultimately death serve to undermine human illusions of free will. Being meek and passive didn't work out so well for either Balthasar or Marie. There is a lot of religious allegory throughout, but it seemed rather jumbled. While the story itself is intentionally choppy and missing chunks of explication. A tale told by a donkey, full of stolidness and farming, signifying something? -
FairlyAnonymous25 September 2018I kid you not, this is one of the worst films I have seen and yet I generally like artsy films/experimental films as long as they aren't too pretentious. The biggest issue this movie has is a very simple one:
Investment.
Why am I watching this character and do I care about what happens to them.
Even some of the worst movies ever made have some form investment in the characters and the story, but this film does not. I can't name even one character who I genuinely cared about or was considered about their well being. Marie? Don't care about her. Arnold? Didn't even know his name until he was about to die. Gerard? He is the worst. Balthazar? Not even established as a truly relevant character until around the 50 minute mark and then he fades back into obscurity until he shows up at the end because, you know, the movie has his name in the title so I guess we should end with him. The amount of investment I had in the characters was so low that they all could've been brutally murdered on screen and I wouldn't even blink (and that is a VERY hard thing to do, as I am pretty sensitive to on-screen violence and don't like that kind of stuff very much).
I can understand why the core concept of this movie has the potential to be interesting. Having a series of mini-stories with an animal connecting them together to show the life of that animal is a neat idea, but this movie doesn't do anything really interesting with it. To be completely honest, if Balthazar's name wasn't in the title I would not have known that he is supposed to be an import figure in the movie. The amount of screen-time focused on the donkey as the key character in a scene might be about two-three minutes max, if even that.
Another huge issue with this film (outside of there being no reason to invest any time on the characters) is that none of the characters seem to run on human logic. They will just kind of do things and there never seems to be a reason why. One of the characters starts trashing a party by breaking mirrors, chairs, bottles, and what not yet no one even notices. That's not how humans react to people breaking stuff. Another scene is where a man is attempting to rape a woman yet when a car drives by she doesn't run for help. That's not how humans act. Heck, she then ends up dating a falling in love with him. That's not how humans act. That said man ends up stripping and beating her later on (with the parents finding out) but then the next scene the mother is talking to the man as if there is no bad blood between them. That's not how mothers act. There is a scene where a girl begs to be taken in by a man because she needs shelter, but then she immediately begins to berate him and start talking about pretentious stuff like "you know you will die too." "You are living in a house designed for death." "You are selfish" Granted, this man obviously wants to have sex with her, but she starts insulting him before he really makes any moves on her. Cops are investigating a house and tons of teenagers are running around behind the house, stepping on wood, and making noise when they aren't supposed to be there, yet the cops never notice or seem to care.
To make matters even worse, the dialogue isn't very good. There is nothing exciting or interesting in the way characters talk or communicate with each other. I'm perfectly okay with minimalistic dialogue, but make it effective. Most of the dialogue is incredibly basic or borderline painful to read. Marie has some of the dumbest lines in the film especially when she is talking to her old childhood lover (which she continually screws over).
The final nail in the coffin is the pacing. My goodness does this film have pacing problems and not because it is slow. This movie seems to run on a weird logic where characters will have conversations off-screen that are relevant to the plot yet the audience is never informed as to what it was they talked about or did. In one such scene Marie and her "new lover" are running through a field and she says that she needs to do something. This thing she needs to do results in her being beaten and stripped. As far as I know, there was NO IMPLICATION as to why she was doing what she was doing, where she was going, or why it was even necessary to confront her old friends. Another instance is a donkey leaves a tramp and then is bought by a circus and used for some mathematical acts. The original tramp shows up at the circus sees the donkey, and then we cut to the next scene with him having the donkey. Yes, the audience should be smart enough to infer that he got the donkey back fairly, but it kills the rhythm of the film. In another scene the mother calls the donkey a saint, we then see him dressed up as a saint as part of a ceremony, and then we cut back to Gerard taking it away at night all within the span of 12 seconds or so. What? Care to explain what just happened? This doesn't happen once in the film, but many many times. I could tell what was happening but there was always a hiccup in the way it was presented.
Lastly, everyone in other reviews seems to make this claim that the Donkey is a "saint" or "pure" or something along those lines but there is no backing for that in the film. The donkey DOES NOTHING in the film and makes no choices. To claim that it has a "character" of some sort is a lie as it is never presented with a character. It has no character so stop treating it like it has some deep philosophical and spiritual significance. It pulls carts and gets beaten. Big woop, that doesn't classify it as a saint. In fact, the concept of it being a saint is only brought up by the mother at the very end of the film but there is no build up to this conclusion. This would be like if in Nostalghia someone said a throw-away line like, "That german shepherd is a saint" and then all of the reviews of the movie say "the german shepherd clearly displays transcendence and sainthood by the way it follows its master around without uttering a sound".
In the end, I have no idea why this film is considered a masterpiece. There is not one good thing I have to say about it except for the actress who played Marie seemed to be skilled, but had the dishonor of playing an uninteresting character who would spout cheesy/on-the-nose dialogue every now and then. Again, this movie has the potential to be a great film, but just about every element of it was done in a poor manner.