AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
-------------------
A simple overture plays over black and white pages of credits. Suddenly,
the music is interrupted by the braying of a donkey, oddly beautiful. The
first shot we see is the closeup of a donkey's flank, its baby nursing
beneath it. French writer/director Robert Bresson ("Diary of a Country
Priest") charts the sainthood of this beast of burden, suffering for the
sins of all he encounters, in "Au Hasard Balthazar."
Rialto Pictures resurrects Bresson's masterpiece, unavailable for thirty
years, in a new print with new translations and subtitles. Bresson and his
editor Raymond Lamy ("Pickpocket") skirt around more traditional
storytelling techniques, dropping the viewer into and out of the lives,
sometimes overlapping, of whoever currently owns Balthazar, for a
cumulative impression of sin and spirituality. "Au Hasard Balthazar"
becomes richer with repeated viewings.
Children walking through a field with their father beg him for the baby
donkey they discover, lead him home and baptize him Balthazar, giving him
the 'salt of wisdom.' Young Jacques and Marie, the daughter of the
schoolteacher on his father's land, enjoy a childhood romance that is cut
short when Jacques' sister dies and his father returns to the city. Years
later, Balthazar has moved from pet to laborer, drawing a cart. When it
overturns, he runs from his angry owner, returning to his childhood home
which we now see is run down and for sale.
The adult Marie (Anne Wiazemsky, "La Chinoise") is pleased to see her old
friend, but the relationship between her father (Philippe Asselin) and his
old employer turns into a local scandal when monies are unaccounted for.
The adult Jacques (Walter Green) arrives to renew his love for Marie and
arbitrate the situation, but he is thrown out by Marie's proud father and
simply shrugs when Marie asks if she will see him again. From this point
on, Marie drifts into a destructive relationship with local tough Gerard
(François Lafarge). Marie runs away from her family, eventually degraded
to the depths of prostitution. Marie's old pet is worked harshly by the
local baker (François Sullerot), whose wife (Marie-Claire Fremont) enables
their employee Gerard's criminal behavior. Gerard is as cruel to Balthazar
as he is to Marie, even setting the animal's tail on fire in order to make
him move.
Gerard is connected by an unsolved murder with a drunken bum, Arnold
(Jean-Claude Guilbert, "Mouchette"), who saves Balthazar from being put
down by the baker, only to beat the animal in drunken rages. Balthazar
literally runs away and joins a circus, where a trainer declares him
exceptionally intelligent, but the donkey's success is cut short when
Arnold attends a show and reclaims him (in a prime example of Bresson's
story progression, we only see Arnold recognize Balthazar and approach the
ring, a bottle upraised threateningly - the next scene shows the man once
again leading the animal along the road - we're left to fill in the
connective narrative).
After all these characters intersect again over an inheritance, Balthazar
ends up in the hands of a mean merchant (Pierre Klossowski), who mistreats
the animal worst of all. Marie reaches her lowest point at his hands as
well, offering her body for some food and shelter. The merchant gives the
donkey to her parents when they come to retrieve her, but Marie runs away
again and her father dies of heartbreak ('he's proud of his suffering'
claims Marie rather heartlessly), leaving her mother alone with Balthazar.
The louse Gerard interrupts Marie's mother grave side, asking to borrow
Balthazar, but she refuses, calling him a saint who has worked enough
during his life. Gerard steals the donkey that night, using him to smuggle
stolen goods, but customs officials begin firing - the boys scatter and
Balthazar takes shelter in some shrubs. Bresson cuts to daybreak, reveals
that Balthazar has been hit and shows him finding the place where we first
saw him, in a field surrounded by sheep. The donkey dies as a lamb suckles
its mother. Just the act of writing this synopsis has brought back tears,
so moving is Balthazar's spiritual transcendence. The Catholic filmmaker
makes the death of a donkey the joyful release of an untainted soul
burdened with humankind's sins. The most modern equivalent of this final
scene may be the ending of Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves."
Bresson uses nonprofessional 'actors' and his cinematographer, Ghislain
Cloquet ("I Sent a Letter to My Love," "Le Boucher"), often focuses their
extremities. For example, we see Balthazar's hooves trotting along, or the
twitching of his ears, almost as often as we see his face. (In fact, when
Marie puts her clothes back on at the merchant's, we see the shadow of
Balthazar's tail twitching on the wall.) People's hands are frequently
shown performing everyday tasks - driving, emptying money into a till.
Sound is natural, sometimes accompanied by a Schubert sonata on piano. Only
once is this cinema verite style given magical qualities in the brilliantly
edited sequence where Balthazar meets the circus animals - a tiger, a polar
bear, a monkey and an elephant. Closeups of the animals' eyes, always
cutting back to Balthazar's, suggest a communion.
Just how does Bresson show such beauty and spirituality in a simple donkey?
This is one of the profound mysteries of "Au Hasard Balthazar."
A
For more Reeling reviews visit http://www.reelingreviews.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37461 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1268203 X-RT-TitleID: 10002688 X-RT-SourceID: 386 X-RT-AuthorID: 1487 X-RT-RatingText: A
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews