• Au Hasard Balthazar

2/6/24 (Tues)

Having seen (and not quite comprehended) Pickpocket a few days earlier, I figured it was time to get more acquainted with Bresson. This 1966 film, roughly “Balthazar at Random” (I wonder why they kept the French title), is widely considered not only his masterpiece but one of the greatest films ever made. That immediately made me skeptical.

The movie follows the life of a French village as paralleled in the life of a donkey. It starts with the birth of the donkey, where he is baptized by village children with the name Balthazar, and ends with his quiet death in a field of lambs. In between, he is passed randomly from owner to owner, mistreated or at best ignored by all of them. The various people in the film have their issues as well, but they are humans able to act on their desires and react to events. In contrast, the donkey does not speak or think or have any of the human qualities typical for these films; it is a donkey throughout, and we can only guess at its feelings from the situation and its occasional braying. It is necessarily acted upon rather than acting, a passive player in its own life. Bresson finally found his perfect performer with no emotions or hints as to what he/she is feeling.

The name Balthazar is biblically one of the Three Wise Men, and the lambs at the end are presumably intended as a Christian image. Many critics have seen the film in religious terms, with the donkey in the role of Jesus. That passed me by.

The film can be irritating in its unrealistic lack of emotion, however artistic that’s supposed to be. The woman’s robotic response to the man who loves her was absurd, and the crowd’s failure in the dance club to even notice the man breaking mirrors, smashing glasses and upending the scene was beyond dumb. I think we’re supposed to look at this like the masked performers in Noh theater where actions are symbolic of emotions, but it doesn’t work that way with actual people. The only convincing character was the donkey. The woman’s decision to dump the bland but stable man who loves her and choose the handsome unpredictable delinquent could have been interesting, but Bresson didn’t choose to develop that. Bit of a waste. Her reaction to the man giving her food and comfort when she is desperate (“You’re ugly”) was unrealistic to the extreme given her circumstances. I don’t get it at all. Bresson definitely needs help in the dialogue department.

The ending was beautiful as the injured donkey lies down in the open field and slowly, anonymously passes away, surrounded by the grazing lambs. So at least the film goes out on a high note. I’m not sure why the movie is so highly esteemed. Bresson is sometimes compared to Ozu, which is superficially true in terms of the pared-back style. But Ozu’s characters behave quite logically within a Japanese context, whereas Bresson’s people are not credible under any scenario. Not my style.