This film stars a donkey! That's right! The performance is hooves-down the best I've ever seen by a donkey in any film. Why the donkey didn't win an Oscar is beyond me, unless he was up against some really talented asses. The film is about the saintly qualities of the donkey – how he suffers for the sins of mankind and all that. He is tormented and abused by one owner after another, yet bears it all stoically, ultimately perishing in a final scene of transcendent power, reminiscent of another famous death scene given a lot of exposure this year by Mel Gibson. Many film critics consider this film, Au Hasard, Balthazar, far more genuinely spiritual than The Passion of the Christ. I don't say so myself because, frankly, I'm not into that Catholic notion of the glorification of suffering as some kind of spiritual grace, which both films develop. Why, after elevating the donkey to sainthood, Bresson neglected to include his name in the cast credits is beyond me. Just one last example of mistreatment of animals, I guess.

Historical Background: Au Hasard, Balthasar first played in America at the New York Film Festival in 1966. It has long been unavailable in America except in very poor prints or bootleg copies. A new restored edition played the art house circuit recently and becomes available June 14th on a Home Vision DVD. You can preorder now, if you like, from some of the vendors listed here at Epinions, such as CD-Universe. This new special edition is a newly restored high-definition, letterbox, digital transfer with new and improved English subtitle translations. Many critics consider this film to be Bresson's greatest masterpiece and certainly it deserves a fine new DVD treatment. Bresson's other work includes Diary of a Country Priest (1951), A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959), Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), Mouchette (1967), A Gentle Woman (1969), Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), Lancelot of the Lake (1974), The Devil, Probably (1977), and L’Argent (1983).

The Story: A baby donkey is discovered by two children walking through a field. The children beg the man they are with to let them take the young donkey home, as a pet. The young boy is Jacques, son of a wealthy landowner and farmer, while the young girl is Marie, daughter of the schoolteacher who lives on the farmer's land. Jacques and Marie baptize the donkey, naming him Balthazar, after the Jesuit Saint Balthazar Alvarez. Jacques and Marie share a bit of childhood infatuation with one another and Balthazar's life is close to idyllic as well, because the children dote on him. This opening part of the film is a little glimmer of Eden. This being Bresson, however, we all need to watch out! The serpent must be around the corner.

Jacques's sister dies suddenly and he has to move back to the city with his grief-stricken parents. The farm is left in the custody of Marie's father (Philippe Asselin), much to the envy of the local townspeople. Marie's father is a prideful man (the first of the seven deadly sins to make its appearance), and, as a result, the villagers begin to treat the family as social outcasts. Marie grows into a young woman (now played by Anne Wiazemsky). Jacques (Walter Green) and his parents return, but a rift develops between Jacques's parents and Marie's father over the farm's accounts and Marie's father's pride causes him to reject a reconciliation proffered by Jacques. Marie is also disappointed at how prudish and staid her old friend has become. The fall from grace has begun. Balthazar, in the meanwhile, has become a beast of burden, pulling a cart.

Fed up with her father's loutish pride and stubbornness, Marie runs away from home and takes up with the town's bad boy, Gérard (François Lafarge). Gérard is the leader of a small gang of tough guys of the town, who scoot about rather ridiculously on mopeds. They wouldn't pass for the Hell's Angels by appearances, but they're plenty villainous anyway. Marie lusts after Gérard but so too does the middle-aged baker's wife (Marie-Claire Fremont). Gérard is evil incarnate and the baker's wife is his enabler. Balthazar gets sold to the baker, so Marie and the donkey end up sharing the abuse dished out by Gérard. Balthazar even gets his tail set on fire by the sadistic hoodlum.

Balthazar is about to be put down by the baker (François Sullerot), but is instead claimed by Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert), the town drunk, who is connected in some way to Arnold, by way of an unsolved murder. When he's intoxicated, Arnold beats the donkey mercilessly, even whacking him once with a chair. Marie tries to extricate herself from Gérard, but he forces her into prostitution instead. When he's finally fed up with her, he takes her to an empty house, where she is stripped, gang raped, and abandoned. Balthazar manages to run away from Arnold and joins a group of circus animals. The ringmaster recognizes Balthazar's uncommon intelligence and trains him as a star performer. Unfortunately, Arnold shows up at the circus one day, waving his wine bottle, and reclaims his animal.

Balthazar is sold again, this time to a merchant (Pierre Klossowski), who works the poor animal mercilessly. Marie, too, reaches the nadir of her life, having to sell her body for food and shelter. Marie's parents come to reclaim her. Her mother also reclaims Balthazar, who is worn down beyond any usefulness. The mother nurses Balthazar back to a semblance of health and declares that the animal is a saint. Marie, however, runs away again, causing her father to die of heartbreak.

Gérard shows up at graveside to ask Marie's mother if he can borrow Balthazar. Gérard is now in the smuggling business and needs a pack animal to carry some contraband across the border. Marie's mother turns him down. Not to be denied, Gérard steals Balthazar and drives him through the night, loaded with silks, gold, and perfumes (i.e., all of the most obvious symbols of human avarice). They run into a border patrol and Balthazar scurries into some shrubs, but gets hit in the crossfire. As dawn rises, we see Balthazar slowly dying, among a flock of lambs, in the very spot where the children had found him years earlier. Nearby, a baby lamb suckles its mother.

Themes: The lives of Marie and Balthazar intersect repeatedly. The downward spiral of the one parallels that of the other, to an uncanny extent. They are soul mates, in a sense, though as a human being, Marie bears more personal responsibility for her soul than does Balthazar for his. The reappearance of Balthazar in Marie's life typically signals the reappearance of Gérard, and hence more suffering all around. A few of the tormentors of Marie and Balthazar get their comeuppance, but most get off Scot-free. Bresson is not providing us with a tale of either redemption or just retribution, but merely a glorification of suffering as an avenue to spiritual grace. Bresson offers us his Jansenist vision of mankind as unrepentant sinners, while finding virtue only in the innocence and stoic suffering of a beast. Balthazar suffers and dies for the sins of mankind. No doubt, the poor beast's moral slate is a lot cleaner than Gérard's.

Bresson's nihilistic viewpoint doesn't so much see God's hand at work in the world as the vagaries of chance. There's a terrible randomness, Bresson believes, in the course of sorrows in each person's life (as well as each beast's). The death of Jacques's sister, for example, seemingly costs Marie her idyllic childhood. Balthazar, by Bresson's account, must bear the burden of mankind's sin not because he was chosen for that task by God, but because of the whim of two children at play. The title of this film means, essentially, "Balthazar by chance." In my opinion, there's a nihilistic void at the center of Bresson's religious vision that has no rational foundation. It's true that Balthazar's suffering owed nothing to any "decision" that the poor beast made, but Marie, by contrast, was complicit in her own fallings out, choosing, for example, to link up with the amoral Gérard, for no better reasons than lust and excitement. Chance may rule the lives of the beasts, but as conscious, self-directed beings, humans have a degree of self-determination over their own fates, mixed together with the haphazard influences. Suffering stoically is certainly morally superior to cruelty and vice, but those are not the only two alternatives – except in Bresson's film. Suffering, no matter how transcendent, is less glorious than community, love, compassion, care, and other positives, sometimes evident in human relationships.

Bresson also broaches another of his pet themes in this film, his hatred for all things modern, which he equates with disintegration of traditional values. The evil Gérard, in his leather jacket, rides a motor bike and blasts his transistor radio.

Production Values: Au Hasard, Balthazar may rank among the most thematically severe and negativistic of Bresson's films, but, stylistically, it is less austere than his usual work. Comedy is a rarity in Bresson's oeuvre. There's not a lot in this film, but there's some, starting with the opening, in which a Schubert sonata is unceremoniously interrupted, at a particularly lyrical moment, by the braying of a donkey. There's some more humor in the circus scene, especially when Balthazar "makes the acquaintance" of other circus animals.

As in all of his work, Bresson eschews traditional narrative technique, omitting establishing shots and transitions, forcing his audience to fill in the gaps to maintain narrative continuity. The film is rich with Christian symbols and associations. There's a lot of violence in this film, though a fair share of it is the implied off-camera variety, left to the viewer's imagination. The montages of abuse and drudgery are depressingly effective.

The cinematography provided by Ghislain Cloquet features a lot of artsy shots of body parts, such as a donkey's flank, twitching ears, pounding hooves, and people's hands at work. Cloquet worked for a number of directors, including Chabrol (Le Boucher). Many of the scenes are filmed with only natural sound. A Schubert piano sonata provides the musical background, when required.

Anne Wiazemsky shines in her debut screen appearance as Maria. She was the granddaughter of French novelist François Mauriac and went on to perform for several of the great "intellectual" directors, in such films as Pasolini's Teorema (1968) and Porcile (1969) and Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise (1967). She later married Jean-Luc Godard and became a respected writer as well. Lafarge was disturbingly effective as the vicious Gérard. Jean-Claude Guilbert, who played the town drunk, also appeared in Mouchette (1967).

Bottom-Line: Like other film critics, I admire Au Hasard, Balthazar as a beautifully rendered parable. On the other hand, I'm not as moved by the film's thematic substance as are many other critics, not buying into the notion of suffering as transcendent spirituality. One critic calls the donkey Christ-like and saintly; another describes the final scene as "one of the most powerful, devastating sequences in all cinema." After such hyperbole, what would be left to say about the gassing of a room full of people at Auschwitz or the martyrdom of such people as Jesus or Joan d'Arc? A donkey, however symbolic of humility, is still a donkey, and its suffering is deplorable abuse, but in no way spiritual.

Not to toot my own horn, but reviewing two Bresson films in one day should warrant some kind of recognition at Cannes, though I'm not quite sure what they would call the trophy. Maybe something like "Most Masochistic Reviewer." The acceptance speech would be straightforward. I'd just bray like Balthazar. Au Hasard, Balthazar is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 95 minutes. Look for that Home Vision DVD version, come June 2005.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age