Au hasard Balthazar

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #297: Robert Bres­son’s Au hasard Balt­haz­ar.

One would expect a painter-turned-film­mak­er to have an eye for com­po­si­tion, and Bres­son def­i­nite­ly exceeds that expec­ta­tion. Through­out Au hasard Balt­haz­ar “shots as paint­ings” abound. This is the first film I’ve seen by Bres­son, and before I watched it, I read up a bit on his style. I was some­what leery of the effi­ca­cy of the spare­ness that was most often used to char­ac­ter­ize his work. Too often you can run the risk of los­ing too much mean­ing by mak­ing the audi­ence work for it. This, of course, is a bunch of hog swal­lop. Bres­son, Bres­son, Bres­son, knows what the fuck he’s doing. The spare­ness empha­sizes and directs, he uses it as a tool, not a gim­mick. It rules.

The sto­ry, as it is, con­cerns itself with the life of a don­key named Balt­haz­ar and with the life of a girl named Marie. They inter­con­nect at times and mir­ror each oth­er at times and ulti­mate­ly [I think] speak of one main theme by using two oppos­ing themes.

The first theme I want to talk about is the one based on the life of Marie. Why? Because she’s hot. Because her sto­ry is more inter­est­ing. She grows up in a rather restric­tive house­hold and seems to be both shy and lone­ly. Her only friend is Balt­haz­ar until he is sold to the bak­er help pay the bills. A young punk named Gérard, who deliv­ers bread, wants to pork Marie and accosts her on a qui­et road. She wants noth­ing to do with him but even­tu­al­ly sub­mits and then becomes his steady shag. She then becomes emo­tion­al­ly depen­dent on his abu­sive com­pa­ny and looks to him to give her pro­tec­tion. The first time she obvi­ous­ly comes to him in need [after being thrown out of her home] he drops her like a dime and gets up with some oth­er girl. She leaves, in the rain, and stops at the mis­er’s house in search of some­one else to pro­tect her. He ends up offer­ing her his mon­ey for sex [implied] and she ends up sleep­ing with him after giv­ing it back. Her child­hood love, Jacques is will­ing to for­give these indis­cre­tions and mar­ry her, even after she is gang-raped [again implied] by Gérard and his min­ions, but Marie lit­er­al­ly dis­ap­pears from the rest of the film.

Balt­haz­ar has a sim­i­lar path, being shut­tled around as chat­tel from one bru­tal own­er to anoth­er. The chris­to­log­i­cal sym­bol­ism is rife. Essen­tial­ly the sto­ry is an alle­go­ry of Christ’s life, but with addi­tion­al tan­gents that make it into much more than just alle­go­ry. Balt­haz­ar is tor­tured, burned, beat­en, exploit­ed and his native intel­li­gence is sup­pressed by the dumb brute work that he is sub­ject­ed to. In the end, he dies with the sins of human­i­ty on his back [black mar­ket goods], a gun­shot wound in his chest, in a shep­herd’s field, sur­round­ed by sheep.

Balt­haz­ar and Marie live sim­i­lar lives, with­out agency, at times seek­ing it, but ulti­mate­ly unable to make it stick. Yet in the end, Balt­haz­ar retains his basic gen­tle­ness and inno­cence and Marie becomes both hope­less and manip­u­la­tive. Like Sword of the Beast we see that human­i­ty is often eas­i­er found in crit­ters than in Man.

• Cri­te­ri­on Essay by James Quandt
• Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma Review
• For­eign site with many stills [scroll down]
• Strict­ly Film School Review