Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

"It is the world in an hour and a half."—Jean-Luc Godard, on Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar
Some films leave such a personal mark on the heart and soul that discussing them can trigger the emotions that the experience of viewing the film stirs. If you love movies, you surely have one or more such personal films that you cherish.

For its devotees, Au Hasard Balthazar is just such a film. Written and directed by the French master Robert Bresson, Balthazar follows a donkey through his life of wandering from owner to owner as he bears up under circumstances that range from abundance to abuse, truly a beast of burden bearing the weight of human iniquity and the weight of experience on his back.

The film's story is simple enough: The daughter of a rural French family claims as her own a donkey she names Balthazar. Marie loves her donkey, and delights in showering him with affection. But her attentions are drawn away as she grows up and turns from her childhood sweetheart to the village bad boy, and she neglects Balthazar. Circumstances and her father's stubbornness force Marie's family into bankruptcy, and they lose custody of Balthazar. From there, the creature is alternately abused and coddled, finds sympathy and cruelty as he passes from one owner to the next, always doing what he was made to do: bear the burden as best he can. Balthazar's life comes to an end much as it began, in a pasture surrounded by farm animals (here, sheep).

It is very tempting to make of Balthazar an allegory for the Lord Jesus Christ. But it's wise not to read it so closely into Balthazar's life, from his play-baptism to his suffering death, carrying contraband as though they were the sins of all who mistreated him during his days. Certainly, Bresson resisted any allegorical underpinnings, preferring instead to point to the simplicity of the story and the central fact of Balthazar's reality within the scope of the film. He is a donkey, a fact made abundantly clear from the opening credits, when his braying interrupts Schubert's lovely Piano Sonata No. 20. The sacred gets elbowed by the profane; the worldly and the holy are always getting entangled. Balthazar is both; the humans who cross his path become who they are through their shared experiences of sin's cruelty, and they do not spare him the brunt of the pain. He was born to suffer, to bear the burden.

Bresson's human actors are restricted to the most austere of performances, and that by intent. Mostly amateurs, Bresson deliberately chose actors of limited experience, then shot take after take to wring every ounce of dramatic artifice out of each actor's performance before getting the flat delivery he wanted. In this way, Bresson's films demand much of a viewer. There is no easy emotion, no passive response; but there is room for the investment, and reward that lingers long after the final reel comes to a close---even if Bresson doesn't hand it to you, it's there to be taken, and all the more rewarding for those willing to make the effort.

Au Hasard Balthazar (an idiom that means something akin to "That's How It Goes, Balthazar") is a cinematic masterpiece whose meaning(s) no two of its loving fans agree on. Like the best of any art form, it resonates in private, personal places where one goes when the heart's keen needs are taken to the altar, to speak quietly to God. Life is painful. Suffering is real. Grace isn't always obvious. But it is there, ever there. Such are the lessons a donkey can teach in an hour and a half.