Review of Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) by Lucas S — 12 Jan 2011

How can a movie, where the director does everything he can, to make the actors not act and maintain the same expression during the whole movie, be the most beautiful and deep movie ever made? Because no other movie, really created humans, not caricatures. It's visual simplicity hides a meticulously produced movie, rich in symbolisms and emotional power.

The biggest tryumph of the movie is to never give in to cheap sentimentality, everything is implicit. The writter and film director, Marguerite Duras, once said:

"For the first time in history, we could experience a movie with the same expressive level, as a novel or a poem".

Cult director, Jean-Luc Goddard, added:

"The world is in this movie, within 90 or 100 minutes, we see the world, from childhood to death, and everything in between".

Indeed, Bresson films the unfilmable, and we see everything from the eyes of a simple donkey. From his first days with humans to jis sad and incredibly gorgeous death, the humans are never demonised, always analised, as they are, imperfect and imcompreensible, but with virtues and morals. All this with intimism preserved.

Unfortunately, the movie is not easily digested, for those used to brainwashing Hollywood schzophrenic productions like Forrest Gump, might find this incredibly boring, slow and cold. For the rest of you, I would say it's a must see.

Art is catharsis.

Final Rating: 10.