Review of Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) by Ryan M — 06 Jan 2010

He's just a Donkey called Balthazar, she's just a girl called Marie. He can't understand his problems or change his destiny, Marie can do both but she fares no better than the Donkey, so does that make her worse than a Donkey? Humans may consider themselves rational beings far removed from the dog-eat-dog world animals are subjected to, but do we have as much say in our own destiny than we think we do? "Au Hasard Balthazar" is a horribly depressing film, chronicling the life of a Donkey from birth through death, with Marie's misfortunes wading in and out of the main story arc.

Balthazar is born, children play with him, he drinks milk, he is baptised and generally enjoys his early life until a quick cut to a man whipping the camera indicates that Balthazar is now a worker, removed from his early life of no responsibilities and boundless fun, from hereonin it is downhill for our saintly hero. Marie on the other hand is at that sort of age where every decision doesn't seem important until after you've realised you picked the wrong choice, her mistake is snubbing the romantic advances of Jacques for the rebellious Gerard.

Gerard is the biggest motherfunker imaginable: Completely evil with no emotion whatsoever (the Bresson school of acting working overtime), no guilt or remorse is shown, he just tortures Balthazar and mistreats Marie yet he never gets any sort of comeuppance. If this was a typical film Gerard would be brutally killed at the end so the bad guy loses, but Bresson shoots this like a real life story: Sometimes karma doesn't come and go around, sometimes things don't work themselves out, sometimes stuff just happens and we can't change it, we just have to accept it and move on like Balthazar does throughout the film.

Speaking of Balthazar, he changes owner an awful lot: tough farmers work him like a....Donkey, he gets hired by the circus to do maths problems, Marie gets her hands on him later on, Gerard bullies him every chance he can get, it's not easy being a Donkey,it's slightly worse for Marie, who gets treated like crap by Gerard, her Dad goes bankrupt and by the end of the film she's been completely humiliated by Gerard. But this is Balthazar's story, and despite all of his suffering, all of his pain, torture and angst, he still perseveres and finally finds his place in one of the most perfect endings in all of cinema. "Robert Bresson's" incredibly stark style suits this story so well, with the acting being decent by Bresson standards, and the really nice b&w photography making the story that much bleaker. "Au Hasard Balthazar" is a Donkey's eye view of our own inability to recognise our flaws, Bresson suggests that all our lives have been decided for us, that we are all Balthazar's and the best thing to do would be to take the pain in stride and move on.