Robert Bresson
Au hasard Balthazar

THE REVIEW

Au hasard Balthazar is a 1966 film by Robert Bresson.

It is the "central" film of his filmography, both because it is the seventh out of 13, placing it exactly in the middle between the first six and the subsequent six, and because it represents, in simple terms, a turning point in his poetics that inexorably shifts from an optimistic to a pessimistic view of life.

Although it was received with mixed opinions by both critics and the audience, Godard was dazzled by it, while Bergman called it "boring". Today, it is considered by most as a masterpiece/cornerstone film of the 20th century.

Au hasard Balthazar indeed sketches new perspectives and trajectories in the realm of the seventh art that will be a school and example. A peculiar script of cinema understood as the writing of images, stylistic choices, new means to convey a message, for instance, the dialogues, here rather sparse, which give way to glances, hand gestures, stillness, choosing rhetorical figures pushed to the extreme, synecdoche.

There are dozens and dozens of filmmakers indebted, or rather, who were inspired or are still inspired by Bresson's cinema, from Godard, indeed, to Bellocchio, to Kaurismaki, to Wes Anderson.

There's this donkey, Balthazar the "pure" (like all animals, after all) and his life, over the years, made of work, beatings, toil, and some caresses (from Marie). His life that passes amid human miseries, cruelty, greed, nothing good under the sun.

Jacques and Marie are two children who will become teenagers over a decade; he swears eternal love to her since he was little and keeps the promise, while she...

The acting is, in my opinion, rather disorienting, perhaps because the characters are defined as "archetypes", thus revealing the absence of true characterization. The characters are mostly representative of a certain way of being. Therefore, there is the villain, the miser, the resigned, the lover, the restless, and then there is Balthazar who remains always the same unto himself...

A piano, and the braying of Balthazar (a genius combination), open and close the film, with one of the most iconic and representative endings in the history of cinema.