What I know going on
I know the film is about the intersecting tale of a young woman and her pet donkey. I am not familiar with Bresson’s work so I do not know how those storylines will play out.
Immediate Reaction
I have been having a difficult time attempting to write about Au Hasard Balthazar. I had a passive experience while watching the film and the experience evaporated from my mind shortly after it was over. I did not struggle to pay attention or understand the film as I did with Jeanne Dielman, Satantango, and The Mirror. It was actually a fairly easy and (at around 90 minutes) short watch. However, I just could not get involved in with the characters. The main reason was that the acting in the film is of a style I have not encountered before. All of the actors operate in a very reserved, spare tone. Now, I am sure there is a reason that Bresson chose this style. My best guess and I bet my future research on the film will bear this out, is that Bresson was trying to remove any sense of artificiality from the film. By adopting this style, the actors remove any sense of theatricality or melodrama from their roles. That is entirely reasonable. Huge Acting! with a capital “A” moments would not make sense given the overall tone of the film. A lot of very cruel acts involving rape, murder, and destitution occur in Au Hasard Balthazar. The pared down acting style removes any chance that this material will come off as salacious or titillating and the use of non-actors prevents any false involvement in the film. Unfortunately, while I understand the reason behind these choices, the acting style did not work for me. At a certain point, the acting style prevented me from getting involved with the film. Instead of coming as simple and spare, the acting came off as flat and emotionless, especially near the end of the film where some very tragic events happen. The subdued reactions of the characters just did not make sense to me, and I expected a greater level of expressiveness during these sections. The one thing I did know about Bresson before watching this film, is that he was famous for using non-actors. I think this really hurt the film. I am not suggesting that Au Hasard Balthazar should have been filmed with A-listers, but actors with more experience would have been able to embody that subdued style without seeming flat.
The main thing I appreciated about the film was its attempt to become a modern parable. The form and content of the film perfectly reflects this. Au Hasard Balthazar is not going to wow anyone with amazing special effects or insanely complicated camerawork, but the film does have an elegant simplicity to the way it is shot, especially the early scenes set in the French countryside, which are beautifully pastoral. This same thought is applied to the way the story is told. It does not play with structure or zip back and forth between the past and the present. However, it is told in a way that perfectly fits the story. It unfolds like a myth or a fable. The tales of Marie, the human, and Balthazar, the Donkey, intersect and comment on each other at various points throughout the film. I am not sure how the two storylines intersect exactly, but that is something I will clear up later. The mythic qualities of the story also help paper over some of the faults in its narrative. I did not understand why the biker gang (probably the least threatening representation of such a thing I have seen) was not arrested or why Marie just accepted the punishment dealt to her by the gang leader. The movie just is not working in that type of reality, so it is unfair to criticize it on those aspects.
Further thoughts
Well after reading several analyses of Bresson’s work I am just going to have to throw up my hands and begrudgingly accept Au Hasard Balthazar as a masterpiece. One aspect that was repeatedly pointed out was Bresson’s use of sound, an element that did not stick out to me on my initial watch. I’ll let Bresson himself expound on the importance of the auditory in his films: “The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive. When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station.” Bresson uses aural cues to suggest events happening offscreen, invoke a world outside that of the tiny farming village, and increase the impact of certain scenes. For example, near the end, we see Gerard and his gang leading Balthazar across the border attempting to smuggle contraband. They get into gunfight with a border patrol. We are not privy to the actions of the police, we simply hear their gunshots. Given the film’s small budget this is a much more effective way to display this conflict and, instead of passively following the action, the viewer is actively engaged and has to imagine these events. Au Hasard Balthazar takes place in a hermetic world. If not for the presence of few modern elements (such as a few radios and a car), it would be hard to pin down the exact time. Sound is used to pop the seemingly idyllic bubble the film is set in. Numerous pop songs fade in from the radio, contrasting the pastoral countryside with the turbulence viewers know will soon come to the more populated areas of the world. Finally, in such scenes as Balthazar’s cart crash and his suffering at the hands of a misanthropic farmer, Bresson amps the sound to an almost unbearable degree. This is in line with Bresson’s general philosophy to avoid manipulation. Instead of showing the cart veer wildly out of control, Bresson makes its sounds overbearing and chaotic, and instead of showing gore or violence during Balthazar’s suffering, he makes that whip crack uncomfortably loud and Balthazar’s braying more painful.
I also gained a greater appreciation for Bresson’s choices regarding acting, editing, and cinematography. Again, I will let the man himself describe his general philosophy in regards to film:
"I think cinema
is misguided, that it has its own language, its own means, and that it has gone
wrong since its birth, that is to say it's trying to express itself using tools
which are those of the theatre. But there are wonderful actors in theatre.
Believe me, I have such a hard time because I don't use them, it's really not
for my pleasure. But I believe in the very particular language of cinema and I
think that, once you try to express something through mimics, through gestures,
through effects in the voice, it can no longer be cinema, it becomes filmed
theatre.[...] Cinema is not that: it has to express not through images, but
through their relation to one another, which is not the same thing at all. Just
like a painter who does not use colours, but their correlation; blue is blue in
itself, but next to green, red or yellow, it is not the same blue anymore: it
changes. The aim is for the film to be made of such a correlation of images,
you take two images; they are neutral, but all of a sudden, next to each other,
they vibrate, life enters them: and it is not really the life of the story or
of the characters, it's the life of the film.”
Those quotes helped me wrangle with the issues I had with the film,
particularly in regards to the acting style. Judging from what I have read,
Bresson was attempting to remove any of the manipulative aspects cinema had
transported over from other artforms. These include the use of sets instead
real locations, theatrical acting styles, and literary dialogues. This is why the
acting style initially seemed vacant and why the film proceeds in an elliptical
manner. Bresson does not want to tell the viewer what to think or how to feel.
He wants the viewer to come to those conclusions purely through the power of
the images on display and their effect when edited together. Instead of
following a strictly linear narrative, many scenes, which in other movies would
be essential, are removed. A great example of this comes near the beginning of
the film. We see the children beg their father to buy a young mule and him
refusing. Instead of showing the father relenting, the next is the family
walking off with their new pet. The viewer is to engage with the film and
imagine the conversation that took place to lead to the purchase of the mule.
By cutting out seemingly necessary scenes and removing the artificial facial
and body gestures present in most film acting, Bresson forces the viewer to
fill up of the film with their own ideas and emotions.
Why is the film on this list?
Seemingly simple, but secretly radical, Au Hasard Balthazar manages to draw the viewer into somewhat depressing conclusions about faith and the nature of man using only the most essential elements of cinematic language.
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