Au Hasard Balthazar
Dir. Robert Bresson France / Sweden 1966 96’
French with English subtitles | 35mm transferred to digital video
Animal protagonists are traditionally the preserve of sentimental stories for children, but while Robert Bresson’s tragic masterpiece about the travails of a donkey has the simple force of a fable, it presents a brutally pessimistic vision. Punished, maltreated, used, loved, Balthazar is put to work by one keeper after another, bearing silent witness to the folly and petty cruelties of his human masters.
Bresson was a Catholic filmmaker, and his story has been interpreted as a Christian allegory by some critics. The director’s austerely concentrated shots, restricted to details of scenes in order to elucidate the whole, and his controlled use of sound to imply off-screen activity, make for a uniquely dense, richly textured film. Jean-Luc Godard was to suggest that Balthazar contained ‘the world in an hour and a half’. (BFI)
Au Hasard Balthazar screens at Baltic in response to Saelia Aparicio’s celebration of the animal and the non-human, A Joyful Parasite.
Level 1 Cinema
Pop-up bar open for drinks from 18.00. Doors open 18:30; Film starts 18:45.
