Au Hasard Balthazar

The film follows the life of a donkey from birth to death , while all the time living it the dignity of being itself -a dumb beast , noble in its acceptance of a life over which it has no control.  It begins with a lovely medium close-up of a small donkey suckling his mother's teat. The baby is discovered by Marie and Jacques ,two children with strong adolescent feelings for each other, and is taken from his mother.  As years pass, family strife intervenes and Jacques is forced out of Marie's life by her angry father.  So begins Balthazar's journey through life, paralleled almost exactly by Marie's miserable trek.  The donkey has several owners ,most of whom exploit him,  often with more cruelty than kindness.  

With his unerring patience,  Bresson scrutinizes and underlines each trait displayed by the film's humans. The magic of Balthazar is that he is the ultimate Bressonian character .  Bresson famously used untrained actors in his films -he called them "models" and purposely stripped away all vestiges of personality so that he photographed only a bare essence.  The difference between Balthazar and us is that we are smart enough to understand our destiny without being able to control it.   The film's restraint is its strength -beautiful monotone images, silences , gestures all laced with a simple piano sonata that underscores the mood of the film perfectly.   Transcendental and sometimes joyful, the film (in typical Bressonian style) eventually gives way to an unbearably sad vision of 'life .