FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Robert Bresson - Au Hasard Balthasar 

The donkey Balthasar will have many more owners, but the first one is called Marie (Anne Wiazemsky). And we are already in the middle of the work of a real cinema saint and his most heart-rending film is called Au Hasard Balthazar: Robert Bresson. It follows the life of Balthazar from birth to death. Balthasar lives in the dignity of being himself: a mute animal, noble, accepting a life over which he has no control. But he is not a humanized animal, he cannot speak or sing. He is a donkey. That's how it is. As a newborn, he takes his first steps. Three children splash water on his head and baptize him. Can only humans go to heaven? No, all creatures. From now on, Belthazor will have many owners. Some good, but all flawed. In memory of the drunkard in the village. He's very good to Belthazor. He takes his name from Marie. Unfortunately, there is a gang of boys who torture the donkey, and Marie does nothing about it. Marie's father is a proud man. Too proud. He never writes receipts, and in the end, it drives him to bankruptcy. Balthasar goes into the possession of the baker and the baker boy (the head of the gang) tortures and maltreats the animal cruelly. He ties a piece of newspaper to the tail of the donkey, which finally collapses. But the drunkard Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert) saves Balthasar, straightens him up again. He is hired out as a circus animal, a donkey that can count. Then he becomes the property of a hermit and even finds Marie again. But Marie is weak. She will not marry the boy who truly loves her, but the cruel baker's boy. And we experience all this through the eyes of Balthazar. What WE see through his eyes: A small village, full of flawed people. In their world, love is unusual, but cruelty is easily obtained. And what does Belthazor see? There's not a single moment in time that will tell us. Other movie animals may roll their eyes, but Balthasar sees things like a beast of burden. His life is all about carrying things. He may or may not feel pain. Everything else is out of his control. Sometimes he screams harshly, like a donkey roars. Is that a complaint or just the sound of an animal? Belthazor never reacts with his cries either. He's not a cartoon animal. The donkey has no way to reveal itself. Nevertheless, we look into his big eyes and feel compassion for every experience the donkey makes. As in all his films, Robert Bresson invites us to draw conclusions about his characters. Conclusions that are our own. His cinema is pure empathy! To this end, he applies extremely strict stylistic restrictions to avoid artificially amplifying our emotions. He forbids the actors to act. Whoever reads more about him (for example, the fantastic book by Paul Schrader) learns that Bresson repeated his settings so often that all acting disappeared from them. The actors were simply supposed to perform certain actions and speak their words. Everything is simplified to the action and the word. There's no inflection, no style. This is how Bresson achieves a cinema of purity. He does not tell us what we want to feel - and therefore we only feel all the more. There are much stronger feelings than if the actors would feel them for us!