The first shot of Au Hasard Balthazar displays an infant donkey seeking shelter and food from his mother’s bosom amidst a flock of sheep.  Suddenly, a hand reaches in with good intentions to touch the little donkey.  Yet, the scene carries a threatening tone, as a little girl and a boy graze the donkey while asking an adult if they can have the donkey.  At first, the man says “Impossible, children.”  However, the following scene shows that he changed his mind where he runs down hill with the children and the donkey.  The scene provides a suggestive hint towards the corruption of innocence, as they remove the baby donkey from the safety of the mother.  Bresson’s cinematic genius shines through in this opening scene, as he strips the scene from characters, emotions, and acting.  Instead, he leaves the audience only with the external stimuli in the form of spoken words and actions taken by the individuals in the scene.  A strong sense of detached objectivity seems to radiate in the scene, which continues to linger throughout the film.

The kids, Marie and Jacques, have a baptism for the donkey in which they name him Balthazar.  It is a fun and loving summer for kids who playfully connect around the little donkey, as they swarm around him with hugs and caress.  Eventually, the summer ends and the kids must depart from one another leaving Balthazar in the hands of other less loving and caring.  Here Bresson depicts the other side of humanity, the malevolent and cruel natures, which seem to derive from people’s own selfish goals.  The emotional coldness continues while illustrating the harshness with which Balthazar’s owners beat him into submission.  This leads the donkey into years of hard manual labor where he pulls wagons, plows fields, and tows logs.  Balthazar’s life with the kids is now a mere memory slipping into oblivion where his current life only experiences whips and sticks that roughly touch his beaten body.

After years of abusive living, Balthazar escapes after an accident, as he once again returns to the house where the kids once treated him with warm affection.  The years have not been fortunate to those who used to live there, as the house now is up for sale and vicious rumors are spreading that the old teacher, Marie’s father who is the caretaker, has swindled the owner.  In pride, Marie’s father refuses to produce any evidence, as it all rests on hearsay.  Despite the family difficulty, a grown Marie (Anne Wiazemsky) does not hesitate to care for Balthazar, but this time the viewers can see Marie’s life change for the worse.  Strong comparisons between Balthazar and Marie emerge through Bresson's illustrious directing that presents the progress of how Marie falls victim to circumstance and wicked behavior.  It leads the audience into a venture where Marie falls into bad company and experiences another form of abuse, which the film suggests through several scenes with Bresson’s brilliant eye for how to frame each scene. 

Through the abusive occurrences that both Balthazar and Marie experience they develop a connection between their destinies.  This connection rests within the cruelty of humanity and the vile deeds of the characters around them.   The abusiveness receives an intricate analysis through socioeconomic, Catholic, and moral undertones, as Bresson does not simply play on one specific aspect of society, but on all.  One of the common interpretations draws to the analogous use of the two protagonists that emerge with Christ-like appearance, as they suffer for the sins of all the characters around them.  Nonetheless, the social and psychological implications of consequences are relevant to the story, as they lead to further deeds and consequences.  Lastly, the moral dilemmas presented in the film might seem heavily influenced by the Catholic Church with the use of the seven deadly sins and sacraments.  Yet, it displays an understanding beyond pious beliefs that transcends the experiences to a more universal plane than mere Catholicism, as the film deals with the idea of destiny. 

A very important aspect of the Au Hasard Balthazar is that the actors do not perform in the film – they do.  This notion suggests that the actions of the characters becomes the characters and words have lost their meaning, as the words do not correlate with the deeds.  Bresson's attention to perfection is evident while the film gives the impression of an artistic collage where each scene could very well have become an infamous piece of art.  The audience gets the pleasure to follow 24 frames per second, which displays a majestic venture through living and breathing art.  Au Hasard Balthazar begins with innocent youth that travels through devious and hazardous terrain, which ultimately ends where it once began.  In full circle, Bresson's black and white film succeeds in multicolor palette portrayal of the diversity of humanity where no one is without transgressions and all should contemplate their own existence before parting with it.

DIRECTED BY

COUNTRY

France / Sweden

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