Part of Milestones of the Last Quarter Century and Weekend Classics
Screening in this series alongside I AM CUBA as an early representation of our long-standing dedication to repertory cinema, AU HASARD BALTHAZAR and similar efforts in the early Aughts were made possible by Nashville Premieres, an independently operating group of Belcourt Founders that underwrote original programming to build an audience for more challenging art-house cinema, alongside new prints of undiscovered classics — before the efforts of the Belcourt as a newly-formed nonprofit could fully support these works on its own.
Widely considered to be Robert Bresson’s masterpiece, AU HASARD BALTHAZAR charts the adverse lives of a donkey named Balthazar and Marie, the young girl who named him. While refusing to manipulate the audience into feelings of pity for the animal or the girl, Bresson illuminates the different ways in which we can respond to basic truths. Though typical of Bresson’s earlier themes of grace and humility in the face of adversity, the overarching tone of the film signals an essential shift towards what some consider a more pessimistic world view, but which Bresson ultimately referred to simply as lucidity. Others maintain that AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, with its themes of burden and sacrifice, holds a place among the most deeply spiritual films ever made.
"No film I have ever seen has come so close to convulsing my entire being as has AU HASARD BALTHAZAR… It stands by itself on one of the loftiest pinnacles of artistically realized emotional experiences.” —Andrew Sarris, Observer “Bresson is one of the few directors for whom cinema was both an aesthetic and spiritual pursuit, a search that was reflected in films for which the words 'sublime,' 'transcendent' and 'masterpiece' can seem somehow lacking.” —Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times
