Au Hasard Balthazar
Written and directed by: Robert Bresson
Starring: Anne Wiazemsky, Francois Lafarge, Jean-Claude Guilbert
At: Kendall Square, through April 15 Running time: 95 minutes
Unrated (adult situations)
In French, with subtitles
For my money, the most Christ-like figure now appearing on movie screens isn't in "The Passion of Movie Review the Christ" or "The Gospel of John." He isn't even human.
He's a donkey named Balthazar, and he suffers mightily for the sins of man in an out-ofthe- way French village in Robert Bresson's 1966 classic "Au Hasard Balthazar. " A new print opens for revival run today at the Kendall Square; a pilgrimage to absorb this quietly devastating, nearly perfect allegory is very much recommended.
Bresson was a Jansenist, a strain of Catholicism that stresses divine grace and man's distance from God. His films -- lean, minimalist fables all -- occasionally allow for sudden bolts of transcendence, but in "Balthazar" we have all fallen and we can't get up. The donkey is merely present as witness, servant, and martyr: Our Beast of Metaphysical Burden.
Balthazar is bought as a foal by rich man vacationing in the village, and as his young son Jacques plays with the donkey and with Marie, the local schoolteacher's daughter, we are given a brief, problematic glimpse of Eden.
Jacques then returns to the city, and Marie grows up into a tremulous teenage innocent Anne Wiazemsky, the closest the movies have ever come to Vermeer) drawn helplessly to local bad boy Gerard (Francois Lafarge).
Gerard's not much of a rebel by Hollywood standards -- he's the leader of a moped gang, for one thing -- but his sadistic streak is considerable and deeply felt.
Marie is soon addicted to him, and her face carries the full weight of the spiritual loss.
Everyone in the village specializes in one sin or another. Marie's father (Philippe Asselin) has a stubborn pride that costs him his land; the baker's wife (M. C. Fremont) lusts after delivery boy Gerard; homeless wastrel Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert) includes murder, drunkenness, and greed among his flaws.
Balthazar serves them all, is abused by most, judges no one.
There's a sequence in which Gerard, annoyed by the donkey's balkiness, sets fire to his tail and watches the animal canter up the road in panic; in the next shot he finds Balthazar standing stolidly among the bushes and hitches him back up to the cart. The violence is absorbed, the sense of forgiveness palpable, but Gerard sees only a dumb beast. Bresson invites us to consider which of these two is the more unfortunate.