Wednesday, March 21, 1:00pm, UNC Charlotte main campus, Student Union Theater, studentunion.uncc.edu
Robert Bresson, France, 1966 / 95 min.
French with English subtitles
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
Introduction by William Davis, Instructor of Film Studies, UNC Charlotte. Discussion will follow screening.
Voted one of the twenty greatest films of all time in the latest Sight & Sound poll of 846 international film critics and scholars, Au Hasard Balthazar is not only a masterpiece, but a film that stands apart for its way of inviting interpretation while resisting it and for recording material reality with a hard, unflinching eye that nonetheless constantly evokes the sublime. It is also that rare film that places an animal at its center—the donkey Balthazar— without endowing it with human traits: by remaining an animal, the character of Balthazar magnifies the humanity of the people he encounters—for better and, most often, for worse. Balthazar’s story begins when he is taken from his mother to be a plaything for some children in the French countryside. Over the course of his life, he will be the companion to Marie, a haunted, passive young woman, the victim of a small-time thug who desires her, a beast of burden for a homeless drunk, a circus animal, and the property of a heartless miser. As Balthazar passes from one owner to the next, from one vice to another, always a humble witness, director Robert Bresson paints a picture of cruelty and innocence that many have seen as a Christian allegory. Is Balthazar’s life the life of a saint? Bresson leaves the viewer to answer, speaking first to the heart and forever after to the restless mind.
