Au Hasard Balthazar - 1966 - DVD

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Clean lines of contrast between black and white characterize this story of time-gone-by, and of its players who reconcile themselves to the personal consequences of the passage of time. Au Hasard Balthazar opens with the classical music of Schubert, an artist whose music is loosely classified as "classical" in that it follows certain structures and traditions, but is distinguished by its purposeful discordance, a musical manipulation of the form it's bound to. The first shot of the film is of a donkey suckling its mother; life begins, traditions are made, and like Schubert's sonata, those traditions will be broken.

The girl who owns the donkey keeps him throughout her childhood and as she grows through young adulthood. The routines of her life change, there is a death in the family, she falls in and out of love, and she experiences lulls of emotional and even physical pain. But the animal's presence remains constant. A tractor enters the frame in a scene on the family farm, as it pulls off the newly plowed field, one that was formally sown by the donkey-driven cart, the girl waits observantly on the cusp on the land, in utter dismay and sadness. She is threatened by the new technology because it replaces her occupation, discredits the modern necessity of her animal, and by extension alters the context of her history with the land.

The animal is a constant that defines her life; it's a companion and a signifier of what her past looked like. The donkey meanders among country fields and provincial paths, and populated cities and bustling streets, constantly crossing borders and witnessing change. The animal is a historical artifact, a piece of living history that sees change but is not effected by it. A group of young boys mock the girl's the wooden cart motored by the donkey, her only mode of transportation. She does not fit into modern culture because her antiquated past still remains in the present time. She begins to question the importance of the things in her life; she cuts ties with her childhood love, rebels, and turns to the town trouble-maker for companionship, the very person who mocked the donkey and wooden cart.

At the same time that the boy condescends to these provincial artifacts he also displays an irreverence for modernity. In one scene he and his friends pour an oil slick on the bend of the road and watch in pleasure as cars skid off the edge and crash. His insecurity with the future and disconnect with the past makes his current state of being rife with conflict and outbursts; he's searching for meaning in his life, but doesn't seem to have a history to use as a point of reference. The girl, then, is an easy target for the boy's disillusionment because she has direct contact to her past, she has a framed index of meaning and he resents it.

The girl finally reverts back to what she knows; she reunites with her childhood love and finds comfort in her native town. Her donkey suffers its inevitable fate and dies, slowly bleeding to death from a shooter's gunshot, alone amongst a flock of sheep in an open field. The girl reconciles her life to the changing future because she makes peace with her immovable past. She understands the contrast of the past and future and how that colors her present life, allowing the donkey to finally die, to stop being kicked and abused by those resentful of the past it represents. The girl makes amends with history to promise life in the future.