{"id":6430,"date":"2005-06-21T10:50:41","date_gmt":"2005-06-21T10:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/not-bad-for-a-donkey-movie.html"},"modified":"2005-06-21T10:50:41","modified_gmt":"2005-06-21T10:50:41","slug":"not-bad-for-a-donkey-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/not-bad-for-a-donkey-movie.html","title":{"rendered":"Not bad for a donkey movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the DVD release of a Bresson film..<\/a><\/p>\n

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When the Museum of Modern Art announced "The Hidden God,"<\/a> a major faith and film series featuring titles as diverse as Magnolia, Andrei Roublev<\/span> and Groundhog Day<\/span>, the curators said the one film which clearly had to be included was Robert Bresson’s masterpiece, Au Hasard Balthazar<\/span>. The New York Times<\/span> recently proclaimed, "Forget the Sith, Tom and Katie, the big movie news this summer is the release on DVD of one of the greatest films in history: Au Hasard Balthazar."<\/span><\/p>\n

Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer<\/span> writes: "No film I have ever seen has come so close to convulsing my entire being. Bresson’s Christian spirituality finds its most earthy, layered and life-giving expression. Grace has never been dramatized more lucidly, or more movingly, than it is here." <\/p>\n

Not bad for a donkey movie. This unadorned 95-minute story follows the young colt Balthazar’s adoption as a family pet, through the hands of many masters, to the moment of his eventual death. It is a fragmentary portrait of a French village in the mid-sixties, tracing the interwoven lives of eight characters. It’s a study of human weakness and cruelty, it’s a portrait of Christ the suffering servant, it’s the heartbreaking story of a young girl’s descent from innocence to despair. But above all, it’s a movie about a donkey.<\/p>\n

Bresson was a French Catholic who made his greatest and most deeply Christian films in the two decades following World War Two. Afficionados would be hard-pressed to choose his masterpiece\u2014A Man Escaped<\/a>, Diary of a Country Priest, The Trial of Joan of Arc<\/span> and Pickpocket<\/span> all have their advocates\u2014but Au Hasard Balthazar<\/span> may be his most resonant and profoundly spiritual work. It is certainly his most affecting. Film scholar Donald Richie describes the film’s final moments: "The combination of something awful and something wonderful going together defeats any critical acumen I may have. It reduces me to an emotional human being\u2014which I think was Bresson’s intention in making this picture."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the DVD release of a Bresson film.. When the Museum of Modern Art announced "The Hidden God," a major faith and film series featuring titles as diverse as Magnolia, Andrei Roublev and Groundhog Day, the curators said the one film which clearly had to be included was Robert Bresson’s masterpiece, Au Hasard Balthazar. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNot bad for a donkey movie - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/not-bad-for-a-donkey-movie.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not bad for a donkey movie - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On the DVD release of a Bresson film.. When the Museum of Modern Art announced "The Hidden God," a major faith and film series featuring titles as diverse as Magnolia, Andrei Roublev and Groundhog Day, the curators said the one film which clearly had to be included was Robert Bresson’s masterpiece, Au Hasard Balthazar. 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When the Museum of Modern Art announced "The Hidden God," a major faith and film series featuring titles as diverse as Magnolia, Andrei Roublev and Groundhog Day, the curators said the one film which clearly had to be included was Robert Bresson’s masterpiece, Au Hasard Balthazar. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}