The darkest version of humanity ever filmed: Robert Bresson's Au Hasard, Balthazar

"Au Hasard, Balthazar" is something like the anti-War Horse: in this case Robert Bresson's 1966 b/w film about a donkey in a tiny rural French town, (spoilers coming) the course of its life, from when it's weaned from its mother and bought for a little farm to its death in field, shot while being used to smuggle goods across the border. Like WH, AHB is episodic, tracing a course in time by following the life of a working animal - but AHB is simple, stark, orchestrated only by a Schubert piana sonata not by orchestrated crescendos. It's much better - but also very difficult and difficult to like: there is not a single human character in the movie who is in any way likable. There is so much cruelty to this animal, and so much cruelty within this tiny provincial town - Bresson's is the darkest version of humanity I've ever seen on film with the possible exception of Peckinpaugh and he was probably nuts. Even the bleakest Holocaust film has at least some elements of hope, of struggling against evil - but not this one. So what's going on? As you watch, it's evident that the film is in some way symbolic or allegorical, but Bresson's too smart to make these images blunt and obvious: I think we're meant to see the donkey's life as like ours, like a human life - we all go through suffering and pain, and things happen that we can't understand - in other words, our understanding and perception of god and the cosmos is no different from a farm animal's perception of human life: we see and feel a deity in only the most blunt and uncomprehending ways as we move through the course of our life - tiny occasions of kindness, but then suffering, frights, abuse that makes no sense to us but fits into a bigger picture beyond our comprehension and perception.