In fact, Bresson is famed for having stated that his deepest ideas are the most covert; yet, none too amazingly, bad critics have always seemingly latched onto the most manifest of his symbolisms, unawares that they are also the most shallow. Naturally, this red herring technique, and masquing of deeper ideas behind the banal religious symbolism of the West has let all sorts of bad critics imbue far too much into his films that is not there, and this is another point I’ll return to. But, the two artists also use ellipses in the narrative in vastly differing ways. Bresson will lead the viewer up to the moment an event will occur, and then jumps over it. His ellipses have specificity, and occur because there would be a certain amount of redundancy in seeing what ‘has’ to occur, due to the intensely strong direction of his narrative and mis-en-scene. Ozu, on the other hand, uses far larger ellipses. He does not lead the viewer right up to a moment where the outcome is a near inevitability. He will elide over a scene or moment for which there are multiple outcomes or interpretations, well before the looseness of his comfortably paced narrative gains firmness and tightens; therefore drawing the viewer back into the film, in a participatory manner, by asking the viewer to figure out what must have occurred, due to the circumstances that follow. This is not an insignificant tactical difference. And either tactic is something subtle that a lesser filmmaker, like Luis Buñuel, to whom Bresson is so unfortunately and often compared, is constitutionally incapable of. No wonder other critics have never commented on this aspect of Bresson’s technique, save in a cursory or shallow manner.
Yet, this sort of misreading is only one of many that critics have made regarding this film and its creator. Perhaps the only thing more frustrating for a good critic and reader than reading when a critic botches an assessment of something good in the negative, is when a critic botches a positive assessment by citing wrong reasons for why the thing is actually good.
Among the many false claims for this almost universally praised film are that the film is a religious film; specifically a Christian one (and despite claims, what the creator of this art, Bresson, may or may not have claimed for the work of art, once done, he has no more valid claim about its meaning than anyone else; the art alone defines itself). This is because, while there are some accoutrements and obvious (and shallow) symbols that specify Christianity as the religion of the human characters, there is nothing specifically religious in it. Is it spiritual? Certainly. But this is reality, in and of itself, not equivalent to being religious, and the spirituality of the film seeps far deeper into orifices of the human consciousness than mere surface religiosity ever touches, Christian or any other. As proof of this claim is the fact that, even if one does not listen to the film (nor read the subtitles) any viewer of any religious or philosophic bent will easily get the tale and its spirituality (in a very secular sense). No specific knowledge of Christianity’s aims nor its history are required.
Article comments
1 - Jon
Oh dear. This review is awful - and I say that though I think Balthazar is a masterpiece.
Is 12 pages of waffle really necessary for a review of the film? In the time it takes to read that I probably could have watched the film again. About 4 pages of that was merely plot describing! And 6 of them were just attacking other critics! Does Mr. Schneider actively search out critics to disagree with? Numerous critics have mentioned Bresson's technique, his use of ellipsis and to what extent the religious imagery is a mask for other things - and with more acuity and less adolescent ranting than this article.
I wont come back to comment, or read any more reviews by this guy because I've seen how any argument on these pages just descend into childish sniping. Still an awful review though.
And the donkey dies/ is dying at the end. To say not is just being very petty.
2 - Robert H
This paragraph--
"As for the DVD, put out by The Criterion Collection, it comes with no English dubbed soundtrack, and only white subtitles " a poor combination, as I’ve oft lamented. The positive of this, though, is that there is not much dialogue in the film that needs translation, and certainly no long speeches. Unfortunately, there is not even an audio film commentary track. This is simply inexcusable in this day and age, especially for such high priced merchandise as Criterion peddles."
--calls into question the legitimacy of anything you say before or after. The fact that you say (or at least imply) that you'd prefer to see a foreign film dubbed into English, makes me wonder if you actually do love foreign films. I can't know for sure, but this makes me think you might also prefer Balthazar in color.
3 - Dan Schneider
If you'd prefer to have up to 1/3 of your visual art marred by letters, go ahead, but any foreign films that are well-dubbed (many Ingmar Bergmans and some Fellinis) are far superior to the defacement of subtitling.
But, if you prefer it, go ahead.