Viewed an interesting movie ‘Au Hasard Balthazar” by the French master Robert Bresson–Diary of a Country Priest and The Trial of Joan of Arc. Simple images and ideas revolving around being human within a community suffering the loss of faith, the existence of the seven deadly sins, and eventually the disintegration of individuals involved in futile, frustrating, manipulative selfish relationships. Balthazar, a name originating with the gift-bearing magi, is a donkey, a heart-warming symbol of faith, hope, and charity. Marie, the central figure, as a child begs her father to purchase the baby donkey. The animal is adorable with infant fur, awkward legs, and a bashful nursing nature. The beast of burden is vulnerability and innocence embodied. The children possessing a zest for life baptize their darling donkey in a staged sacred ceremony, naming their wonder Balthazar. As the years pass, everyone suffers. Marie becomes a complicated angst filled young woman, unable to love, attached to wayward social activity, losing respect for her father, a man of no solutions in his demand for honor while enduring stubborn aimless poverty–suffering impurely through pride, Balthazar is Marie’s only outlet for love. The final scene, accompanied by a Schubert sonata, presents the death of Balthazar. The delinquent Gerard torturing and deviously influencing Marie throughout the film, absconds with Balthazar, utilizing the donkey for criminal activity. Definitive, once the spoiled Gerard receives a portable hand radio and motorbike loud French rock-n-roll follows him throughout the film. Whenever we watch Gerard we hear the influence of pop culture. During the black market smuggling diabolical, Balthazar is shot. Gerard and accomplices flee into the darkness of a surrounding forest. Balthazar’s death is a black and white meditative dance upon the screen as a flock of sheep, guide dogs, and a shepherd venture upon his dying. Upon the big screen, as intended to be seen, the scene is mesmerizing in beauty juxtaposed to all the preceding confusion and travesties.
Today’s reading fit nicely into the theme of the herd, expanding beyond to the duty of shepherds.
Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of My pasture…You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds. I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply. I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing… —Jeremiah 2
The LORD is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want. —Psalm 23
