The cover of the Blu-ray disc of "Barthazar the Donkey" launched by the Standard Collector's Edition
I would seriously recommend an extremely outlier movie, Batsa the Donkey.
You may not have heard of this movie, let alone seen it.
But its value proves that it is definitely a rare treasure in the history of world cinema.
It may be one of the very few "animals" and not "animal movies".
Robert Bresson with "Protagonist Batsa"
Its director is the famous French film master - Robert Bresson (1901.9.25 ~1999.12.18)
Don't think it's just an old 1966 movie.
This movie is more "avant-garde and avant-garde" than any film you see right now.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > a story that is simple to paranoid</h1>
People are attractive because they don't realize their charm, and that's what I'm looking for for. ———— Robert Bresson
Anna Viazemski, who plays Mary, not only collaborated with Bresson, Godard, Pasolini and others, but also became a well-known writer and screenwriter
The film "The Donkey Barthazar", which was nominated for the Golden Lion Award at the 27th Venice Film Festival, features a donkey whose name is Batsa.
Through the eyes of a donkey, the viewer is able to gaze at the world with an unusual perspective.
Batsa was abused, trafficked, and eventually killed at the hands of different people.
In its hollow eyes looking at the sky, what is revealed is the same theme as that of humans—a tortuous but uneventful life.
At the end of the film, Batsa dies a very long and painful process
In the peculiar film "Batsa the Donkey".
Nothing that has anything to do with the protagonist of the story, Bartha the Donkey, or its absence, is not revealed.
This principle, which Bresson strongly adheres to, drives the audience extremely mad.
Because the plot is omitted to the extreme, the story is very broken and incoherent, breaking the habit of ordinary movies to pursue a smooth narrative and edit the language of the camera.
The heroine of the film, Mary, her love is very blind
This method is obscure and confusing, but at the same time full of wonderful expectations and temptations.
This infinity is close to the "reality of life", trying to destroy the "truth of drama".
Because in reality, our vision (the horizon of the eyeball) is limited.
It's just that televisions, mobile phones, and the Internet have increased our horizons.
Such a subversive treatment is not only highly artistic, but also a severe provocation to popular entertainment.
Batsa carries the miscellaneous tastes of the five tastes and also bears the important emotional medium of Mary
Therefore, this movie is destined to make the minority obsessed and let the public suffer.
Senior film scholar Dai Jinhua once said that if you really like movies, you must read classic movies, no matter how hypnotic a classic is, as long as you insist on watching it, even if you watch it half asleep and half awake, you will have gains.
And this kind of harvest is something that commercial entertainment movies can't give.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Bryson's paranoia and leadership</h1>
I don't let the actors see what they shot before, otherwise they will see themselves on the screen like they look in the mirror and then try to correct their faces and movements, which is the case with all the actors. —Robert Bresson
Mary spent the night with the miser, or stayed up in her chair until dawn, we don't know, because Batsa was not present
We will constantly wonder why Mary would hug the cold and tyrannical Glade;
What exactly is Glade's desire, why is he summoned by the police, who dies, who does it;
Who the donkey belongs to; why does the father reject the priest; who deceives whom, who doubts whom?
Countless questions, raised by a single lens, need to be answered in the gaps where different lenses are connected.
Whether the murderer was a tramp or not, we never got an answer
All undertakings and descriptions are erased.
There is no point in each scene existing alone, and only in a specific position does it have a miserly and vague meaning.
Bresson believes that it is very interesting to create a film with the rule of "the result comes first, the cause comes later".
In this way, the reason will naturally become a good suspense, and the story can capture the curiosity of the audience.
Bresson is obsessed with expressing automated hands and feet, and the hands and feet have a special charm in Bresson's shots
For example, When Glad is summoned, we guess that someone has been murdered and the murderer may be him, but as the plot progresses, we find that we guess wrong, and we guess that it is Arnold the tramp, but it turns out that it is not him, and it does not matter who it is for the story of the movie.
Maybe no one will ever know who did it, or even if it wasn't murder at all, it was an accident.
In any case, these details, which only stay at the narrative level, have little to do with the film's philosophical motif.
The gaze created by the camera gives every subject (object) a soul
In Batsa the Donkey, Bresson has been trying to get rid of everything that doesn't matter.
Life is exactly like that.
We see a lot of things, we don't pay attention to the cause at all, we always see the result first, and then we find the cause.
The result precedes the cause, the action precedes the performance, and this is the real charm
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > automated subconscious</h1>
The muses never spoke to each other, they danced only together— the French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas
A foot that generates self-awareness in a close-up gaze
Bresson never let actors be subject to professional habits.
After filming "The Women of the Boulogne Forest", since "The Diary of a Village Priest", Bresson has used non-professional actors who can't move.
So, in Bresson's mouth, the actors became "models."
Hands full of self-consciousness
Bresson hates professionally crafted theatrical actors, and their initiative and professionalism are Bresson's least favorite parts.
In his opinion, they should be marionettes in the hands of the director.
Just do the action, read the lines, let the body naturally reveal and react, without worrying about the meaning of the story.
Those hands and feet that Bresson is keen to photograph, with their own consciousness to satisfy the expression.
They are both alienated from the faces of the characters and interlinked with the motivations of the characters' actions.
The movement of the hand can be expressed separately for consciousness and intention
The way the hands and feet behave exposes their subconscious to automation.
They become parasites of the characters, both sharing the components of a body and serving alone as the end of the transmission of the mind.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > "alive" of The Donkey Barthazar</h1>
When I named the movie, I had an urge to give it a biblical name. The name itself is the motto of those saints, and the Three Wise Men of the East claim to be descendants of Batsa. —Robert Bresson
Batsa had used his wits to get a circus job in middle age
Batsa the Donkey is another projection of God.
The physical it is from being pampered in childhood, to being brave and capable in adulthood, to being full of wisdom in middle age, to returning home in old age, how similar to human experience.
It's just that it can't open its mouth, and it can't express what it sees.
In his youth, Batsa was also fascinated by fields and aimlessness
In Batsa's gaze, we see the loveless desire of Mary and Glade.
See the homeless man's turmoil, see the miserly ghost trembling.
He also saw himself dying in the meadows and among the flocks.
As a teenager, Batsa was teased by children and infected with childlike fun
The donkey follows these masters and companions, like a medium that mirrors the sins of mankind.
God is never present because you are praying.
Nor will you be present because you are blasphemous.
Batsa's eyes witnessed everything
Bresson's contemplative exploration of the loneliness and transcendence of the spiritual world gives Bassat the donkey a certain mimesis and substitution, which can be both the camera itself and the externalized embodiment of the gazing experience.
In short, Bassat is an important proof of the presence of the "superego".
Robert Bresson is a film master among film masters
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Bresson was my spiritual teacher, and this film is one of my Bibles</h1>
Art is declining, art is dying, maybe it's too free, maybe it's too broad, and everything is like that today. —Robert Bresson
In my opinion, there are two kinds of movies, and they do not interfere with each other.
One is a commercial entertainment product, and the other is a serious film art.
Bresson's films belong to the kind of serious film art that can neither be classified nor answered.
Anyone who tries to dismantle or imitate Bresson is either killed or injured.
Bresson's paranoid subtractive aesthetic is mostly difficult to accept by the mainstream.
Art is about hiding and alleging, and if everything is said explicitly, it is not art — Bresson
As a creator of cinematic art, Bresson was unusually arrogant and great.
Since making the film, he has parted himself from the film entertainment product.
Bresson never even felt like a director or a filmmaker, he was just an artist who tampered with the rules.
He marveled at the objectivity of the camera, precise and unbiased, able to capture what the human eye "can't see";
Bresson on the set of Batsa the Donkey
Obsessed with the subjectivity of editing, all films are produced in editing, without exception.
Bresson believes that the art of cinema is the art of bringing elements into place, which is no different from other arts.
Like an anecdote by the German music master Bach, he played for a student, and the student admired him very much, but Bach said, I have nothing to worship, as long as the right note is pressed at the right time, the rest is the credit of the instrument.
Bresson under Paul Schrader's lens
As an art industry, whether a person is a worker or an artist depends on his philosophical speculation and creative margins, and if the artist is not dictatorial, confused, addicted, and controversial, then he will only be a practitioner or worker.
For Bresson, no matter how the times moved, he was always at the vanguard, and that has not changed to this day.
As for me, I love Bresson.
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