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Balthazar (re-release)
Metascore
100 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 8 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    Bresson suggests that we are all Balthazars. Despite our dreams, hopes and best plans, the world will eventually do with us whatever it does.
  2. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    100
    1966 French masterpiece -- the finest, most deeply personal work of a filmmaker who has been compared, justifiably, to both Dostoyevsky and Bach.
  3. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    100
    To see Au Hasard Balthazar is to understand the limits of religious literalism in movies -- the limits, even, of movies themselves. Bresson pares everything away until all that's left are the things we do and the hole left by the things we could have done but didn't.
  4. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    100
    This great film, made with uncompromising honesty and devastating reality, is, according to Jean-Luc Godard, "the world in an hour and a half."
  5. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    100
    The final scene of Balthazar's demise is one of cinema's most moving and haunting moments.
  6. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    100
    To cut to the chase, Robert Bresson's heart-breaking and magnificent Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) -- the story of a donkey's life and death in rural France -- is the supreme masterpiece by one of the greatest of 20th-century filmmakers.
  7. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    100
    If in Bresson's films nothing ever seems out of place or superfluous it's because he strove to find the essential truth of the image. Not an image or sound is wasted -- or offered up in self-glorification -- and from such seeming simplicity there arises a world of feeling.
  8. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Dave Kehr
    100
    Perhaps the greatest and most revolutionary of Bresson's films, Balthazar is a difficult but transcendently rewarding experience, never to be missed.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.4 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 52 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 14
  3. Negative: 3 out of 14
  1. JohnQ.
    2
    Why would you want to feel the agony of existence?
  2. IraM
    10
    I just purchased this movie. I have seen it twice now. Religous allegory and painful realism in one movie. Not quite as surreal as Bunuel or Fellini, more subtle. What stikes me as strange are the events that never take place on screen. On the first viewing, I thought that maybe I wasn't paying attention close enough. I guess that is a part of the mystery, though. I loved the party scene with the fireworks. This is a subtle, sad masterpiece.… Full Review »
  3. Previous
    10
    A film that a sum of people would be turned off by, Balthazar touches the heart instantly after the 3 minute mark as it tells a tale about the life of a donkey suffering a powerful experience you don't want to miss.… Full Review »
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