Negative Positive
Title: Au Hasard Bresson
Review: I'm puzzled by critics reacting to this movie as an expression of Bresson's compassion and mystical spirituality. What we have here, when all the auteurish hoop-de-do is removed, is a story about a gentle beast who is beaten and abused in every possible way throughout his life--in one scene he's even lit on fire--and who dies at the end of a film in a manner meant to imitate Christ's Crucifixion. And according to all available evidence, Bresson pushed reality to its furthermost possible extreme by actually having all of these outrages visited on the living beast who was Balthasar in the film. The animal's suffering was authentic. Personally, I would question the compassionate spirituality of a director who expressed his artistic vision by repetitiously, almost compulsively torturing a helpless animal.
Is the review positive or negative? 