Robert Bresson vs. Peter Brook

Netflix delivered me two Criterion copies of classic films today, one of Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, and the other the 1963 version of The Lord of the Flies directed by Peter Brook. I watched them both in one afternoon, and I tucked into the DVD extra features through the evening. I don’t think I’m the only one who still doesn’t understand Bresson’s work yet. While I’m the only one of my friends who has ever watched a Bresson film, therefore taking away the possibility of conversation and discussion regarding his work, I just don’t quite see it.

The story is simple enough. A young girl, Marie, befriends a juvenile donkey and names him Balthazar. She isn’t allowed to keep him as a pet, but as their lives unfold they take strangely parallel paths. Balthazar is passed through the hands of various owners who treat him cruelly, working him to exhaustion and beating him at every opportunity. Marie finds herself being deceived and manipulated by a group of young sadists and feeling betrayed by the failures of her farmer father. She ends up abused and ruined and Balthazar ends up abused and left for dead by cruel locals. Uplifting story eh? But there is a strong sense of humanity in the path that Balthazar travels. He has even been likened to Christ and other Biblical allegories.

I think I understand what Bresson is trying to do, in terms of craft; shoot a film that’s as realistic as it could possibly be. He never uses professional actors, only non-professionals he calls “models,” and he has been known to do up to fifty takes of any shot until the individuality of an actor has been obliterated and they recite the lines without any acting being involved. Interesting approach granted, but does it really work? I have the feeling that it must because there is endless literature and cult followings of Bresson’s work. He was never a successful filmmaker in that his films made lots of money or won trucks full of various awards, that being the usual and modern indication of how good somebody is, but I’ve read a number of top-10 lists from various filmmakers, critics and writers who constantly hail his work, notable Balthazar, Pickpocket, and Diary of a Country Priest. I haven’t gotten to Priest yet, but the other two I’ve watched and maybe I just need to see them again or something. There’s something I’m missing.

I felt the same way twelve years ago after watching Fargo. I hated it when I watched it but I realized that I was in such a minority of opinion that I forced myself to watch it a couple more times, ultimately… still not getting it. Some films just don’t connect I guess. The difference is that I LOVE the Coen Brothers, but Bresson has yet to speak to me. I recognize the beauty in the film, I think, I see the humanity that he tries to express and the simplicity of the filming and acting techniques, but its just so dull. And don’t get me wrong. I love dull. I love Jarmusch and Tarkovsky and Antonioni as much as the next cinephile. Maybe I’m just waiting for the day that I see it playing at a repertory theater and I come out sobbing from the beauty I just witnessed. Maybe my time for Bresson hasn’t arrived yet.

The Lord of the Flies however I thought was terrific entertainment. I never read the book (quick confession; I am a terrible reader. It takes me weeks to read one book and so many of the classics assigned to me in school I never finished or, sometimes, even started. My love is for the silver screen, and lately my flat-screen tv. I am a lover of most types, genres, and nationalities of film and I can watch them over and over again. And I do. But tangents aside…) so I don’t know the accuracy of the story, but I loved watching these kids slowly grow into feral killers. This corresponds to the earlier article I wrote about Ondskan and boarding school scenarios being perfect arenas for good vs. evil. Take a few dozen boys, strand them on a desert island (or a school where adults are less present), and watch nature unfold.

At first they try to maintain a semblance of society by designating a leader and dividing boys into groups for hunting, foraging, building shelters, and keeping a signal fire. When the hunting boys first discover the thrill of killing wild pigs however, their bloodlust begins to slowly cross over into something more sinister. But you know the story I’m sure. What I liked was the craft in which you watch this deterioration of humanity into wild beasts. At first I was caught by how stiff the acting was, but then I realized I was watching a large cast of child actors no more than twelve or thirteen who had little if any previous acting experience. Of course they would be a little wooden. As the movie progresses however, you see these boys beginning to enjoy the building chaos and anarchy they’re getting their little hands on. This is most apparent in the campfire scene where you see them leaping around throwing their arms and their spears into the air yelling and screaming and chanting their hunting mantra over and over. They can taste the blood of the pig on their lips. They are carnal savages, no longer well-bred little schoolboys at all.

Even the leader Ralph is seen during the campfire eating a hunk of pig flesh and enjoying the crazy scene around him. Having been battling the hunting leader Jack for control of the boys and control of the society he’s trying to keep from deteriorating, he clearly enjoys a moment of animal pleasure. He recoils in horror when the scene turns violent and a boy is slaughtered when he is mistaken for a wild “beast” that the boys all fear. The hunters, which now outnumber the others 2:1, regard the incident as a mere accident. But that doesn’t stop the boys from tasting the blood on their hands and wanting more. They now target the fat boy “Piggy” who has been the subject of much ridicule and discrimination throughout the film.

In the extra features the director mentions how he ended up discarding much of the script in favor of letting the boys improvise quite a bit on the set. While this may detract from the closeness the film keeps to the book, it does allow these boys to be a bit more organic in their acting style, and not so confined to the words they’re speaking. Perhaps since I watched the two films in one day I tried to think how Robert Bresson would have shot a film like Flies. Would he have let the boys improvise as they did and erupt into the carnage the inevitably happens? Probably not. But then that may be why Bresson never touched a film like Flies, opting instead for the small slices of realist humanity he can detail in much more intimate films. Had Peter Brook directed Balthazar however the actors would have surely been more explosive and expressive, and the story of the donkey would have been severely overshadowed.

That is perhaps one thing I understand about Bresson, the films be makes could certainly not be told by any other filmmaker. At least with Balthazar, any other filmmaker would have missed the point or failed to highlight the donkey’s struggle by allowing his actors to roam more freely. Maybe I’m starting to understand Bresson after all… well, not yet. Appreciation doesn’t necessarily equal high regard. For instance I can appreciate Jean-Luc Godard’s contribution to cinema, but I don’t particularity like his movies. Perhaps if I were alive in the 60’s when these films came out and saw how different they were to movies that preceded them I could understand their brilliance a little bit more. As it is, I’m not that old, I have no such perspective. And pundits please, don’t think its just because I was raised on blistering Hollywood over-productions. I love the small movie, but like anything I have to connect to it first.