Nights are for the Heart Broken

Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) - Bresson Perhaps the most melancholic adaptation of Dostoevsky’s White Nights. A painter named Jacques meets a suicidal young woman, Marthe, and talks her out of jumping off from the Pont-Neuf bridge. For four nights, he falls in love while she pines for her lover to come back. After her lover doesn’t show up, she reciprocates his love and of course, it’s his happiest night of his life until…

In his typical austere fashion, Bresson goes on to tell lovers on the bridge at night story. Young actors emoting their heartbreaks here have no equals in cinema, really. The romantic bosa nova provided by Marku Ribas really adds to the achingly beautiful Parisian night atmosphere. You know the heart break's going to come but when it happens, it's still devastating. Ugh!

Crystal Clarity

The Devil, Probably (1977) - Bresson
Which is more painful: seeing a baby seal clubbed to death or the main character shot dead in mid-sentence? This precisely measured condemnation of the modern world seeing through an intelligent young person, The Devil, Probably is a quietly angry film. Watching it is a frustrating experience also. Bresson's 'actors' go through their lines in their monotonous delivery. We don't see the victim when the bus runs over him. We only see passengers' feet and so on...

Charles denounces everything, from religion to psychoanalysis to money and sees no reason to go on living while the world is getting destroyed. What's remarkable is its clarity in disdain for destructive nature of human and making the case for ending life, without judgment.

There is a short poignant moment at the end where Charles stops before on his way to die. From an apartment, its door ajar, there is a music blaring from TV set. The scene is very brief and in typical Bressonian fashion, there are no discernible emotions, no coverage, no closeups. Even art can't change his mind. Superb spiritual granddaddy to recent Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st.

Beast of Burden

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) - Bresson

It took me this long to see this finally and I got nothing much to say. It's profoundly sad and beautiful and moving. And I didn't expect that from a movie whose main character is a donkey. Unlike any other animal films, our donkey starts as a donkey and remains a donkey until the end. Yet it pulls so much empathy and emotion from us. The donkey is the (mostly) silent witness of all the human follies around him. He takes all the abuses and neglect in and dies alone. No character notices or mourns its passing.

Then there is Marie (Anne Wiazemsky). She is sad and beautiful. No wonder Godard hurried up and married then 19-yr old unknown actress right after seeing the movie. It's also the first film I felt there is no excess anywhere, that all the 90 some minutes are totally justifiable. Edits, closeups, sound, everything. The film is a transcendental beauty.