Get ready for the Criterion DVD of "Au Hasard Balthazar"

May 29, 2005 by


Robert Bresson’s haunting, soulful masterpiece is coming…

Have you advance-ordered your copy? I have. This was the best film I saw on the big screen last year, and I’ve thought about it more than any other film since.

If you don’t know about this film, just read the 100% positive reviews from the Online Film Critics Society.

Bresson is one of the few directors for whom cinema was both an aesthetic and spiritual pursuit, a search that was reflected in films for which the words ‘sublime,’ ‘transcendent’ and ‘masterpiece’ can seem somehow lacking. – Manhola Darghis, The Los Angeles Times

Bresson is one of the saints of the cinema, and Au Hasard Balthazar is his most heartbreaking prayer. – Roger Ebert

The supreme masterpiece by one of the greatest of 20th-century filmmakers. – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice


  • Facebook
Filed Under: Journal Tagged With: , ,
About Jeffrey Overstreet

Don't you hate these ugly click-bait ads? Visit LookingCloser.org for a bigger, better, ad-free version of Jeffrey Overstreet's blog. Jeffrey Overstreet is the senior film critic for Christianity Today, the author of Through a Screen Darkly and Auralia's Colors, and he teaches writing and film at Seattle Pacific University, Houston Baptist University, and Northwest University.

  • BethR

    We-e-l-l…after viewing that poster, all I can say is I knew there was a reason I studied French. ;-)

    If Serenity does well in die Deutscheland IN SPITE of that freaky poster, it will be a testimony to the pre-exisiting Firefly fandom there.

  • opus

    Best. Movie poster. Ever. The only thing better would be if the movie had ninjas in it. Freakin’ sweet ninjas, that is.

  • Neb

    That Serenity poster!!!! 8-O What planet is it from?! Holy Cow: is that really Summer Glau? No way… Gack.

  • Matt Page

    I got “Au Hasard Balthazar” as a present on DVD the other dy (from the UK, but not the criterion collection one).I’ve not seen it before so I’m really lookig forward to seeing it.

    Matt