Au hasard Balthazar by Robert Bresson

Has any other filmmaker so delicately balanced cruelty and compassion? Or Schubert and hee-haws? The life of Balthazar, a duende donkey if there ever was one, is one of the great stories of cinema. And Robert Bresson is French Cinema, wrote Jean-Luc Godard, just as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music. Elsewhere Godard called Balthazar “the world in an hour and a half”. If so, pass the hankies, the world is one big sob.