Notes on Our Hero, Balthazar (2025)
Who among us hasn’t dreamt of taking the life of another? Breathed it into existence? I will let he who is free from sin cast the first stone.
I have thought about killing people. I have expressed that sentiment aloud, as a joke, as a serious sentiment, about a past, about a future, about a recent past, about something that happened to me, about something that happened to my people, about something that happened near me, about something on the television, about something nearby, about something that’ll never touch me, about something that touches me nonstop and can’t be seen, as a trolley-problem-style question, as an expression of humiliation about acts of God, my lot in life, choices made before my birth, careless choices, because I was loved wrong, ladder-up booomerism, being the chosen sacrificial lamb, because today this is the straw.
Who among us hasn’t dreamt of saving the day, being a hero, and being seen for it? Not because you set out to be seen, maybe because you set out to be seen, but in a perfect world with a perfect scenario you would take decisive action and change the shape of the world, even if only over a small patch of dirt.
What could you gain? Friendship, admiration, respect, meaning, a narrative arc to your life, a place in the world, a justification for your shouting, a justification for your tears, an audience that allows you to have feelings at all.
Don’t you want to be loved for doing the right thing?
We all want to be understood.
I watched Our Hero, Balthazar (2025) on a watermarked screener application where the video owner had their name in the watermark. The video renter. The part-time viewer, full time experiencer. The relaxer. That’s what you do when you lead a life where the only people that want to have sex with you tell you after it’s certain you’ll never meet again that they can’t wait to tell their friends they fucked a famous person. They can’t wait to tell their friends they fucked a famous person that they picked flowers for even though allegedly they didn’t finish. It’s understood that I was lucky to even be in the room. In my lonely, rich life I get to watch movies before other people in the comfort of a home. My old flame told me I had to see this movie. She couldn’t stop thinking about me when she watched it. It hurt me. She was decidedly my old flame when she said it. Women that like me admire the shooter streak crawling under my skin desperately seeking an egress the size of a needlepoint. I might be the illegitimate son of God. I don’t want that to be me. I want to be loved and understood. Maybe because that’s in me that’s what I am. You try to be it. You try to not be it. At the end of the day maybe you always were. I’m not. Was Solomon?
I remember when we were in love, more falling out of love, or rekindling a love, we had a love once and we have another now, and I thought this movie had a dumb name and a dumb premise. I had never seen Au Hasard Balthazar (1966). I figured this movie was for people like me. People that would see the name and roll their eyes and remember they hadn’t seen Au Hasard Balthazar. I’ve seen L’argent (1983). I’ve seen Pickpocket (1959). I wasn’t confident it would capture the moment. I saw a meme scrolling on Instagram with the shot depicting our hero, Balltism screaming, “Why did you rape me?”
I wondered if I was wrong.
Balthazar is rich. Balthazar is in high school. He is likely still a child. He lives in New York City. He lives with his mom. He has no future. He will always be rich and isolated. He is overshadowed by his incredibly successful mother. His growing up is explicitly a hindrance to his mother’s self image. Her self image is her perception of her public image. His first encounter with a man beyond his family is a future leader overcorrecting observed infantilization to say that Balthazar is a young man. His father is not part of the film. He is only mentioned as a source of money. If Balthazar’s life coach doesn’t think he lives well the money stops. Balty films himself perfectly mimicking people in moments of distress in front of a ring light and uploads them to various social media platforms. He wants a cute and smart girl to want him back. He practices what she says too. During an active shooter preparedness drill and learning session at Balltism’s private academy we learn that the students at this school tend to have a chief of staff and private legal team. One of Balthazar’s classmates makes a snide remark about who he would call if he found out someone was planning to carry out a shooting. This line is the film’s first Chekov’s gun. Balthazar volunteers to act as a victim to be closer to his crush. They experience the meet-cute during the simulation of the active shooting situation. The active shooting simulation is introduced with a smash cut POV shot of the (to be revealed as) incredibly small world leader in active shooter preparedness running down a high school hallway moments after Balthazar begins to have a panic attack watching his mother ignore his birthday to spend time with the Black and Jewish politician Hakeem Atkins. Hakeem slides his hand across Balthazar’s mother’s lower back. She has rejected his request to spend his birthday together. He begins to have a panic attack. We see this in the reverse shot of his reaction that uses a visual effect to make his senses distort. This is the first layered filmic joke playing with the cuckold stereotypes. Balthazar’s experience of cuckolding is a simulacrum.
Balthazar decides he wants to do something good. He invites his crush, Elinore, over and tries to kiss her while watching footage stolen from security cameras uploaded to DeathHub.com of a recent school shooting. The shooting footage was sent by another person online with the handle, School_shooter16.
Solomon is a poor white guy that is about to get fired from the gas station for making his one woman coworker feel uncomfortable due to his inability to stop talking about, per her description, his father’s penis and the possibility that cartoon characters are worth wanting to fuck. These characters are heavily inspired by Danny Phantom. This is a nod to the Randy Stair supermarket shooting. Some people wonder if Randy Stair was trans. Solomon lives in a mobile home with his grandmother. His mother is dead. We see indications of this around his mobile home. This comes back during a crucial early scene unraveling Balthazar’s catfishing. Solomon’s father is sporadically present after an extended absence. He is a retired porn star. He is a man that has retired from more trades than most men enter. Solomon’s father robs Solomon and continues to treat him as a mark. Solomon meets his father at a masculinity conference where testosterone aiding supplements are sold. The testosterone aid is named Thrush. Thrush is something you can get from sucking dirty dick too much for too long.
Balthazar and Solomon connect on social media. Solomon lives in rural Texas. Balthazar catfishes Solomon as an older woman interested in Solomon sexually. Balthazar and Solomon speak to each other as each other during the catfishing before they meet IRL. Solomon mocks Balthazar’s mocking of the victims. Solomon likely sends Balthazar a photo of his large penis. Balthazar is platformed by an algorithm that can’t recognize he was not a victim of the shooting. They meet each other as each other first because of their point of connection - insensitivity toward victims. When they meet each other as each other in sincerity it is hostile. Balthazar uses an AI voice clone of his mother that he recorded the sample for during a smothering hug to send dirty talk to Solomon. When Balthazar goes to speak to his mother she is speaking flirtily about Hakeem. This is the introduction of the two character Oedipal narrative.
Solomon speaks to Balthazar because he thinks that Balthazar is an older woman named Terra. Solomon’s quest for pussy leads him to opening up for the veiled Balthazar.
Balthazar wants to stop Solomon’s school shooting to make Elinore want to (love? date?) fuck him. To desire him at all as a worthwhile person. Balthazar’s sexuality is completely subsumed by his desire for recognition and attention.
Balthazar wants to do this so that everyone will have that same ultimately flat response of gratitude, adoration, and subservience to him.
Balthazar wants to be an object, an icon.
Solomon wants the world to see him as more than an object, maybe an object, maybe the only way he feels he can assert his humanity is to also become an object, a past, a haunting, an icon, an image.
Solomon wants a friend.
Balthazar wants a friend.
Balthazar wants an IRL friend. Elinore taught him how to phrase it that way. Balthazar thinks that Solomon could use an IRL friend.
The narrative kicks into gear when Balthazar catfishes Solomon with the plan to eventually meet him IRL. Balthazar is doing this to win the affection of a woman in New York. Balthazar meets Solomon at a bus stop, gives a phony excuse as to why he’s not the woman while still dressed somewhat like an older woman, and then they drive off. Solomon eventually takes Balthazar’s phone and exposes the catfishing after hearing Balthazar speak to his mother. He recognizes the AI voice clone. Solomon later asks if Balthazar wrote all the dirty talk. Some dirty talk is AI assisted, because all search engines are AI assisted now. Balthazar runs away into the forest saying he just wanted a friend. Solomon wants a friend too. He’s impressed someone would go to such great lengths to be his friend.
When Solomon is introduced we watch him watching his father speak at the Thrush masculinity conference and then the duo reconnecting. His father has asked him to participate in this grift ahead of time. His father takes his money and leaves him with powders and guns. Solomon goes to work and gets fired for the no-call-no-show to see his father. His father gave him guns with the serial numbers scrubbed off that can’t be sold. Solomon tries to sell the Thrush masculinity product and fails. Solomon uses the unsellable guns to shoot the product, making it unsellable, effectively destroying his path up after being robbed by his father. Solomon goes home to his grandmother that can’t afford the extortionist rent increase to keep the mobile home on the land. Solomon’s grandmother is always in a chair on the couch watching news learning about violence elsewhere. A different, but similar looking police chase is depicted every time she is watching TV. She watches TV in cheap lingerie. This is Solomon’s life as he develops a romantic digital relationship with Balthazar’s woman avatar.
Balthazar and Solomon become friends. Solomon shows Balthazar his room where there’s a pride flag and the classic pink and white and blue trans flag, and swastikas, and guns without serial numbers. Anime art covers the wall. Some of it features small strong boys. Some pretty women. More Danny Phantom style art is on the wall and framed in an expensive frame. He has a pretty nice townie room for an arrested adult. Solomon drives Balthazar around in his tuned up car to a band that sounds similar to Babymetal. Solomon shows Balthazar how to shoot a gun. This is the first loving touch. This is the purest loving touch. This is arguably the only true loving touch in the film. This is a spiritual, sexual, religious encounter. These are two men, maybe one man, that are ostensibly the same in some way and for each it is a genuine encounter with the other. It is two white men encountering each other as The Other sincerely, just like IRL. They are two halves of a cosmic religiosexual whole split across class and geographic lines. They are Swastika-crossed-lovers-of-violence. Solomon wraps his larger frame around Balthazar’s body and teaches him how to be a man. He holds him from behind and shows him how to point and shoot his gun. Their bodies come together naturally and easily. They smile. They feel good. They are with each other, with another, truly in and of a moment. It is touching without conflict or pain. It is gentle and assertive. It is an education on violence.
I thought about my uncle and learning to shoot in the middle of nowhere. This is a film full of nowheres. You witness the equally isolating incredibly wealthy nowheres in densely packed global urban centers and the destitute rural nowheres that give you space to play with guns, truly alone.
You see all the nowheres full of people. Every large crowd in the film is politically motivated. It could be argued that every scene is, even the lonely alone-and-not-alone introduction of Balthazar’s emotional gestalt, but the political silently creeping into private life while not being stated explicitly, for example, “Your mother bore you weak…” during a sales pitch. When these people are not encountering creeping snake oil salesmen one-on-one they are shuttling themselves into large rooms where everyone is cattle except them. But I’m doing this for my dad.
Solomon goes to his old job to prove to the woman that he has a friend. She accuses him of having sex with little Balltism. This is one of the only times it is acknowledged that Solomon may be grooming a child.
Solomon takes Balthazar to the school he was going to shoot up. Balthazar asks why Solomon won’t shoot a night janitor. Balthazar begins the process of lining up a shot on the night janitor. Solomon tells Balthazar he’s done with all this. Balthazar is the one ready to commit the school shooting because it is easy for him to pop one off in a nothing wagie janitor outside of Fort Worth. Solomon is not a school shooter. If anything he is definitively someone that stopped a school shooting. Balthazar is now without a doubt an attempted school shooter, if aiming and intent is enough. I point my finger guns everywhere I go. I’m the Gwonz, baby.
Balthazar calls Elinore and Solomon says he will not carry out the shooting. Elinore wants Balthazar to fuck off.
Balthazar and Solomon go shooting again. They take 2CB beforehand. Balthazar wears a dress. He wears the dress he sleeps in. Balthazar puts a gun to Solomon’s head. He laughs. They eat. Solomon shows Balthazar his father’s porn. They go to a bar. Solomon gets molested by his father. Solomon’s father and the shooting victim’s uncle make suggestions that the victim’s uncle’s girlfriend should fuck Solomon. Solomon is getting ripped off by his dad. Solomon’s father calls Solomon’s mom a cunt in this hostile negotiation. This father is not concerned about the nuclear family or prosperity or any alleged American value. He got his son fired and insulted the woman that gave him life. He insults everything that tethers him to humanity and threatens everything that reminds him of sensitivity. Balthazar says it is a grift. Solomon turns on Balthazar to get his father’s favor. Balthazar said they met because he wanted to stop Solomon’s school shooting. Solomon and Balthazar get beat up by Solomon’s father and his colleague that lost a child in the shooting that Solomon sent footage from to Balthazar. Discussion of this shooting is playing on the TV before they get beat up.
When they go home Balthazar asks where he will sleep. I believe Balthazar slept the first night in Solomon’s bed and that they had sex.
Solomon takes Balthazar to shoot up his father’s next masculinity conference. Solomon hugs Balthazar. Solomon tells him he will be a hero. Solomon’s father has been groping Solomon. Solomon has a video of his own father having sex. Solomon gives a pistol to Balthazar to stop the shooting once he gets his father. Solomon runs into his father outside the conference hall. Solomon cannot pull the trigger, cries, and has a confrontation where his father says he loves him. Solomon lowers his gun. The father moves in. Balthazar points the gun at Solomon’s father. Solomon exclaims that this is his father. Balthazar is right to think Solomon’s father would disarm and then kill his son to better sell pills or get famous. Balthazar is protecting his kill. Solomon and Balthazar go back to the mobile home.
Balthazar says that Solomon is not worth his time. Balthazar calls Solomon’s tears disgusting. He hates Solomon’s feelings. He hates real feelings in the moment. He only likes a feeling when he can perform it. Earlier in the film Solomon asks if Balthazar’s tears are real. Balthazar fumbles his response. Balthazar wants someone to act decisively. They have their Bill and Hillary moment. Solomon knows it’s time to man up and give his wife what she wants. They’re a power couple.
The boys fight over the sales sheet Balthazar promised the money for to save Solomon in Solomon’s bedroom. A gun gets between them. The gun goes off. The trigger is pulled somehow. A bullet kills grandma. Does a person kill grandma? Who? Could a gun have legitimately killed someone in this instance? Solomon’s grandmother dies in his arms watching police chase footage, blood all on his shirt. The scene unfolds too fast to let that narrative that guns kill people to take shape. Solomon takes the gun outside and starts shooting wildly in an operatic fashion. He is not shooting to kill. Balthazar has the pistol he was given. Balthazar shoots Solomon quickly after Solomon asks if he got what he wanted. We see a shot of half of Solomon’s head and his open blue eye. He is speaking. We know the brain stays alive after the body is dead, maybe even for thirty minutes. What does half a brain think as it becomes the dead villain in a shooting? There are not enough victims for it to be a mass shooting, unless every crying person in a crowd is a victim. When I met Charlie Kirk only a few weeks before he died and he looked up into my tranny eyes…
Balthazar calls his chief of staff. Balthazar tells him to contact the legal team. When did Balthazar learn of the shooting plan? High school is a place you go to learn how other people live.
Balthazar is a hero. The titular hero, Balthazar. He is at home in New York. His mother touches his cheek gently, in an understated way, now that he has killed a man, his friend; she sees him as fully human. He is preparing for his first television interview as a folk hero. He texts Elinore. She doesn’t respond. A homely girl with a nice chest that works at the TV station tells him where she’ll be tomorrow. She says she’ll be at his event. After the first question he addresses the camera and weeps, spittle dripping, “We are all fighting for our lives.”
What are Solomon and Balthazar? The same people? Different people? People wearing each other’s skin not knowing how to get out? You? Me? The id and the ego? More likely a twisted ideal of that.
They are Oedipus Rex. Balthazar scripts sexts in his mother’s voice. Solomon has an impotent rage that can’t be expressed because he cannot kill his father. Their journeys begin because they’ve been abandoned by their families. Solomon has been molested by his father, felt up on screen. He is ultimately a sensitive soul that feels everything deeply. Effective killer Balthazar has to train himself to feel and express emotions like other people. This mimicking behavior is also handled well in the recent film The Sweet East (2023).
Are they average men? Are they slightly off the beaten path men? They’re men I know. They’re actually men I used to know. These men are always men I used to know.
Is Solomon a failed mass shooter, a mass shooter, a would be mass shooter? What kind of murderer is Balthazar? Murder is an action. Is that too political? What kind of killer is Balthazar? Can a killer not be a murderer?
Balthazar mocks distressed emotions alone. This is how we meet him. He mimics the feeling behavior perfectly and uploads them to a social media channel. He trains himself and his feelings on other people’s forward facing videos. The first idea, image, and sentiment expressed is one that asks us to doubt someone’s experience and pain. Can we see the real thing in the imitation? Can the imitation show us a shadow of the real thing? Is it possible to perform the behavior and action and have it not be the real thing? At what point does it become the real thing? At what point does it become the real thing you’ve done? When does the feeling become real for you? Can the feeling be real for you and not others? If the feeling is real for others does it matter what you’re doing?
What is the real thing if your entire encounter begins and ends on a screen?
Does all your prep work in front of a screen count toward when you become the real thing?
Recently at work I’ve been trying to make people laugh. I wrote my own joke. It would be my standup opener. Maybe someone else wrote it before me. The hardest part about having a huge cock is finding out you have a shitty personality. In Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps (2024) during the “Incel Superman” portion we find out our incel superman has a big useless dick. Solomon seems to have a big useless dick. Balthazar received an unsolicited photograph of the dick. Balthazar seduces Solomon with his mother’s voice. Balthazar halfway stops Solomon from killing his father, then the father from killing Solomon for sparing him. When Balthazar murders Solomon one eye is missing. He is blinded. He is dead. He will not live to be redeemed by his daughter. Sorry incel, but you don’t get Antigone in real life. Maybe I am naive, but the big useless dick feels like a new phenomenon. People with small penises have something to feel sad about. Actually, one of the hottest women I know IRL wants her girlfriend to have a small penis. The real impotence is having a big dick and having nothing to show for it. A big dick doesn’t even get you in the door. You get yourself in the door to disappoint with your big dick, or because all you are is a big dick. Some people have huge cocks and fuck wrong. Some people have huge cocks and cum fast. Some people have huge cocks and are total freaks socially. Some people have huge cocks that are shaped weird and are therefore wrong. Some people have huge cocks and they live in worlds where there is no way to express themselves and connect with another person and pull out their huge cock and there is no one worth fucking or there is one person to fuck and they are silently sitting next to the hung person realizing just getting fucked by a huge cock is not going to solve the problem.
The first incredibly tall, incredibly well-developed woman I dated was the first woman I dated to tell me that the first incel was a woman. She was an incel because there wasn’t a candidate as good as her. She was right. People forget that. That woman was the first woman that people would take me to the side away from her and very seriously ask me the mechanics of how I have sex with her. I came inside her during some of the earliest Trump presidential debates.
I live in the best place to be trans in the world, Chicago. I live here because my mom lives here. I got lucky. Balthazar destroyed his life in the land of opportunity. Solomon never had an opportunity. His life is masculinity powder shot to bits by metal propelled by the original masculinity powder, gunpowder. The film encourages us to ask questions I’d like to assume we’ve all asked ourselves. If I didn’t have the circumstances of my life that I do would I have become him? Or, in a more humble fashion, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Is Solomon grooming Balthazar? Is Balthazar a child victim of Solomon? Is Our Hero, Balthazar a fascist provocation exploring the idea that pedophilic dysphoric males are alienated from society enough to kill their fathers and their own? Is Our Hero, Balthazar a fascist provocation sympathizing with a pedophile that was molested by his own father and in turn he Greeked a beautiful young boy who learned to kill at the hands of his first victim? Balthazar is grooming Solomon for a different crime. Is Balthazar a closeted woman encouraging the next Charlie Kirk shooter? At the end of the day can we blame pussy for getting the ball rolling here?
As more of America hollows itself out (yonic), collapses into itself (yonic), makes decay cover the earth like kudzu (pubesic), what can we do to coexist in a world with people where you share a world they don’t want and they reject that obligation to the world, to yourself, is to rise above that id impulse?
This film also shares a similar jumping off point and themes as Divine Hammer (2026). Two women meet with an intention to kill. They encounter varied simulations on the way toward their endings. In Divine Hammer it’s a sweet besties and/or romcom pulling from the introduction of Ginger Snaps (2000). The simulation is a cute prank. It is an artistry. In Our Hero, Balthazar there is an artistry to the violence. It is the pulling of the string.
Balthazar simulates the emotional response at the start of the film to make the viewer cast doubt on the realness of his final act. What part is less real? Why is it less real? One person encourages another person to commit an act of violence in real life. This encouragement begins online. The enabler also kills the terrorist. Is the enabler absolved of being the terrorist? Don’t Mormons who run the CIA do something like that? I’ve been thinking about trying Swag. Do I need Swag when I have swag? Is it less real because it’s a rogue agent? This is ‘allegedly’ what the US government does to its own citizens all the time. Is it less real because some kid pulled the string? Why is that less real? Why is one “some kid” less legit than another “some kid”? Is it because he’s faggy? I smell a shut-in NEET. Don’t you pass around pictures of the most dangerous American men that have ever lived?
Is it less legitimate to play the most dangerous game so explicitly? When are we killing people and not playing the most dangerous game? Is it not self-defense at all even if you baited the situation into occurring? If all you ever wanted to do was get someone to try and kill you just to see who you would become after, does it make you any less of a survivor? Are you no longer fighting for your life?
-- Gwen Hilton is a writer and editor in Chicago. She is the author of Sent to the Silkworm House and Where the Breastplate Meets the Blade published by Expat Press. She is a fiction editor at APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL. She is looking for a woman that relates to the song “Jeannie Needs a Shooter” by Warren Zevon.
