Direction: Jerzy Skolimowski
Country: Poland / Italy
The ingenious 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who directed peculiar dramas such as Deep End (1970), The Shout (1978), and Four Nights With Anna (2008), returns with the spectacular EO. Centered on the life of a donkey, the film makes for a unique and rewarding cinematic experience, conjuring up Robert Bresson’s masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) while heading away from it by designating its own philosophical anthropomorphism and sensory-charged experimentation.
The film is challenging, not too obvious, and delineated with multiple levels of human complexity. It’s a disconsolate portrait of humanity in the guise of a donkey’s journey painted with red-filtered dreams, life instinct, a lot of resilience in the face of adversity, and inescapable freedom, which is also the essence of Skolimowski’s enthralling cinema.
The exquisite cinematography by Michael Dymek (Nocturnal, 2019; Sweat, 2020) is absolutely stunning, pairing up with Pawel Mykietyn’s adequate score, and Isabelle Huppert shines a light by the end as a wealthy French countess who faces emotional dilemmas.
The humor, dark enough to merit special attention, arrives unexpectedly in batches, making this moving ballad of fate and suffering even more irresistible. EO sounds an alarm for animal mistreatment while taking a painful look at the malice and cruelty present in our brutal society. Deservedly awarded in Cannes, the film establishes a connection with the viewer, sending us back violently to our mediocrity.
