Film Review: EO

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
Starring: Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Huppert
Running time: 88 minutes

For almost his entire career Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski has remained in obscurity, faded away almost entirely in the public despite maintaining a solid track record at festivals. His latest film, a tale about a nomadic donkey which seems to drift across Europe interacting with a variety of different people, is unlikely to stir up any kind of late period recognition. As with his prior films it refuses to adhere to conventional filmmaking standards, with an incredibly loose plot and a highly experimental visual form. Despite being deeply experimental, it remains an interesting treatise of both the human condition in modern life and our relationship to animals.

EO is a spiritual homage to Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) which features the same basic concept, despite being executed in a very different way. Both films omit all sense of coherent narrative structure and replace it with emotional vigor, aimed at making the viewer respond to the cruel events occurring, rather than understanding them. Bresson managed this simplicity with his austere style which focuses on acute minimalism, making the drifting plot easy to follow; Skolimowski on the other hand creates the exact opposite, turning the film into a surrealistic journey, which can create a dizzying experience. Skolimowski revels in this anarchic nature with the film often jumping from a chaotic scene to something far more serene, remaining constantly unpredictable. 

Throughout the film cinematographer Michał Dymek makes use of a myriad of camera techniques. Whether it is a sweeping shot of the Polish countryside, a slightly haunting POV shot from the Donkey’s perspective, or a dream sequence shot in deep, hallucinogenic reds — the film never ties itself down to a single style. For brief stretches the film finds rhythm in EO exploring the wondrous beauty of the countryside, then moments later turns into a montage of nightmarish images which could have easily been plucked from a horror film. Whilst shifting between the natural and the surreal is disorienting it keeps the film constantly unpredictable, with each new encounter being a genuine surprise. Decorating the images is a beautiful score that ranges from a poetic classical symphony to a thumping techno song, adding an extra layer of surrealism to the strange things happening in the film.

Despite Skolimowski’s EO following the same premise as Bresson’s original, the central difference is how the donkey interacts with the world around them. In Au Hasard Balthazar, the donkey signifies Christ, and whilst it receives much scorn and cruelty from humans, it never loses its innocence. Of course, a similar theme exists in EO as the donkey is still beaten and scorned; however, the donkey in this fable has a sense of agency that allows them to navigate the world. We see the world through the donkey’s eyes, see its memories — in vivid red flashbacks — and watch it actively make decisions such as escaping from a farm. Skolimowski seems less concerned about the allegory for Christ but more in how humanity interacts with both nature and animals.

Above all things the film remains a uniquely strange object, a film that feels like nothing else being made right now. Whilst it can slip into realms of incomprehensible meandering — some would argue that is the whole point — it often soars into something totally free and liberated. Dymek and Skolimowski’s attention to detail in portraying the lonely nomadic donkey is hard to not find beautiful; their deep close ups capturing the animal’s melancholy eyes as it drifts without any real sense of destination. It is through this detail that allows the audience to relate to an animal that says no words, and despite its journey remaining alien to our own experiences, we understand its pain and question our own humanity. Unbound by conventions the film remains formally inventive with a beautiful soundtrack decorating the strange, yet profound images. 

EO is out on February 3rd at Broadway Cinema