Inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic “Au Hasard Balthazar,” Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO” also follows the life and times of a humble donkey. However, this latest offering by the 84-year-old Polish filmmaker is in no sense a direct remake of one of cinema’s enduring masterworks. So titled for the hee-hawing sounds a donkey makes, “EO” (now in theaters) is an experimental donkey picaresque, dispensing with the ascetic filmmaking aesthetic for which Bresson was best known and instead capturing the world as vividly experienced — seen, felt, imagined, perhaps mourned — through all the senses of one noble ass.
This beast of burden is first seen bathed in red lights at a traveling circus, where he is tended to for a time by a loving young woman (Sandra Drzymalska). After animal rights activists intercede, EO ends up at a horse farm, later escaping to wander upon a small town and various other destinations, where the compassion or cruelty he’s shown suggests the range of human emotional capacity and consider our civilization’s willingness to inflict violence on innocent creatures. Some of the film’s digressions are absurd, others tragic; all expand our sense of this animal’s humble and quietly transcendent spirit, capable of wandering between various lives — in the Polish and Italian countrysides by a palatial villa lorded over by a self-involved countess (Isabelle Huppert) — with the kind of existential openness that eludes us mere human mortals throughout our lives.
Bresson explored the role of spirituality in a cruel, exploitative world; often only through suffering and death, his films proposed, could be grasped an inner redemption and atonement, a transcendent grace. Skolimowski — a boxer, painter, poet, and actor whose eclectic body of work often concerns the isolation and displacement of outsiders — has discussed seeing “Au Hasard Balthazar” upon its initial release in 1966, after it was ranked first on the Cahiérs du Cinema list that year — one spot above Skolimowski’s own “Walkover,” second in a set of semi-autobiographical features made early in his career. “Balthazar” is the only film, Skolimowski once said, that has ever made him cry, and he attributes to this viewing experience the revelation that an audience can identify just as strongly with an animal character as one played by a human actor.
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Played by six different Polish and Sardinian donkeys — Tako, Mela, Ettore, Hola, Marietta, and Rocco — the donkey at the heart of “EO” is indeed a creature deserving of our empathy. However, Skolimowski makes no effort to anthropomorphize him. Instead, the veteran filmmaker studies his subject closely, especially in close-ups of his expressive eyes, while heightening sights and sounds of his natural surroundings with a restless progression of modern techniques — drone shots, strobe lighting, dream sequences — to reach an intense, hallucinogenic balance of insight and grandeur.
Poland’s official submission to the Oscars, “EO,” has been a critical favorite since its premiere in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize (tying with “The Eight Mountains”). A steady presence on end-of-year top-ten lists, it was most recently named best international film by the New York Film Critics Circle and best foreign-language film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; with “EO” fever hitting both coasts, Skolimowski spoke to The Playlist about making his audacious new film, sharing his “obvious” love for animals, and using sound to access a donkey’s inner world.
Firstly, thank you for your time, Mr. Skolimowski. I’m sure you’ve been speaking extensively about “EO” already today.
Thank you for understanding that I might be slightly tired of it. Of course, I understand that this is a necessary part of the work, so…
I wanted to start by asking about “Essential Killing,” which you’ve discussed as a film exploring the point at which a man’s will to live turns him into an animal. “EO” feels like a fascinating counterpoint to that, charting the life of a donkey and the nature of his will. In what ways are these two films linked, in your view?
I can see one huge difference between those two films. The difference is that “EO” is obviously made out of love for animals and nature, while “Essential Killing” doesn’t express those particular feelings. And the major difference is the fact that, in “EO,” it’s very obvious that I love my main character. And I want the audience to love my main character, which is not necessarily the case in “Essential Killing,” where the human character is presented in several different situations. Some of them are quite negative for the main character.
I think the relationship, as I saw it, pertains more to the near-wordless, existential journey through a dangerous landscape that occurs across both films. What appeals to you about that narrative style?
Well, that’s obviously something which I prefer to the other formula. Generally speaking, both myself and my writing partner, my producing partner, and my life partner — my wife, Ewa [Piaskowska] — were fed up with the so-called “traditional” narration, or some people call it “linear” narration. That’s not precisely the term I wanted to use, but, generally, [I refer to] the kind of plot-driven narrative where there is a main plot, and everything else is only developing background. We were looking for a different formula, and I think we are making little steps with each of the films. In between [“Essential Killing” and “EO,”] there was also “11 Minutes,” a movie of also untypical structure and narration. My goal in filmmaking is definitely to go away from conventional solutions. I believe that if I would decide to make another film, it could even possibly lead toward going even further in demolishing traditional narration.
Along his wanderings, we see this donkey in close-up, as during a sequence when someone gives “EO” a joint from above in a way that situates him diminutively within the landscape, from below in a way that calls attention to areas of his body. We see, at times, through EO’s eyes; at other times, his expressions are unreadable. Can you talk about achieving this fluidity of perspective outside of merely making the film from the donkey’s point of view?
Of course, by choosing the animal character as a leading character of the film and deciding to tell the story as seen through the eyes of the animal, I had to find all possible solutions for [making] the audience identify with the main character. There was no dialogue, so I was left with a little bit less opportunity for this identification.
One of the things which was calculated from the beginning, and eventually managed to achieve what I really wanted, was my work with the composer Paweł Mykietyn, with whom I worked for the third time. In a way, the key to our work on “EO” was the fact that I told him — and Paweł is a world-class classical music composer, but the key I gave him was — when watching the final cut on which we’d been working, to please hunt for the moments when you can get with your tune inside this donkey’s brain or heart, to present something like the inner monologue of the protagonist. And Paweł did it.
I think it’s very, very successful where the image — especially the close shots of donkeys’ eyes, which are incredibly large, and full of melancholy, and full of ambiguous reflection on what he sees —is somehow making comments, but one could hardly name them. One could hardly [declare] them to be expressing this or that. But there is a judgment in those pictures and a judgment in the sound as well. So, I believe we created the chance for the audience to really identify with the main character, although it’s only a donkey.