Eo

Eo

Director – Jerzy Skolimowski

Writers - Ewa Piaskowska & Jerzy Skolimowski

2022, Poland-Italy

Stars - Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Hupperte, Lorenzo Zurzolo

 

It can be a little odd/embarrassing telling someone that you went to see a film about the life and times of a donkey. What that doesn’t convey is that any apprehensions that this might be twee, staid or a little po-faced is thrown out from the opening where we have strobing red lights and close-ups that take a while to work out. Anyone who is a fan of Skolimowski’s ‘The Shout’ (which I have been since I was a kid) or ‘Deep End’ will know that he’s quite the master of atmosphere, the offbeat and the uncanny.  Hence, ‘Eo’ is only ever a cut away from some abstraction, or strobing, or amazing vista, always just a step away from alternating between near-fantasy and then neo-realism. Donkey dreams? We have that. A hunt in a forest turned into a hypnotic nocturnal light display? That too. The score and sound design likewise keeps pace by surprising in its variety.

 

Taking a starting point from Robert Bresson’s ‘Au hazard, Balthasar’ (1966), Eo the donkey follows the ‘Black Beauty’ route, an innocent passed though hands both good and bad and always exploited in some way. Even being rescued by the best-intentioned animal rights activists from the circus takes the donkey from the love of his trainer and sets him off on his journey of hazards with occasional reprieves. The edge and suspense are generated by wondering just how bad or good things will get for this unwitting animal at the mercy of a mostly manipulative human world. Unlike Pinocchio, this innocent has no voice, dance routines or agency on his travails. When he falls under the attention of any human, we are concerned if they want to turn him into horse meat or adopt him. The irony is, being under human altruistic care will be his only safety, and going through an open gate in search of freedom might not be the best plan. The machinery of mankind doesn’t allow any autonomy for animals.

 

The subjective view sometimes wanders – a robot dog; a football, even – but it is only when Isabelle Huppert cameos for a little human melodrama that the narrative seems to altogether forget the donkey for a while. ‘Eo’ doesn’t rely on anthropomorphism, despite the occasional donkey memory of the circus woman that loved him; or as Donald Clark writes “You couldn’t call the piece sentimental, but it is occasionally hard not to make it thus in your own head.”  However, the occasional drifts in perspective and open vistas set Eo adrift in a wider world of non-human standpoints, and highlights, say, the herd mentality of football fans; or generate surprising observations, like the apparent class divide between horses and donkeys.

 

Fascinating and restless, a film that succeeds in making the audience contemplate the plight and status of the animals we both adore and maltreat. Unsual and mesmerising.