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.

Babylon

 

Babylon

Writer & Director – Damien Chazelle

2022, US

Stars – Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart

 

A “Look At Me!” film from the very start, but less obnoxious than Luhrmann and not quite as Music Video as Snyder. Bookended by a deliberate showiness at the beginning and a delusion of meaning at the end, there’s still a lot to like here. It would seem that those involved think of ‘Babylon’ as an important statement on cinema and the era it evokes – indeed, the title doesn’t suggest modesty – but the drama and flashiness aren’t original, just entertaining. It’s all the tropes in their best dress. Brad Pitt is initially in shit-eating-grin mode and Margot Robbie is one of those intolerable “troubled free spirit” whirlwind girls, but when the film settles and stops only showing off and the actors add nuance, they get to do sterling work. After all, these are great actors. Robbie’s bar-top dancing debut and her first foray into the talkies are great set pieces. But it’s Diego Calva that does the work that grounds the drama; you can see and care for the development of character in him most of all, from wide-eyed set flunky to someone who can manipulate even himself and his genuine niceness when his newfound career demands it.

 

There’s a hint of what ‘Blonde’ was on about, exploiting and devouring its own; impressive old-style hundreds of extras in the background; a horror diversion into a dungeon of freaks that proves again that the film is just running on tropes, however amusingly. And there is a Tobey Maguire in a maximum scary cameo. Even Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a time in Hollywood’ touches base with the reality of behind-the-scenes more credibly. The grit and destruction here is the Hollywood Dream kind.

 

 

So we end up with a montage namechecking films that broke technical moulds. It’s both an audacious and laughable montage, proclaiming a film student level of insight and emotional resonance. You may snort, “Really?” Critic Robbie Collins gives a most generous reading that Manny’s tears and smile are those of defeat and acceptance at a system that chews’em up and spits’em out; but that’s perhaps allowing it more than surface depth (it certainly didn’t strike me that way). For me, the most poignant scene, the one that made me think I was being told something real, is the moment where the black performer Sidney (Jovan Adepo) is persuaded to apply black face to be as dark as his band mates for the camera.

 

Otherwise, I was left wondering what I was meant to feel nostalgia for? A party that is half orgy? Reckless and dangerous film sets with no safety rules and rampant exploitation? Characters that are lushes and addicts and privileged bores at best and moral vacuums at worst? Decadence as the ultimate goal? It’s a charmless world, however hedonism is celebrated. Despite the many great scenes and moments, despite the cast doing solid work, despite always being entertaining and lush, the film’s nostalgia for a romanticised film era – one the Chazelle is too young to have experienced – ultimately seems muddled and false. It’s no way as genuinely troubling as his ‘Whiplash’ existentialism, asking, “What does it take to be an artist?”  

 

Entertaining but unconvincing.

 

 

Enys Men

ENYS MEN
Writer/director – Mark Jenkin
Stars – Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe, Flo Crowe
2022 – UK

Mark Jenkins’ ‘Bait’ was a sensation in its DIY formation. His follow-up ‘Enys Men’ (Cornish for “Stone Island”) is similarly constructed with a clockwork Bolex camera, and an even more audacious post-production sound design comprised of often sharp diegetic sound and blaring drone. (If any more evidence is needed that lazy jump-scares are simply a result of volume, see if you jump at innocuous Cornish landscapes because the of blasts of musical stings.) The feel is of a 70s folk horror with bold colours, some print flares and speckling which are intrinsic to the success of its feel. And ‘Enys Men’ is a full-on mood piece, where narrative gives way to wilful abstraction and hints of meaning.

What seems to be the tale of a volunteer on an unpopulated Cornish island (“Enys Men” is Cornish for “Stone Island”) taking the temperature of some flowers and dropping a stone down a mine shaft gradually evolves into something inscrutable, fascinating and disquieting. Past and present seemingly overlap increasingly and, for me, her world becomes a lost continent of ghosts generated by the stone. Or is she just going crazy in isolation? Or is she overwhelmed by and trapped in the uncanny? But don’t go looking for narrative and answers. It’s all hints and symbols.

Mike Muncer (Evolution of Horror) calls it ‘Penda’s Fen’ meets ‘the Lighthouse”, and that’s a fair description. A film of still images almost,  accumulating empty atmosphere, detractors say; certainly Keri O’Shea sees the aesthetic as free-floating to condescending aimlessness. If it hits your buttons, it’s a superior horror-inflected ambient genre piece of nightmare logic and the uncanny, with just a touch of body-horror. 

 

Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio

 

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

Directors – Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson

Writers – screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Patrick McHale based on the book "Pinocchio" written by Carlo Collodi

Stars – voices: Ewan McGregor. David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth

 

Well, I dislike a film pointing to itself and insisting on its magical-ness all the time (see also: ‘Babylon’). I just happened to have the subtitles on at the start of Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of ‘Pinocchio’, and the first was “Magical uplifting music plays”.  And the musical numbers were the kind that do nothing for me – so I appreciated the gag where several numbers were cut short.

But Del Toro can’t help but lean towards horror (yes: the giant crucifix too) so you have the horror of war – fanatical, filicidal fascism – but also the creation of Pinocchio is not that far away from ‘Frankenstein’ and the melodramatic shadow-play of German expressionism. I quite liked ADD Pinocchio spinning and twirling through a world trying its best to break into bleakness and horror tropes, his naivete his immune system. To this, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth’s exuberant voice-work for our wooden protagonist seemed appropriate and good, although I have a friend who couldn’t stand it. And therein perhaps lies the issue: you do have to go with all the “magical-ness” and the vergence on the twee at times, depending upon your taste, as that is what seems popular. And it’s easy to be impressed by the award-winning stop-motion – because that’s always awe-inspiring work (even in its shabbiest form). The model work, the tangible quality, the knowledge of the painstaking skill and patience it takes means stop-motion has the edge as a visual medium.

 

The changes to Collodi’s original tale are interesting – no donkeys; Del Toro’s sensibility dominates – takes a little time to settle, seems to lose interest in its musical agenda, pleasingly dark anti-fascist fairy tale, thematically heavy, but if the sentiment and a tone of neediness (after all, it is "Del Toro's Pinocchio') isn’t to your taste, then you may find it lacking.