Tent-Pole Cinema
Anthony Paletta
Eo, the new film by the difficult and superb Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, is an episodic tale about, to put it simply, a donkey who, unlike Eddie Murphy in Shrek, has nothing to say but much to see as he serves as our (largely) mute witness to a bewildering world.
Chaucer wrote of donkeys that “a humble beast exalts the rider.” This humble beast exposes the rider in all sorts of ways, sometimes with a point, sometimes without one. Skolimowski has acknowledged inspiration for the film in French director Robert Bresson’s donkey-centered Au Hasard Balthazar, and there is something specifically evocative about a modest donkey chosen as witness to the human condition. They’re not objects of affection like pets, they’re not objects of admiration like horses. They’re also not bred specifically to be eaten or to churn out other food as livestock are. They occupy a place of marginal utility in the menagerie. Being often unnoticed, they’re perfectly suited to observe.
If you can still catch this astonishing work in theaters, you should. Though any film buff can name a number of great Polish filmmakers, Skolimowski has come just short of truly broad recognition. Now 84, he is experiencing a late career boom of critical recognition, with Eo declared winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and currently shortlisted for the Academy Award for best foreign film.
Eo is more of an explicit message film than Skolimowski has ever made, closing with a text appeal for kindness to animals. This is a film about a hero’s wandering from Poland to Italy and in between, only the protagonist generally has no choice about where he’s going to go. But events within are not remotely as simple as it might sound. Vignettes shift without explanation, and their tone varies radically from grim to comic to surreal. The overriding theme of Eo is not that the behavior of humanity is horrible (although it often is) but that it is mystifying. It’s something of an equine version of the 1998 Samuel L. Jackson film The Red Violin that traces the life of a previous instrument over centuries, except no one treats a working animal remotely as well as a Stradivarius.
Early in the film, the titular donkey is separated from a kindly owner by protesters against the use of circus animals. Do-gooders do no good from the start, as Eo’s life only gets worse. It’s not a straightforward descent. There are other decent folks. Some help — others don’t seem to think about him much at all.
In a film that rests heavily on its score to convey a sort of inner life to a creature that’s never going to say anything, Skolimowski has to rely on deft work and plain weirdness. Expect color-filtered drone sequences, hints of telepathic powers, and even a sequence featuring robots. Are these donkey dreams? That’s up to you.
Eo’s success in this year’s awards and art house movie reception is a good reason for it to break through to mainstream viewers. And it’s an even better reason for this great talent to break through and for his career’s worth of output to come in for more attention. Skolimowski was born in 1937 in Lodz, his life rapidly pierced by tragedy (as with many Poles of the era) when his father was executed by the Nazis in childhood. He made four heavily new wave-y autobiographical films in his native country, which early attracted comparisons to film buff favorite director Jean-Luc Godard due to their hand-held camera angles, disjointed narrative, literary themes, and prevailing anomie — although he had never seen a Godard film. Amid the drab conformity of the Polish People’s Republic’s scrapyards, lumberyards, and factories, Skolimowski looked like a master of capturing alienation.
Communist censors refused to release the last of his films, which featured students being interrogated by unseen inquisitors about why they would raise an ominous banner of a four-eyed Stalin. He decamped for London and a stellar run of films — do not delay to watch The Shout and Moonlighting — and then relocated to the United States, where he made some passable though less-than-stellar projects. At this, he took a 17-year break, spent painting, until his 2008 return for a run of still more eclectic and arresting films. Even if none of this is familiar, you’ve likely encountered him already in occasional acting roles, from Eastern Promises to Mars Attacks! and The Avengers.
A film about a donkey might not seem a logical creative step, but Skolimowski’s career has never been characterized by any of those. In 2016, he observed to Cineaste magazine that “the greatest sin a film director can commit is to be boring.” He remains, on that count, a man of impeccable virtue.
Anthony Paletta is a writer in Brooklyn.