Cinema Styles: EO examines human behavior
Film: EO (2022) Director: Jerzy Skolimowski Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Sandra Drzymalska, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz How to Watch: Criterion Runtime: 88 minutes Genre: Drama Awards: Academy Award Nomination for Best International Feature Film, Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Best Cinematography at National Society of Film Critics
Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director who has been making movies since the early 1960's. In 2016, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film
Festival. Now 84, Skolimowski is still making movies, and his newest one is a career best. EO tells the story of a donkey that encounters various human beings, and the joy and pain they bestow upon him. The film was inspired by French filmmaker Robert Bresson's 1966 movie Au Hasard Balthazar. Both films have a donkey as the protagonist, and use the innocent animal to showcase the extent to which human kindness and cruelty can affect the most helpless beings in existence.
EO uses remarkable technical prowess to provide audiences with the point-of-view of the donkey. We never truly know what the donkey is thinking or feeling, but Skolimowski uses all the cinematic tools at his disposal to allow us to walk a mile in his hooves. We imagine what the donkey is experiencing internally, and in that sense, each audience member adds their own interpretation into the film. The intriguing part of this is it provides a unique film-viewing experience for each person who watches it. In that sense, it's a fully subjective work of art, and one that leans into that subjectivity rather than teasing it out.
No one asked for a remake of Bresson's masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar, and on the surface, that's what EO appears to be. Skolimowski makes the film his own though. EO is a snapshot of 21st century humanity in all of its glory and shame. It's an examination of human behavior at this particular point in time, and a fascinating exposé into our treatment of all living beings.
The true testament to a society or any community of people is how they treat the most vulnerable individuals and animals living within it. EO is a movie that has some hope for humanity, but also doesn't shy away from the areas that could be improved upon. It's a film that does its best to exhibit the spirit of the animal realm, and asks audiences to question who the real beasts are in our relationship with them.
EO uses an episodic structure as the donkey moves through various stages of his journey. The story is structured in a way for us to have empathy for the animal, and it does so in increasingly imaginative ways. The story isn't straightforward. It wanders like an animal might do, but the ultimate journey is one of existential pondering. It's a movie that has a persistent striving for poetic visual imagery, all while liberating itself from the shackles of plot or audience expectations. It's designed to disorient viewers, and in the process, invites us to see the world from a perspective outside of our own. It's a movie that begs to be felt rather than analyzed or fully understood.
EO is an enthralling and exuberant film from a living legend of the cinematic world. It's a movie that feels youthful in its energy, and also contains philosophical wisdom that only comes with age. It uses the perspective of an innocent animal to show the full range of experiences life has to offer. It shows human virtuosity and brutality in equal measure, and displays the cruelty that often causes loss of innocence. Ultimately though, the film's message is one of hope. Even if the universe can be chaotic and cruel, we don't have to be. Bobby Styles studied Film at UCLA, and worked as an editor and producer on several film, commercial, and music video projects in Los Angeles. He currently teaches the intermediate and advanced Video Production courses in the Multimedia & Technology Academy at Monache High School. His column appears weekly in The Recorder.