Veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO was an unclassifiable viewing experience, considering its bold narrative experimentations on a premise that walked a fine line between simplicity and simplistic; its balancing between tonal solemnity and demonstrations that veered towards cloying and cartoonish; its simultaneous espousal of the kind of themes and “radical sympathy” that aren’t really new, but situated in a modern-day European setting filled with topical social abominations that provocatively pointed towards its “rotten core”. These dichotomies were especially manifested by the way it unequivocally evoked Au Hasard Balthazar – which had made a profound impact on Skolimowski when he’d watched it sixty-seven years back – and in its dramatic departure by replacing the earlier film’s austere and rigorous form with an overly eventful sequence of tableaux and stylistic spectacle. The protagonist, like the Bresson classic, was the eponymous donkey who observes, experiences and journeys through long stretches of apathy, abandonment, dislocation, desolation, misery and cruelty – sparingly separated by brief yet unanticipated moments of love, tenderness, empathy, companionship and beauty – and becomes a mute, unwitting and oblivious witness to zealous animal rights activists who spark the first of its string of separations, casual exploitation of vulnerable immigrants, horrific hooliganism, humans’ shocking capacity for violence, decrepit aristocrats and whatnot. Its tad overdone journey began with a traveling circus that it was a part of and bleakly ended in an industrial abattoir, and traversed through Polish countryside, lonely highways and Italian towns. The hyperactive direction, therefore, was marked by mordant world-view, dazzling camerawork and hallucinatory visuals on one hand, and corny moments, glib humanity and showboating artifice on the other. Isabelle Huppert featured in a short, enticing cameo as a cold, frustrated countess.
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Experimental Film
Language: Polish
Country: Poland
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