Eo

Breathtaking film. It's so refreshing to see a film like this in 2022. It feels like stuff like this was only produced in the 70's. It never could have happened in modern America. Not a chance. Poland gets big points for this one. Director Jerzy Skolimowski is a bit of a mad man (The Shout is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen).

Eo is a visual feast. Beautiful cinematography that generally stays in the realm of reality but also offers fits of surrealist wonder. The music score is beautifully tragic and tremendous. The sound editing is colossal. And, the legend Isabelle Huppert looks even better now than she did 21 years ago in The Piano Teacher.

You'll barely notice the lack of dialogue because you will be so immersed in Eo's story. It often feels meditative, which is extra intriguing and impressive considering that most of the time Eo is...not in a good place. It makes you wonder...is this what it actually feels like to be a farm animal? Sad but strangely sedated, unfittingly content?

Though Eo never moved me to tears, it is a very sentimental movie. The comedy is minimal but the moments it does have are very memorable. Whenever a human comes around, you can be sure something imbecilic or terrible is going to happen! Towards the end, it almost started reminded me of something like The Painted Bird, just focused on a donkey rather than a young boy, but it never gets even close to as hardcore as that story.

And then, finally, there's the most blatant accomplishment - they actually managed to make a highly entertaining movie about the life of a donkey in 2022. How did they even do it?! Where did they find the inspiration?! Amazing. I definitely recommend this! A highly respectable feat!

The biggest surprise of the Cannes film festival this year was probably that the Prix du Jury went to a film about a donkey. Not just that a donkey played a big role in the film, but the donkey was the protagonist of the film, and genuinely played by a donkey.

Surprisingly enough, that works. It might sound crazy at first to watch a film which follows throughout the entire runtime a donkey which can't speak or really express his feelings, but it actually works. That's due to the fantastic work of the team behind the film. Much of the success is due to director Jerzy Skolimowski, who seemed to know exactly what he was doing and how he wanted the film to look in the end. But he wouldn't have succeeded in making an interesting film about a donkey if it wasn't for his DoP Michal Dymek and his film editor Agniezka Glinska. Their collaboration results in giving the donkey a character, and making us believe that EO is actually played by a fantastic actor. There were a few moments throughout the film where I actually thought that this donkey should get an Oscar. Of course I was always fully aware that a donkey can't act, and that this is only technical expertise. Film editor Glinska used for example one of the oldest montage techniques of the history of film, the Kuleshov effect, which proved that editing is the key to every film, and that the audience can actually interprete the actor's feelings rather by the following shot than by his expressions. When Kuleshov tested the effect, he edited a (never-changing) close-up of an expressionless man, together with three alternate ending shots: a dead child in a coffin, a bowl of soup, and a woman lying on a divan. Audiences interpreted the expression on the actor's face as sadness, hunger and lust, although it was always the same. This effect got reused by Hitchcock many times, especially in his masterpiece "Rear Window".

In EO, this effect is used many times: A shot of the donkey's eye followed by a shot of animals being mistreated, makes us believe the donkey is actually sad. Another shot of the donkey (who was probably only wondering why people are standing for weeks with a camera around him) followed by his circus "mother" returning to him makes us believe he is happy, and so on. Paired with incredibly impressive and beautiful images, EO actually turns out to be a very interesting and refreshing film, even amongst experimental cinema.

Nonetheless, you're watching a donkey for 80+ minutes. And after a while, you start to feel that. You're waiting for some kind of emotional conflict, some interesting dialogue, etc, - which the director then tries to include by introducing side characters. But those side characters don't work at all, as they only distract from the main story and leave the audience completely cold. Even a great actress like Isabelle Huppert can't save the film's triviality by smashing a few plates when talking to her gambling addict son (who brought the donkey home with him). Instead, her acting - and every other actor too - feels completely misplaced and exaggerated, which is also due to the fact that the donkey always moves on very quickly after having met new persons, so no actor has more screen time than just a couple of minutes.

Last but not least, the film also doesn't manage to entertain enough through the message alone. As to expect, the film speaks a lot about animal exploitation and mistreatment and ultimately advocates for animal rights, but the message is clear after a few minutes, and the ending of the film - which I won't spoil here - doesn't work either, which ridiculousness the message a little.

But after all, EO is an interesting experiment, which surprisingly works due to the fantastic technical aspects. The film's main flaws are in the screenplay (and of course also in the fact that the protagonist is a donkey), but luckily, the film runs only 86 minutes, so you can overlook these weaknesses and still enjoy watching it.

Inspired by Bresson's 1966 Au Hasard du Balthazar, EO is a very worthwhile contemporary revision of an innocent animal's experience of the human condition. Our folly, our greed, our anger and violence, our hypocrisy, our hubris ... and many more vices, but occasionally moments of redeeming compassion. When human beings were hunter gatherers we were much closer to the behaviour of animals, and coexisted in an ecologically natural state. Well deserved Palme D'Ors for both the music and the movie. Excellent photography and sequencing too. This film takes us on an inexorable journey involving a gamut of emotions. See it at a cinema for the best experience.

If you are looking for a story in a movie this is probably not for you. This one is a piece of art though. Have you ever wondered what would a donkey do if you let it loose? This movie tries to answer that very question. You follow EO (pronounce it so that it sounds like a donkey), taken from a Polish circus because of bankruptcy, he gets away multiple times and ends up in Italy. He falls on the worst of the human race as well as good people. Any short story that starts during his journey never gets a resolution because he just leaves for other things. It is a bit frustrating at times, but you are here to follow EO, no-one else. The imagery is beautiful, and the music on top is just awesome. An underrated movie that you should see if you love art more than cinema.

IO stayed with me for days. This film is experienced and digested in the flesh. There are not many words in it so it is impossible to distance yourself from it by intellectualizing it. The places where animals live; the situations that happen to them - nothing we didn't know about - but shown from a different perspective - perspective of a donkey, a creature that is dependent on humans: it's owners (caretakers?) and the laws regarding animals.

I was touched and moved by something I had hitherto passed by indifferently: the fate of animals that are not given names. This film was difficult for me and appealed to me at the same time.

And last but not least I'm always very happy to see Isabelle Huppert on the screen.