Huge Polish director, several times awarded at Cannes and Venice, Jerzy Skolimowski comes out at 84 EO (Hi Han in Polish), the tragic story of a donkey. In theaters Wednesday, October 19, the film updates in a new version Random balthazar (1966) by Robert Bresson who had moved the filmmaker to tears in his youth: sublime.
“EO” is a donkey performing a circus act in Poland with his beloved mistress. Animal rights demonstrators released him following a municipal decree and the authorities made him available to individuals and associations. He escapes and crosses the country to Italy to find his protector. His journey puts him in contact with benevolent or hostile people: the world is seen through the melancholic eyes of a sensitive and misunderstood animal.
Far from Bressonian asceticism, Skolimowski’s staging is of a visual and emotional audacity that grips the guts and breaks the heart. A boldness from which younger directors would do well to draw inspiration. From the very beautiful credits, the eyes will no longer leave the screen, fascinated, hypnotized by the graphic beauty of the images. Preferring to let images speak rather than words (there is very little dialogue), Jerzy Skolimowski reconnects with the essence of cinema. At the limit of the experimental, it is however not disconnected from the public, who will identify with this donkey embarked on an adventure where the contradictions of a humanity in loss of meaning are expressed.
The original trauma – the abduction of the donkey from its mistress – denounces the chasm that can separate the benevolent motivations of animal rights activists from the misunderstood experience of the donkey. This is the first of the human contradictions with which Skolimowski confronts his candid ass. He will know many others in his infernal journey paved with good intentions, as well as less good ones…
The subject and the story recall the philosophical pamphlet of Voltaire, Candid, in a picaresque mode, while the form is of an astonishing visual inventiveness, very contemporary. Unseen images inhabit this UFO film, where surprise and beauty are in every shot, on a magnificent soundtrack and music (composer Paweł Mykietyn won the Cannes Soundtrack prize for film music). The braying of this donkey in the face of a disoriented world is heartbreaking. The most beautiful film screened at Cannes this year, which would not only have deserved the Palme, but also the recognition of one of the greatest living filmmakers.
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Gender : Drama
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
Actors: Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzolo
Country : Poland / Italy
Duration : 1h26
Exit : October 19, 2022
Distributer : ARP Selection
Summary: The world is a mysterious place, especially seen through the eyes of an animal. On his way, EO, a gray donkey with melancholy eyes, meets good people and bad people, experiences joy and sorrow, and the wheel of fortune alternately turns his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected happiness. But never, at any moment, does he lose his innocence.