‘EO’ Review: An Innocent Equine Versus The Post-Industrial World
Courtesy of Janus Films.
Horses were first domesticated over 6000 years ago on the Eurasian Steppe. Since then, the hooved animals have aided humankind in exploring the globe, working the land, and fighting their wars. However, since the industrial revolution, humans' exploitative authority over horses has drastically evolved, with machinery taking preference over the four-legged creatures. In a time when humans are conditioned to exhaustively reap the benefits of the natural world, many overlook the souls of the animals we no longer attempt to understand. With his latest film, EO, Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimoski brings the focus back to animal conscience through a donkey's eyes in an entirely new and imaginative form of filmmaking unlike any other movie of 2022.
EO first premiered at this year's edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where it tied for the Jury Prize in the festival's main competition. An adaptation of the Robert Bresson film Au Hasard Balthazar from 1966, Skolimoski chooses to recontextualize EO for modern times and adopts an experimental nonlinear narrative to capture the experience of its donkey protagonist. Viewers first meet EO (named after the hilarious yet heartbreaking braying sound donkeys are known for) at a Polish circus, where he is loved and cherished by his acrobat caretaker Kasandra, although manipulated for her act in the show. When animal rights activists denounce the circus, EO is taken from Kasandra and he begins his epic journey - being passed from one owner to the next. On his adventure, EO traverses his way from Poland to Western Europe, coming across people from all walks of life and rungs of the social ladder, experiencing heart-warming tenderness and the most abysmal cruelty.
At 84 years old, Skolimowski's innovative vision for EO confirms that creativity is only enhanced with age. EO is one of cinema's most daring and impressive audiovisual feasts of 2022. The film introduces EO through a bird's eye shot, with the donkey revolving around the circus ring under flashes of brilliant red lighting. Red plays a massive role in the film's visual language, representing a terrifying balance of brutality and compassion that EO faces as he completes his trek through Europe. A later scene also harkens back to the violence of red effectively, as an unusual drone shot makes its way through a forest up a stream that brazenly hints at a river of blood. Skolimowski and his team of cinematographers (no less than three different people due to COVID-complications) oscillate between powerful point-of-view shots that highlight the donkey's perspective and glorious establishing shots that help to anchor the audience to EO's ever-changing surroundings. Visually, the film moves from a pastoral sensibility to hideous, industrialized landscapes as EO travels from East to West.
Sonically, EO utilizes a bombastically dramatic score that combines orchestral ensembles with unsettling electric tones that speak to our modern world of technology. Created by accomplished Polish composer Pawel Mykietyn, the film's score powerfully contributes to its overall mood, shifting from delicately tinkling classical ensembles to blasting synthy moments that greatly compliment the emotional and narrative shifts throughout the film. Likewise, EO's sound design works to mirror its striking score by balancing ambient sounds of nature that our titular donkey experiences during his most peaceful moments with horrendously sinister accents of industrial noise. As a result, the sound design and score nearly take on another character within the film, helping to hold together EO thematically despite its daring narrative structure.
EO's gripping tone and mood work unceasingly to contribute to the overall standout qualities of the film that make it one of the best of the year. Unlike many other movies that feature an animal protagonist, Skolimowski deters from anthropomorphizing EO or making him an entirely comprehensible character from the perspective of human emotion. Instead, the director leans into the cinematic qualities of the six donkeys he worked with on the film, highlighting their innocence and expressive essence and platforming them to the level of movie stars. In contrast, the director shies away from the conventional narrative form by focusing little on the film's human performances. Usually portraying debauched, selfish personalities, the human actors quickly come and go, allowing the film to maintain a hyper-focus on EO's perspective. The film's nonlinear structure also will enable viewers to fall into the entrancing mood of EO instead of having them wrapped up in the traditional three-act construction of most movies. While this detour from the familiar may alienate conventional audiences, it captures EO's point of view amazingly.
Courtesy of Janus Films.
Creative and fearless in its filmmaking, EO is ultimately a movie that demands attention for its donkey hero and the animals he encounters along the way. In a world where humankind continues to capitalize on natural resources and creatures for our selfish benefit, Skolimoski has constructed a film with important messages about our future if we cannot learn to curb our mistreatment of animals and even one another. As stated in a recent interview with Film Comment, the director's work on this movie has even aided him in curbing his meat consumption and seeing the natural world through a different lens. While other pieces of cinema and art have exhaustively invited the same moral questions, EO has succeeded in manners never seen before on-screen, summoning alert for the remarkable film as it makes its way into theaters across the globe.
EO is currently in theaters in New York City and will open in Los Angeles on December 2 before opening in other cities across the country. For more information, visit EO's official website.