What Is the Story About?
Inspired by Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), EO follows the life of a donkey born in a Polish circus. Driven by an animal’s perspective, EO poetically explores the joys and sorrows, the good and the bad in the circus donkey’s life after he escapes as a turn of adventures.
Performances?
The donkey actors in the film Ettore, Hola, Marietta, Mela, Rocco, and Tako are literal riot. It’s amazing how these animals can drive so much attention and their perspective grab a narrative so strong and so moving when they play EO. EO’s bond with Sandra Drzymalska who plays Kasandra is adorable.
Analysis?
Written by Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska, EO is a heart breaking and moving animal driven road drama that takes a brilliant hypothesis on the lives of ‘other lives’.
Evidently inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic Au Hasard Balthazar, EO’s primary character is a donkey. His adventures, comprising of the right mix of good and bad, and sometimes incoherent scenes where EO remains as an animal, with the audience clueless of what he thinks or why he does what he does occupies most of EO.
After a brief opening shot of EO and his lovely trainer Kasandra bonding at a Poland circus, he gets separated from her owing to animal activists shutting the circus down. The film begins exactly there, as EO begins to hopelessly and aimlessly wander across the topography of Poland. Unlike films like Okja, EO doesn’t intend to establish a heartbreaking story of man-animal friendship, but places an animal in a merciless fast moving world, observing what happens around him gathering little to no attention for himself from mostly inhumane humans.
Sometimes, the film just features EO’s closeups, his escape into the wild like adventures Superposed on wondrous camera tricks and frames, doubting what the writing aims to achieve in short. And sometimes the writing establishes touching scenes, like the one where EO runs after Kasandra following a temporary reunion. And sometimes the closeups are too purposeless even.
All said and done, EO is not an animal movie for kids. It’s tragic in every sense of the word. EO gets abused quite a few times, and EO takes all the blows without even trying to escape. The underline being, EO escaped the circus humans made, but at what cost? He escaped into the world where humans are at loggerheads with themselves and the other lives.
In short, EO is a film that deeply impacts you on a psychological level if you are up for it. With quite a few interpretations that could be made on the man-animal equation, the existentialism of humans as animals themselves, the brutality of life in entirety etc EO touches drastic realities one by one. If slow and metaphorical writing is something that you dig, EO is definitely worth your time. If not, this couldn’t be your cup of coffee.
Music and Other Departments?
Michał Dymek’s cinematography is a thing of beauty. In the case of animal driven films, it’s often hard to get the pov shots accurately, but in EO, the camera work is a character in itself and does so much heavy lifting. Agnieszka Glińska’s editing is crisp and Paweł Mykietyn’s music is the soul of the film. Accurately aiding the film’s perspective and audience’s reaction in more ways than one.
Highlights?
Core Theme
screenplay
Cinematography
The ‘donkey’ actors
Score
Drawbacks?
Not everyone’s cup of tea
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes. Certainly.
Will You Recommend It?
Yes. If you’ve enjoyed animal driven films like Au Hasard Balthazar, Gunda, War Horse etc, EO is right up your alley.
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