Reel Movie Mondays: Spring 2023
EO
Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski | Poland, Italy, United Kingdom, 2022 | Drama, 86 mins, 14A | Polish, English, French, Italian, w/English subtitles, filmswelike
Content advisory: animal cruelty, violence
Polish master Jerzy Skolimowski’s gripping new drama, which shared the Jury Prize in last year’s Cannes competition, follows a sentient donkey as it experiences the best and worst mankind has to offer. EO is a fable-like journey through contemporary Europe, rooted in its tumultuous past, looking towards its uncertain future.
Told through vignettes, the film’s anchor is the anthropomorphic eyes of a donkey (played by six different equines named Taco, Ola, Marietta, Ettore, Rocco, and Mela) that senses its way through the wheels of fortune.
These include helpless indenturement inside a mobile circus (under the care of wide-eyed Kasandra, played by Sandra Drzymalska), heading full speed for a glue factory on Mateo’s (Mateusz Kościukiewicz) lorry, a fractious adventure with prodigal-son-turned-priest Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo), and a peek inside the so-called good life in the bourgeois home of a bored housewife named The Countess (Isabelle Huppert).
To err is human, to forgive divine — and we are only left to guess what Eo — after seeing the best and worst of humanity — would do. A subtle reminder about the absolute cruelty of eating animals, Skolimowski’s chef d’oeuvre makes clear that we’re not so different from the most common beasts: we are born, briefly experience suffering and (if lucky) love, are unceremoniously exploited for our labour, and then we die.
