EO

While Jerzy Skoimowski’s EO is being billed and labeled as “a modern-day retelling of Robert Bresson’s Au Hazard Balthazar,” the film stands on its own as a modern update that is every bit as compassionate and noble as Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece. An incredible odyssey about an animal experiencing crisis after crisis as a result of humans’ mistreatment of animals and each other. A study of public morality upheld with intoxicating visuals that is seen through the eyes of a donkey is one of Skoimawswki’s most notable films. The film is vastly different than much of his previous work, with an elegiac narrative, elliptical imagery, and mythical overtones. The film also has some sudden bursts of violence and other distressing cruelties, but they only elevate the drama, and EO is one of the most resonant films you will ever see of about animals as their faces express so much emotion. The film’s technical craftmanship and directing also stand as a highlight of the year. In the end, the film is not only a visually sublime and commendable tribute to Bresson, but it’s also just as emotionally affecting as any human drama you will experience this year.

The film’s main character, like Au Hazar-Balthazar, is a donkey who travels through life in the European countryside, escaping one crisis after another and being cared for by one human after another. The film’s ravishing cinematography by Micha Dymek impresses in the very opening shot as we open up with the donkey lying down in the middle of a circus ring as red neon lights bathe over him and a young Kasandra (Sandra Dzrymalska) keeps reassuring the donkey, whose name is EO. She treats him with grace and humility in the aftermath of some type of pain the donkey endured, almost protecting him as she mourns over him for his mistreatment. She holds EO down with intimacy, as if the aesthetics show the existence of a purgatory between her and EO. Red neon light and red end up becoming a common color motif throughout the course of the film as well.

Just like Bresson’s masterpiece, EO examines our relationship with animals. The film explores how humankind is incapable of being pure towards animals because we hold so many indifferences and hostilities towards each other. Ultimately, Skoimowski’s even connects the commonalities between humans and animals, showing how working-class humans carry on with daily routines and mechanical duties that eventually benefit a hierarchy as we all confine ourselves within the same structures adorable EO finds himself trapped in.

The film’s structure is very much like Bresson’s as well, as it’s very episodic as EO moves and escapes from one human after another. Humans serve more as abstractions, or traits of humanity with varying degrees. We have encounters that display both the cruelties and the kindness of human morality as we see exploitation, rivalry, violence, incest, and finally compassion. Isabelle Huppert makes a surprise appearance that takes a more Bunuelian turn as her section of the film deals with an estranged stepmother and son interlude that adds to Skoimowski’s themes of personal morality. That is the luminous beauty of EO: it merges magical realism with abstraction in a way that rivals some of Europe’s most important landmark art-house filmmakers, from Dreyer to Bergman, and, of course, Bunuel and Bresson. Skolimowski creates his own unique vision at the time, which defies expectations and is both surreal and emotionally sincere.

The cinematography also reigns supreme. Everything from the extreme close-ups of EO to the profile shots gives the donkey an elegiac vulnerability. Dymek’s cinematography and Skoimowski’s conceptualization shoot EO with a variety of lenses and shots ranging from wide to bird’s-eye to moving tracking shots that heighten the film’s angelic tone. The way EO is shot makes him one of the most vulnerable creatures you will see in the frame. They even alternate to EO’s point-of-view as blurred edges close out in the frame, which is in the vein of Andrew Dominick’s films and gives the film a feeling of a translucent dream state.

Throughout the course of the story, we see EO become more of an observer and bystander, almost like his own eyes are a film camera itself that observes the cruelty of humanity through his eyes, like the alligator in Miguel Gomes’s Tabu (2012). The film also puts forward an entrancing metaphor on the cycles of life through a breathtaking moving camera shot through a waterfall, The water flows deeply through EO’s psyche to show the rhythm of life and how water is so pure, and even though humans and mammals are made up of water, the complexity of human nature creates a wide range of various emotions that hold so much frailty over our own selves, each other, and other species that is anything but pure.

EO is comparable with such recent films about animals as the narrative drama White God, and the documentaries Cow, Space Dogs, and Gunda, which were all films about animals living in some sort of oppressive. confinement. EO tells the story with the same type of minimalism, but there is much more dialogue and human interaction than anticipated, and yet it still delivers an emotional impact. The film extracts a deeply involving narrative that uses a donkey to explore the cycles of life and viciousness of humankind. Both hallucinatory and at other times straight-forward, the narrative conveys its magical realism with bliss that is also equally gut-wrenching. There is a lot to interpret about what it all signifies. Nonetheless, EO is a transcendental and transfixing parable that is one of the most remarkable cinematic experiences of the year.

EO opens in limited theaters Friday, November 18th.