Criticism of ‘EO’, an exercise in cine-state-of-mind

People are (per se and because yes) beings inclined to barbarism, moral turpitude and foolishness… Yes, we are the worst. And the other little creatures? innocent, of course. They, our neighbors-colleagues-friends, the animals. Since limited reasoning also restricts the ability to do ‘Evil’… well, that’s it. Here, lowered to the most common of understandings, the thesis of the latest, and often captivating, feature film by octogenarian Jerzy Skolimowski, a relevant epigraph in the Encyclopedia of Great World Cinema that is still there, alive and rolling.

But, let’s land: if ‘EO’ is a great film work, it is not because of its pastoral message or its conceptual expression halfway between Hrundi V. Bakshi and Mr. Chance (curious, by the way, that the Polish filmmaker uses Isabelle Huppert at a moment almost worthy of Peter Sellers), but because of its entity as pure sensory experience and as a captivating exercise in cinema-state-of-mood in which the grotesque, the imbalance and even the unbalanced are erected as pillars of a bold expressive proposal that, yes (are there moviegoers left? You are warned), of Bressonian, little; almost the donkey and that’s it.

For animal lovers with movie buffs

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DATA SHEET

Direction: Jerzy Skolimowski Distribution: Sandra Drzymalska, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Isabelle Huppert Country: Poland Year: 2022 Release date: 16–12-2022 Gender: Drama Script: Jerzy Skolimowski, Eva Piaskowska Duration: 86 min.

Synopsis: 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 not-so-good people, he knows joy and sorrow, and the wheel of fortune turns, according to the moment, his good luck into disaster, and his misfortune into unexpected happiness. But he will never, at any time, lose his innocence.