<
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-09/eo-review-oscar-nominee-donkey-movie-jerzy-skolimowski/102180408>
"Animal adventure as psychedelic dream, Oscar-nominated donkey tale
EO is
that rarest of things: a narrative film that actively decentres the human
perspective in pursuit of a new way of seeing.
The eponymous star of Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski's other-worldly
feature is a plaintive grey donkey whose deep, dark eyes might be read as
either windows to the abyss or a reflection of the world in all of its wonder –
sometimes both — as he wanders across a vision of Europe populated by farmers,
football fans and French countesses, adrift on the tide of fate.
His journey begins in a Polish circus, where his only friend is a young
showgirl, Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), with whom he shares a gentle, almost
psychic bond, depicted in a tender, red-lit tableau set to Paweł Mykietyn's
baroque orchestral score.
Liberated from the circus after protests by animal activists, EO embarks on a
picaresque adventure that's variously wondrous, mystifying, and sometimes
traumatic.
His trek takes him from a horse stable and a seemingly friendly farm to a rowdy
soccer match, a perilous encounter with meat traders, and even to the Italian
enclave of a countess, played by no less than screen doyenne Isabelle Huppert.
Though the film's obvious precedent is Robert Bresson's revered 1966 classic Au
Hasard Balthazar, Skolimowski's version of the donkey odyssey is less a remake
of that heavyweight text than its jazzy counterpart, a galaxy-brain take on the
Frenchman's Christian parable that hoofs its way beyond morality and into
altogether uncharted, agnostic terrain.
The film collapses arbitrary boundaries between nature and technology,
imagining a world in which all creatures — donkeys, robotic dogs, Isabelle
Huppert — are imbued with an equivalent degree of consciousness."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
