Jerzy Skolimowski discusses his donkey odyssey

THE Planet HAS Seldom if at any time seemed at at the time as ravishingly beautiful and beset with menace and cruelty as in EO, the place it is imagined by Jerzy Skolimowski via the eyes—no, the overall perceptual system—of a donkey. EO (named for the hee-haw sound these animals make) performs in a circus with Kasandra, a young girl who dotes on him like Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is a enjoy that is nurturing and tinged with eroticism. When Kasandra abandons him, riding off on the back of a motorbike with the guy who abused him, EO trots just after her, but in dodging an oncoming auto, he loses her path and plunges, “au hasard,” into a deep forest.

Yes, Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (constantly in the best five of my preposterous “greatest movies ever” list) was a setting up stage for Skolimowski, who as soon as said that Balthazar was the only film that created him cry. But EO is far far more radical in its sort. EO is its sole protagonist, even though Bresson’s movie is split concerning a donkey and a woman, and, as Skolimowski has noticed, Bresson is far more intrigued in the girl. EO is also much more contemporary, in that it speaks right to the horror of our destruction of the all-natural planet and its nonhuman inhabitants without having bringing God into the picture. It is a movie in which visuals of the organic planet transcend our common vision, in element due to the fact they are manufactured unusual via our empathy with EO. Skolimowski, in his refusal to anthropomorphize his donkey, exhibits him as a question and a secret, so by extension is the sky over him—a veritable firmament, as soon as swirling reds, after vaulting blues—or the hurrying waterfall from a hydroelectric dam as EO stands—small, strong, and seemingly fearless—on a slim bridge that crosses it. No significantly less wonderous is the sight of EO grazing on the manicured garden of an Italian palazzo when inside of a lady (Isabelle Huppert, no a lot less) fights with her incestuous lover. It is all poetry, the photos of lifestyle and dying, and the sounds—concrete and musical, but with hardly any words—that merge with and intensify what we see. A veteran of some twenty movies, lots of of them as difficult and ironic as he himself is at age eighty-4, Skolimowski has built a movie that in its delicacy and grandeur is in a course by by itself. And which, by the way, could have the impact of generating a couple of viewers reconsider their meat-having habits. At Cannes, where EO received the grand jury prize, the director thanked all six donkeys who embodied EO. “We made it,” Skolimowski states just about every opportunity he receives, “out of our really like of animals.”

AMY TAUBIN: It is attractive to see you, if only on Zoom. I don’t say this frivolously, but EO is a single of the biggest movies I have at any time witnessed. I considered that right after the to start with time I noticed it, but following viewing it a 2nd time, I’m even far more specified. I was nervous about heading back for the reason that I had these types of a solid psychological reaction the 1st time. I can no lengthier go back again to Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar simply because I get started to weep as quickly as I listen to the donkey’s bray in the opening seconds. And you clearly accept the partnership involving your movie and Bresson’s. But let’s converse extra concretely: What produced you go again to filmmaking right after a split of seven a long time? And what made you decide to make a film about the odyssey of a donkey?

JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI: Even in advance of this split of seven years, I took a more time break from filmmaking involving 1992 and 2005. It’s a sophisticated situation. Besides remaining a filmmaker, I am a painter. I seriously love to paint, and I simply cannot paint whilst working on a movie due to the fact filmmaking is tricky and can take a good deal of electrical power. And because I developed into a respectable artist who has experienced quite a few exhibitions, I now have a crew of professionals and sellers. And they necessary merchandise, as they phone it. But I was thinking all the time about what my up coming film must be. Ewa Piaskowska, who is my cowriter, coproducer, and also my spouse, had the similar feelings as I did. We have been both of those fed up with the linear narration of the movies. It had develop into tedious for me to tell a story from A to Z, action by move. In my earlier film, 11 Minutes, I tried using to wreck that linearity. I was not fully pleased with the film, but at minimum I produced the initial action. Then I experienced the concept that if I introduced an animal character, it would get me nearer to what I want to obtain, 1st, for the reason that there would be considerably a lot less dialogue, and next, since this animal would not be launched the way a human character is. It would require substance that wasn’t simply just to serve the story. That turned out to be ideal. I had to shoot quite a ton around the animal just to get some bits and parts that would current the character.

After we made the decision on this line of action, we experienced to choose what animal it would be. We right away refused the most common kinds, pet dogs and cats, mainly because there were so a lot of films about puppies and cats, some of them embarrassing. Purely by chance, we satisfied the wished-for animal in Sicily. We made use of to expend winters in Sicily mainly because the weather in Poland concerning December and March is genuinely significant. In the wintertime of 2019 to 2020, we identified for the duration of the Christmas period that in a nearby village there is a Nativity celebration that will involve countless numbers of persons. It appears to be like nice, really colorful, funny, noisy, you know. These attractions are in potentially a hundred different areas, and the audience is introduced in by buses. They type a line to go from area to position until finally, at the incredibly close, there is a minimal barn. When you get near to it, you hear an unbelievable sounds made by all kinds of animals, who are quite agitated. When you enter, you see probably sixty animals—chicken, geese, pigs, sheep, cows, and just one enormous bull. And in the middle, Saint Joseph, tall in a extensive robe, keeping the personnel. He appears to be a tiny like the Oscar. Up coming to him is Mary, holding the toddler. But the animals capture all the interest.

Abruptly a hen flew in excess of Saint Joseph’s head. I adopted her as she landed on the other facet of the barn, and there, deep in the qualifications, standing by itself, shut to the wall, motionless, silent, was a donkey. I was immediately fascinated simply because the donkey was a portion of the demonstrate and at the same time, he wasn’t. He retained his length. He stood there with extensive-open eyes. The donkey’s eyes are monumental in proportion to its encounter. And in these tremendous, melancholic eyes, the two expressive and mysterious, I uncovered a remark on what was heading on, and the comment was almost certainly the very same as mine. That yes, all these folks are accomplishing, but it does not make feeling. And the donkey someway intimated that indeed, I share that mind-set of an observer who does not take part but with his presence by itself helps make a comment. His eyes not often moved from 1 object to another. He was like a camera placed for a grasp shot. He sees anything but does not point out any specifics as currently being critical. He is just there. Eva also was glued to the donkey. At that instant, we both felt that this is the animal who could be the lens of the future movie. We quickly thought of the Kuleshov effect—you know, the Russian filmmaker who confirmed how if you just take a near-up of a man’s confront and then slash to a piece of bread, we would read through the expression on his experience as hunger, but if we took the very same near-up and followed it with a weapon, we would read through his expression as murderous. I realized that if I used the donkey and then lower to aspects of each scene, I would have a multilayered commentary on what is happening.

AT: A important element of my background is avant-garde film, so I believed of Stan Brakhage, who experienced several illustrations or photos of donkeys in his films. He talked about how the donkey’s peripheral eyesight is significantly broader than ours since of the placement of the donkey’s eyes.

JS: Certainly. We investigated this. It’s the same for horses. We experimented with a specific lens that was wider, but it was just not comfortable to search it and it would have drained the viewers, and it seriously didn’t provide us closer to the working experience of the donkey.

AT: I also considered of Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, which you reference several instances in EO. I remember you declaring that it was the initial film that introduced you to tears and soon after that, you under no circumstances cried once more seeing a movie. Balthazarhas prolonged been on my best-videos-of-all-time record, but I can no more time observe it mainly because I commence crying as soon as I hear the donkey’s bray in the opening seconds. Both equally films get started with this paradisical romance between the donkey and the young woman who nurtures him. And in equally films, she abandons him simply because she has other priorities. But Bresson’s narrative is split in between the donkey and the girl, and it ends with the beatification of Balthazar. Your film is tougher: The youthful girl disappears soon after the early scenes, whilst a single has the feeling that the donkey’s odyssey is to obtain her again—he has a memory of paradise that you clearly show in short, generally pink-tinted, delicate-concentrated imagery, as if he remembers her with all his senses. I felt all over the film that I was inside of the sensory encounter of EO—what he noticed, what he heard, what he smelled. The younger woman’s hand caressing him. I know that is only my imagination, but it is a richer working experience than if the film ended up simply a form of map of the donkey’s see of the earth exterior himself.

JS: I agree with you that was most likely our undertaking to reach these a reception. But of program, it’s a pure fantasy of the scriptwriters and the director. We do not know, scientifically, what is heading on in a donkey’s thoughts. But still, I attempted to consider, as we shot, what this animal was considering. And as you will have to know, it is not quick to get the job done with donkeys. They are identified for stubbornness, which is true, and for stupidity, which is not. It wasn’t usually achievable to reach what we required, but they are extremely clever, diligent, sensitive, lovely animals. I liked that animal so a great deal that I stored investing my time—when we were being getting ready the upcoming shot, or when we experienced a lunch break—with the donkey, whispering light text to him all the time. Some thing occurred, a sensation of coexistence. We really felt that at that very moment, it is like two of us against the rest of the environment. That below, the electricity, the drive to exist, is only with us, him and myself, myself and him. And that was a incredibly powerful bond. And I consider mainly because I realized that with the animal, he was a lot less stubborn than usual.

AT: Have you at any time worked with a human actor in that way?

JS: No, no, no. With actors, I wouldn’t whisper gently in their ears.

AT: Let me talk to you about the extraordinary sequence in which the donkey, who has been crushed almost to loss of life by soccer hooligans, is crawling via the underbrush, and you present him not as a flesh-and-blood animal, but as a metallic robotic. I am about the identical age as you, and I have arthritis in my backbone, and on damp times, I feel as if my whole entire body is produced of rusty steel. And I thought that EO should be sensation that identical kind of soreness, and that his human body has become an alien matter.

JS: Fantastic interpretation. I wanted to accomplish two factors. Initial of all, I desired to convey the experience of the donkey when getting overwhelmed. So when the robotic falls down on the floor, we want him to get to be equipped to get up and continue on strolling. But I also desired to talk that mainly because of our angle toward animals, mainly because we mistreat them and fall short to treatment for them, we will eliminate them. They are our associates in character, and what transpires when they are long gone? We would have mechanic animals, and how will we take care of them? Would we whisper carefully to the robots?

AT: Earlier, you spoke about how you ended up drained of a linear narrative with individuals forms of causal connections. Do you imagine that EO, partly since of its use of visual metaphor, is closer to poetry than prose? Do you make that difference?

JS: Certainly, extremely significantly. As a younger man, I was a poet. I even revealed a pair of publications of poems.

AT: Just one past dilemma: Most of your films are extremely vivid in their use of colour. This film is both equally vivid and lyrical in its imagery. So I want to talk to particularly about the cinematography in EO.

JS: For this movie, we ended up applying a few distinct DPs. We commenced with 1 of the ideal Polish DPs, Michael Englert. It was the beginning of the pandemic, and regretably, he received Covid after the 1st handful of days of capturing, and no 1 knew how extended it would get for him to get better. He proposed that we keep on with his considerably young colleague, Michal Dymek, whose operate I appreciated. I listened to some of his strategies about the movie, and I pushed him to go further more and to not set any limitations on what he preferred to do, to really do it as an avant-garde film, simply because I want this film to appear really fashionable. We experienced some extraordinary images from him, but he couldn’t end the film, regretably, mainly because when we started out collaborating with him, we did not know that the capturing period would previous from January 2020 to March 2022, in portion mainly because of Covid. And Dymek experienced a contract to do a movie in Taiwan, so he had to depart. And he was extremely tough to exchange simply because by then we experienced some very abnormal cinematography. It was only by way of good effort that we bought an previous good friend and a excellent DP, Pawel Edelman, to move in for a few times, and we managed to finish the movie with Pawel. All of them have been willing to danger their popularity to do this film. We used only their finest stuff. But in buy to get the ideal, they experienced to threat that some of the shots could be named completely unprofessional. DPs are usually very careful not to do something which could be regarded as imperfect, because if the director instantly decides to use an imperfect shot, the blame goes to the digicam men and women, not to the director. But people guys, thankfully, dependable me not to use their imperfection.

EO opened in New York on November 18 and will open up in Los Angeles on December 2.

— Amy Taubin