Of the admittedly select few movies I’ve seen by Robert Bresson, Au Hasard Balthazar is the one that I like. As in I get it and its tragic themes in a way that Bresson’s other films don’t typically gel with me -even if it is a very tough movie to get through. It might shock those who’ve only seen EO, essentially a modern Polish remake of Balthazar written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, that it is by a stretch the less miserable film. And this is a film that features a donkey being carted off to be sold for meat and is later beaten up by football hooligans. But EO at least has moments of humour and joy to counter-balance that, it is more subjective and by proxy more empathetic than the largely empirical Bresson film. That film taught of the despair of the world -this one shows its dark absurdity.
There’s a kind of joke at the centre of the premise, as much like in Balthazar, EO is sometimes the main character of his journeys, other times just an observer, trotting along or being taken along from one story to the next. He begins life as a circus donkey and the beloved pet of trainer Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska). But protests (ironically) against animal cruelty result in the circus being shut down and all the animals being sold off. He ends up on a farm/petting zoo which he eventually walks away from, he comes upon a seemingly abandoned village, he is transported on a truck with an otherwise friendly man to be made into salami -he briefly becomes a football mascot. At each turn he experiences a new face of humanity, perhaps learning some lessons along the way -harsh though they may be; but mostly just being a donkey, a donkey on a strange and surreal odyssey.
The movie is hypnotizing in this way -EO is introduced in an indistinct haze of blaring red light and frightful sounds: a glimpse of his life in the circus perhaps, a world that seems overwhelming and hostile but hard to make sense of. In spite of Skolimowski seeming to use animal welfare protests as a catalyst for the plot and much of the harm that would befall EO, he clearly has little affection for the circus environment -viewing it in perhaps similar definitions. And like a trauma flash he returns to its horrifying tones at points through the movie to indicate EO’s fear or confusion. But he also uses these mystifying devices to abbreviate space and time, and perhaps audience comfort, crafting a movie that is additionally haunting and disorienting for its more direct tragicomic virtues. Not only is EO’s mood astutely reflected, and a foreboding air of violence felt in the harsh colours and thumping sounds, but it gives the movie a sharper character, visually and psychologically as it adapts Bresson realism into rich formalism -and subtly gives us an entryway (abstract perhaps) into EO’s point of view, or else that of some other non-human entity. One scene after EO is hurt focuses bizarrely on a robot dog walking through the streets nearby, seemingly disconnected from EO’s plight, there as some kind of symbol. It’s nebulous, but Skolimowski demands your attention on it as he tracks its movement from ground level with an intensity befitting its suddenness -is it some comment on machinery versus natural animal life?
EO’s adventures occasionally frame him in relation to other animals. As the first truck conveys him to the farm he watches out the side as free horses gallop in the adjacent pastures -the easiest bit of symbolism Skolimowski chooses to indulge. A specific white horse becomes the focus of his attention at that farm, represented seemingly as an ideal for EO, though brought down in dignity. A German Shepherd is combative to him and potently by the end EO is more appropriate in the company of cows. Just about all the wildlife he encounters is put to use to some capacity by people, as labour, as livestock, as game. One scene sees him wander through a moonlit forest by a creek at night that hearkens in both visuals and atmosphere to the tranquil river sequence from Night of the Hunter, complete with close-ups on a frog and spider in their habitats. The name to this allusion is pretty literally echoed when green laser beams light up all around the forest and the next thing you know a howling wolf has been shot dead. For a moment it looks like EO is the unfortunate target, but he makes it through. Yet there’s a clear perversion to this, not just in the killing of the wolf but the disturbance of the wilderness to make it happen.
The cruelty of humans or else their mere hopeless misunderstanding of animals is a major theme of the film. Indeed though he cannot talk, EO’s anthropomorphized perspective speaks volumes. No person that he comes across does not in some way seek to exploit him or his fellow creatures, whether in aggressive or relatively harmless ways. He is meat, he is a pest, he is labour, he is a mascot, he is a prop. Even to Kasandra, whom he meets again on his journey, he is just an animal, to whom she drunkenly wishes a happy birthday before wandering off, mistaking his aimlessness for freedom. She has apparently gotten over their connection. A couple people are spotlighted beyond their relationship to EO, most notably Mateo (Mateusz Kościukiewicz), who kidnaps him for salami, and who shares a solitary scene towards the end with none other than Isabelle Huppert as his wealthy mother. There’s a kind of absurdism to them and their drama, really to all sign of human drama in the film -Skolimowski’s message clearly that it doesn’t matter. There’s a fundamental satire to the movie: its football hooligans are such cartoons, EO brays at a TV in a shop window as animal control officers close in on him. It presents its humans and their preoccupations as inherently silly and EO as a sardonic interloper -until it comes to the matter of their power over him. EO manages to casually walk that line right up to the cynical, sombre end.
Skolimowski gleans plenty of character out of EO in the same way Bresson did back in the day. But unlike Bresson’s statement on mankind, his is a statement on a larger ecosystem; subjective where Bresson would be objective, and interrogating with specificity how our actions towards the world and its creatures might be received. EO is an immensely fascinating movie, and a spontaneous one too. I dare anyone to come away from it ignorant to its point …or feeling innocent.
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