'EO': the mistreatment of a donkey and the artistic subjugation of the terrifying

One cold January morning in 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche was walking through the streets of Turin when he observed a coachman mistreating his exhausted horse with a whip.

The philosopher approached, hugged the animal and began to cry.

His mind, from that precise moment, collapsed.

He stopped speaking for 10 years, until his death, and he spent that time in psychiatric hospitals without being able to recover his reason.

Witnesses say that his last words, next to the horse, were: "Mother, I'm stupid."

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Jerzy Skolimowski: "I have survived Nazism and communism, and I have never been as pessimistic as I am now"

The haunting story of the philosopher, the basis of a beautiful film by Béla Tarr,

(2011), resonates throughout the footage of the singular

​​directed by veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski: the story of a donkey mistreated by its successive owners in a contemporary society with overtones of dystopia, which also makes you want to hug.

tragedy ,

another mythical film acts as an obvious point of reference for the octogenarian Skolimowski:

(1966), by Robert Bresson.

The style, the staging and the use of music, sounds and even the point of view could not be more different in the works of Bresson and Skolimowski, and yet they seem like sister films, above all because of their humanism.

The French austere, and the Pole resoundingly vehement, both, yes, have their narrative axis in the ellipsis.

Now, the subjective shots from the donkey's gaze, the almost continuous images of the animal's teary eyes, the impetuous soundtrack by Pawel Mykietyn, in many passages almost a sound design rather than a conventional score, and the fiery use of color , starting from a blood red that fits perfectly with the story, distinguish

a title that alludes to the name of the donkey, from Bresson's work.

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"Conscious of the intuited truth, man now sees everywhere only the terrifying," Nietzsche wrote in

And as a contemporary tragedy we must classify

awarded the jury prize at the last Cannes festival, which it would be good not to see only in animalistic terms, which also, because at the same time that there is a social x-ray taken over by the ultras, the violence, chaos and restlessness, an exercise of artistic freedom coexists, almost abstract, in part of the vital path of the animal.

Since the magnificent

(1966) made Skolimowski one of the spearheads of the new cinemas of the East, almost 60 years have passed, and the filmmaker is still there, even with long intervals between his feature films at certain times.

And if in that first work dream and reality went hand in hand until embracing something halfway between the theater of the absurd and surrealism, now, at 84 years old, he presents a plea in favor of tenderness that only lowers its guard (yes, yes , in a rather deplorable way in a sequence unworthy of its worth and of the film itself) in an unnecessary episode, with a change of point of view, starring an unleashed Isabelle Huppert breaking plates.

"Only art is capable of twisting nauseating thoughts about the frightening or absurdity of existence, turning them into representations with which one can live," Nietzsche wrote.

Representations of the sublime, as an artistic subjugation of the terrifying.

And in that reflection the cry of the philosopher,

de Bresson and

de Skolimowski remain united.

EO

Director:

Jerzy Skolimowski. 

Cast:

Sandra Drzymalska, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Isabelle Huppert, Tomasz Organek.  

Genre:

drama.

Poland, 2022. 

Duration:

86 minutes. 

Premiere: December 16. 

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