Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s new film EO is in many ways a fairly eclectic brew of influences, but its most obvious forebearer is Robert Bresson’s 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, of which it is a sort of spiritual remake. From Bresson, Skolimowski has taken the contours of EO, however the two films are markedly different in ways both obvious and productive.
As with all of Bresson’s mature-period work, Balthazar is a highly controlled, ascetic film. It requires a certain amount of work on the part of the audience, especially due to the frequent use of narrative ellipses which can easily frustrate those expecting a straightforward A to B plot. Broadly speaking, it follows Balthazar, a donkey, as he is passed around from owner to owner in a small French town, being both victim of and witness to abuse.
Bresson’s approach is the antithesis of sensationalism. He required his actors (or ‘models’ as he termed them) to purge themselves of emotion through repetition and he only uses one piece of classical music sporadically as a soundtrack. In some ways this makes the suffering all the more painful to watch as we are placed in a more passive role as observers, especially during a scene in which Marie, possibly the only character who truly loves Balthazar, is sexually assaulted whilst running errands.
Bresson was a devout Catholic and all of his films are suffused with a strong sense of spirituality. It’s possible to interpret Balthazar as a Christ figure, the beast of burden suffering and witnessing for humanity’s sins. However, this is but one simplistic reading of a film so expansive, which Godard famously dubbed ‘the world in an hour and a half’.
Balthazar generally evokes two kinds of reactions in people. The consensus is that it is a transcendent masterpiece of suffering and compassion, though others find it ‘painstakingly tedious’ in Pauline Kael’s words. For the record, I fall somewhere inbetween – it’s often frustrating but it does have a cumulative power. When Balthazar lies down to die as Schubert plays over the top, it is undeniably one of the most moving moments in cinema.
EO is a very different beast. Skolimowski shoots far more subjectively and seems actively disinterested in the human lives. The way he presents ordinary human activities makes them alien so that a football game becomes an incomprehensible ritual. He also indulges in stylistic flights of fancy that are far removed from Bresson, notably two long sequences drenched in red that traverse the Polish landscapes and the rough ground of the forest.Skolimowski’s concerns seems to be more with the state of modern capitalist society rather than the spiritual realm of Bresson. As Eo passes between owners, we see not the kind of interpersonal abuse of Balthazar, but rather the struggles of modern labor and tribalism. As a modern update to Bresson, EO works well, transposing not just narrative but also themes to the modern world, and demonstrates that life for many is still nasty, brutish, and short.
Image “Donkeys in love” by Klearchos Kapoutsis is licensed under CC BY 2.0.