The film by the 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski introduces the audience into the world of an animal that many of us don’t know enough about. The result is a one-of-a-kind viewing experience, evoking empathy and emotion, so it is not surprising that it is nominated for the Best International Film Award
For an hour and a half, the film “Eah” follows an innocent-looking donkey, and tells his heartbreaking story. After being thrown out of the circus, only one woman in the entire world seems to care about the lost animal, and she is the one who gives him compassion and help. Jerzy Skolimovsky makes experimental use of sound and image in the new film that seem to allow the viewer to enter the consciousness of the donkey.
Which led the critics to express surprise that the film was made by a director in his ninth decade of life and not a young and innovative filmmaker. But anyone who knows the cinema of Skolimovski, who began directing about 60 years ago, knows how to appreciate his aesthetic adventure since time immemorial. And it’s important to say, before continuing –“E-ah” is a film that needs to be seen and heard on the big screen to experience it as a complete work.
The film opens with an unusual image in which a young woman in a circus ring is actually E-ah’s compassionate angel, the donkey. The screen is painted bright red and music that consists of bow and wind instruments that reminds a bit of Donkey’s girlhood envelops the viewer like a spell. Not long later, the circus goes bankrupt and the donkey moves between owners, in a factory, on a farm, brutally beaten by football fans, until murder. So he is taken by truck from Poland to Italy, where he finds himself in the villa of a rich countess.
Skolimowski’s film (who wrote the script together with his wife, Eva Piaskowska) ostensibly follows the tragic journey of his donkey from a moral standpoint that emphasizes the suffering caused to animals by humans. A scene that illustrates this in particular takes place in the forest where E-ah arrives in his wanderings. It is night, and the forest looks magical like in fairy tales. When E-ah is walking in the forest he passes a gravestone, then we find out that it is a Jewish cemetery that disappeared in the thicket of trees, and the history of Poland is well hidden.
The film introduces the viewer, from the very first moments, into the consciousness of the donkey, among other things through beautiful images such as a tear in the corner of his eye, or his view through the truck in which he is taken by a herd of galloping horses. In addition, it focuses on Ae’s reactions to the brutal way in which humans act, in his physical presence.
In conclusion, “E-ah” is a film unlike anything else in the cinematic landscape. He operates on an experiential level, and most of all he avoids offering a specific interpretation. The result is, as mentioned, a viewing experience that should not be missed, and if it can be viewed on the big screen, all the better.
? Did the article interest you?