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Interview: Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska on Changing Hearts with EO

Skolimowski and Piaskowska discuss how emotion guided all of their creative choices.

Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska on Changing Hearts and Habits with 'EO'

“Life is such a treasure,” said Jerzy Skolimowski on the message of his 2015 film 11 Minutes, “we only understand that when we lose it.” Though his latest, EO (named for the Polish phonetic spelling of a donkey braying), is a rural picaresque rather than an urban symphony, the same sentiment prevails throughout. Skolimowski, a veteran of the Polish New Wave who trained under Andrzej Wajda and co-wrote Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water, is as vibrant and vital as ever today with his riff on Au Hasard Balthazar.

Like Robert Bresson’s classic, EO follows the travails of an innocent donkey passed between human owners and forced to witness their compassion and cruelty. But Skolimowski shrugs off the ascetic artistry of his French forebearer. The film’s poetic use of image and sound to align the audience with a donkey’s perspective is a triumph of artistry and empathy alike. EO is simultaneously a film that feels impossible for an octogenarian to have made and yet only possible for such a seasoned, soulful filmmaker to bring to life.

I spoke with Skolimowski and his co-writer, co-producer, and wife, Ewa Piaskowska, prior to EO’s theatrical opening in New York. Our conversation covered how the project came together, where it departed from Bresson’s masterpiece, and why emotion guided all their choices.

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What was the genesis of EO? There’s the intent to make a statement on factory farming as well as a desire to riff on Au Hasard Balthazar. Did one emerge first?

Jerzy Skolimowski: I think the order of the ideas, which came together while we decided to make the film, was that, first of all, I saw Au Hasard Balthazar nearly 50 years ago [around when] Cahiers du Cinéma called me and asked me for an interview. I was very surprised. I wasn’t even 30, and I had made only two feature films. One I made as film student, Identification Marks: None, and then my first really professional film, Walkover. The reason they were calling me was because they made a list of the 10 best films of 1966, and I was informed that Walkover took second place. I was absolutely surprised, and after a long silence from my side, I finally asked, “And who got the first place?” [And it was] Balthazar.

My memories of Balthazar are very vivid. At the end of the film, I found myself with tears in my eyes. I was looking at films [at the time] like a young professional who’s just watching how a master manipulates an audience and gets them into [a certain mood]. But I didn’t count on the fact that it [would affect] me so emotionally. I cried at the final scene when Balthazar the donkey is dying in the field surrounded by the herd of sheep with their little belts dangling on their necks. It’s still incredible. I received the lesson from the old master. Robert Bresson taught me that the fate of the animal character can move the audience even stronger than any performance by the greatest actor [performing in a tragedy]. So, let’s call that the first element.

Then we thought for a long time after 11 Minutes, my last film with Ewa, about what should be our next film. And we really couldn’t get an idea. Finally, we decided that we should try to make a film about something that really touches our hearts and minds in a direct way. Something that we would like to protest. We [discovered] that the only cause that was really moving us emotionally was the fate of nature and animals. And that is how we got close to the decision to offer the main part to an animal performer, and we chose the donkey. And the rest you know.

Ewa previously mentioned that what you do is you have to create an environment where the animal can be natural since they cannot act. What does that look like practically? How is that different from creating an environment for humans?

JS: Well, people try to be natural in a documentary film. They are aware that worlds are being shown on the screen—that it is not fiction. It’s a [reproduction] of reality, and so they are trying to be as natural and real as possible. But when it comes to a feature film, there is always a script behind it, and it’s a matter of the interpretation of the intellectual speculation between the director and the actors. And it always gets slightly twisted. The reality is somehow less important than the show of the of the feature film, which takes over.

How, practically, do you get a moment like when the donkey is crying at the sight of the horses running free whenever he’s being transported in the trailer away from the circus. Did you have this specific shot in mind?

JS: Yes, I had such a shot in mind. It was written in the script that the tear is running down the cheek of the donkey, and this is what happened.

Ewa Piaskowska: That was makeup! Something harmless to the animal.

JS: The well-being of the animals was rule number one [on set]. No animal was hurt.

EP: I would say more. No animal was unloved on the set.

JS: They were ruling the set, actually. They were the most important.

EP: The donkeys had a trailer on set, and Jerzy did not. They took over the entire operation.

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When it comes to understanding the donkey as a character, were you digging into any research on animal consciousness or psychology? Or did you primarily rely on your artistic instincts?

JS: We were trying to get some knowledge about what was going on in animals’ heads. Also, we were researching an interesting subject, which is the difference between the vision of the human eye and the animal eye. Apparently, the angle of an animal’s sight is wider than a human’s because the eyes of animals are located further in the back of the head. They see more, while people look straight [ahead] and only have a limited angle on the sides. But we didn’t really pay much attention to the science because [we ultimately worked by] pure instinct.

EP: We were making this film for humans and not for donkeys, you know!

JS: It was the voice of our hearts. The most important criterion was the emotion. We wanted to create a certain emotion, and our number one [priority] was how we were going to show it, and how much we were going to [get into] the animals’ heads. I had this plan that in post-production, when scoring the music for the film, because the animals don’t have dialogue, I wanted to support the way of expression of their feelings by using the music as a kind of inner monologue for the donkey. My composer, Paweł Mykietyn, who is a brilliant composer of classical music, didn’t see working on the film as a step down from his lofty position as one of the best in the world. He did the job with a full emotional engagement and put a lot of heart into the music. It’s obvious from the score that it is the projection of animals’ moods.

How did you come to design other sonic elements in EO, such as the subjective sounds that align with the POV shots?

EP: A very interesting example would be the shot when you have a close-up of horses, and suddenly all the sounds of reality just disappear into some sort of a vacuum. Then you have this super-rich enhanced galloping of horses.

JS: It’s about creating moods and emotions. So whatever worked to engage viewers emotionally, we would use it as a weapon to [grab] them by their throats and touch their hearts.

EP: But you’ve always loved [playing] with sound, no?

JS: Yes, in 11 Minutes, Radoslaw Ochnio—the same sound designer who worked on EO–received the best European Film Award for best sound.

EP: In The Shout, I think you were the second filmmaker to produce a film in Dolby stereo.

JS: That’s correct. That was the year when Dolby stereo was introduced. Apocalypse Now was number one. The Shout was number two on the screens equipped with the equipment.

EP: You actually brought the equipment to Cannes!

JS: Yeah, we had to bring the whole equipment. Some people maliciously said that we just blasted the eardrums of the jury, so they gave us the Jury Prize because they were completely deaf.

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The film has three credited directors of photography, largely due to Covid issues. Given the film’s constantly shifting settings, did that change of vision have any unexpected benefits complimenting the themes?

JS: I wouldn’t call it a matter of using different camera people once we established the style and the routine of the photography. We were planning from the beginning to use several points of view for the animal. And then the execution of it, we had three different people. We shot the film in 26 months, with stoppages from time to time reaching six months. The number of shooting days were not huge, but the long period of it spread over more than two years. That might have had some effect. But, on the other hand, we had time to pre-edit some sequences, and therefore what was needed in between already [gave] a very strong indication of how it should be done to match the previous and following sequence. So there were, of course, disadvantages to the whole situation with the pandemic. But, on the other hand, having extra time for editing and preparing the next sequences created a slight advantage [when it came] to balancing the whole thing.

Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska on Changing Hearts and Habits with 'EO'
A scene from EO. © Janus Films

It was developed before the pandemic, but given that EO is about the meaning of life and death, did Covid have an effect on the thematics as well as the aesthetics?

JS: We don’t actually see anybody in masks. We didn’t want to [indicate] that it’s exactly this period of time. We thought that because the message is so universal, we’d rather avoid pointing out that we are in the year 2021 or 2022. By avoiding the masks, signs, and things like that, we thought it would have a more universal appeal.

Why did you start EO with the donkey at the circus and depict it, for all its faults, as one of the better environments in which he toils? It feels at odds with Bresson’s depiction, too, where the setting plays like a degradation and humiliation.

JS: While we were working on the script, we made a list of every possible place where the donkey on his journey could find himself. Obviously, on that list, the circus was included because it was one of the places in reality where a donkey could [be encountered]. We treat the circus, as you rightly mention, in a different way than Bresson. For us, it was mostly the perfect place where the donkey found that bond with his trainer and partner in the act—Cassandra, the girl—and those scenes between them in the circus were an important, big, emotional beginning of the journey for the donkey. And there is some repetition in a couple of flashbacks from that period of their lives. The strategy was that we would show them quite happy together, the girl and the animal, [before] they parted. And then, of course, the journey of a donkey changing places and [cycling through] different owners, would progress from Poland to Italy.

EP: I think it would have been very one-sided to show the circus as a degrading environment. It gets at an interesting paradox: people who actually mean well for animals and their well-being are actually setting him on a journey to disaster. We liked the paradox of it.

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There’s a real ache at the center of EO that stems from how industry, transportation, and entertainment have all left the donkey behind. He’s outmoded no matter where he goes, like the scrap metal he walks by at the beginning of the film. Is that the kind of statement you think you could only deliver now?

JS: As I mentioned earlier, the film is the result of our love for animals and nature. We have some beautifully photographed nature, which could appeal to people watching it and saying, “Oh, I wish this beauty could be preserved and not demolished.” That scene with the scrap metal is about the “nature of our times.” Let’s keep [nature] as long as possible, let’s keep it the way it was created. The beauty, which is a natural beauty, is the healthiest environment for human beings and animals as well. More should be done to preserve the climate, nature, the well-being of animals, and maybe some people will decide to change their habits a little bit.

Two of us reduced the meat consumption solidly, without exaggeration. We eat maybe one thirds of what was our normal meat consumption. We still did not reach this stage of becoming vegetarians, but I hope that maybe one day it will happen. Because those are our moral needs, to somehow participate in the reduction of the barbaric methods of industrial farming. From what we hear about the conditions of the animals in those institutions, it’s something which really should be taken under legal control…if it is not something that becomes illegal. That’s our opinion, and it’s our wish that maybe this film will have at least a marginal appeal to people who may realize how far and how bad we are in debt on this subject.

When Balthazar dies, there’s a sense of nobility in his sacrifice, which some attribute to Bresson’s Catholicism. I don’t get the sense you want us to feel similarly about how EO meets his end. Does the way your film conclude reflect any larger views about life, death, and what it means to exist on this planet?

JS: Well, first of all, I wanted to shock people a little bit with my ending. If the film would [conclude] with some kind of happy ending or just dissolve the whole tragedy of the animals into a kind of normality, it wouldn’t have the strength of shock. It actually should put some people into [a state of] tears, [for] realizing the fate of those poor creatures, so I purposely put as much emotion [into the] ending of the film as possible. I think it works for the film, and it works for the final message: to have people leave the cinema and [be gripped by] this uncomfortable feeling that perhaps they share some kind of responsibility for animals’ fates.

Marshall Shaffer

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based film journalist. His interviews, reviews, and other commentary on film also appear regularly in Slashfilm, Decider, and Little White Lies.

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