EO (2022), BFI Blu-ray/DVD out now.

This film is made out of emotion… it’s our song of love for nature…

Idea for a new streaming service: Jerzy Skolimowski being “interviewed” and talking about his films, his collaborators and his art, no ads, just 24/7 humility, intelligence and integrity, self-depreciating humour, pauses for thought as he translates from his English to The English aided by partner, co-producer and co-writer Ewa Piaskowska. Trust me, it’ll be compelling and, how you kids say, immersive.

This smashing new release features one such post screening interview from New York in which Jerzy, as he was at the BFI last month, in erudite and eloquent form, leaving his interviewer standing with lengthy freeform extemporisations you’d expect from a former jazz drummer, despite the urgings of Ewa to keep his answers short. He can’t help it; he has such a powerfully holistic view of his work and all of this is punctured by the honesty and charm of the former poet who once tried to steal and destroy his own books.

EO marks the apogee – so far - of his cinematic renaissance and is a stunning work for a man of any age but as the director says, this was the most democratic of creations in which he took a step back and encouraged his collaborators to do what felt the most natural and adventurous to them. But we’ll come to the donkey later…

The lonliness of the long-distance trotter

He marks the contribution of Polish composer Paweł Mykietyn whose beautiful score really opens up the simplicity and beauty of the donkey’s world, not in an anthropomorphic way but in terms of a connection to the feelings all animals must have regardless of sentience. If nothing else, this film asks us to not only unconditionally focus on the predicament of the animal but also our reactions to it and Mykietyn has us in bits.

Michał Dymek’s cinematography is frequently breath-taking, both in terms of patient equine close ups but also in covering the immense sweep of the journey from the confusion of the initial circus to EO’s journey into the lower Alps, mountains and lakes ahead as the truck carrying him snakes it’s way closer, an overhead drone shot on a straight bridge, the donkey in relief traversing a bridge in front of a dam and the waters swirling and then reversing in front of us; non-linear, time running backwards as we, or EO, attempt to make sense of the movement.

Agnieszka Glińska’s editing must also be mentioned, she’s so vital in establishing the action/reaction of the four legs and the two legs, the tone and the pacing of an apparently slow film in which so much happens and not all is resolved… that’s life and we can make our own dénouements…

EO with Sandra Drzymalska

Skolimowski talks of his first proper film, Barrier, being screened in Paris and then listed as the second-best film of the year in Cahiers du Cinéma's top 10 films of 1966. They wanted to interview him and, after he recovered from the shock of this unexpected accolade, he insisted on seeing the film that came first before. It was Robert Bresson's 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar, the beginnings of Donkey core, and which took him from his semi-professional/semi-cynical filmmaker’s poise to tears by the final stunning reel.

Almost 60 years later he chose to make his own film about a donkey partly out of compassion – the film is a reality-checker for all careless carnivores – but also for technical reasons; he wanted to use an animals’ uncomprehending yet all too real responses to drive the narrative and he wanted a new, real character to help present a non-linear narrative. As with his earlier work, Essential Killing (2010) the film is a picaresque fable only more satisfying and successful, with enough human interaction to flavour the relentless journey.

Jerzy may be dissatisfied by some of his dialogue-driven work but he chooses his human performers well especially with Isabelle Huppert in the final human segment, she is always the master of interior expression and barely has need of dialogue herself. It’s tempting to draw a link to Jane Asher in Deep End – I think the director likes the red hair aesthetically but he also admires their silent stillness. Huppert is a Countess commanding a huge estate as well as her troubled stepson, Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo), a trainee priest, who rescues EO from a lorry load of stolen horses, confessing his meat-eating sins to his new friend.

Isabelle Huppert

The first human interactions are the key though with our hero EO performing in a circus and being loved by his trainer and rider Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska). This is the closest connection the animal has throughout the film and it is perhaps what drives him on to keep moving once he has been “rescued” from the circus by well-meaning animal rights activists who get the animals taken to a sanctuary. EO is visited by Kasandra but after she leaves, he sets off in pursuit and his adventures begin. He is only one donkey and it’s a confusing disjointed world out there.

EO himself is portrayed by six donkeys: Ettore, Hola, Marietta, Mela, Rocco, and Tako but none of them were hurt in the making of this picture. All of them look straight to camera, always in character, never flinching but always some how pleading… may we make the effort to understand them.

 

As usual with the BFI, the special features are indeed special:

Jerzy Skolimowski & Ewa Piaskowska on the making of EO (2022, 27 mins): director Jerzy Skolimowski and co-writer Ewa Piaskowska discuss the making of EO at the New York Film Festival

Skolimowski A to Ż (2023, 53 mins): an alphabetical journey through the work of Jerzy Skolimowski with writer Michael Brooke who also conducted that superb interview with the director at the BFI in March.

High Rise Donkey (1980, 56 mins): in this Children’s Film Foundation adventure, three children who live in a tower block try to save a donkey from small-time crooks.

The Clown and His Donkey (1910, 4 mins): rare silhouette animation by Charles Armstrong depicting a clown doing tricks with his donkey Charles Armstrong depicting a clown doing tricks with his donkey.

UK trailer and assorted teasers

First pressing only illustrated booklet with an essay by Ewa Mazierska, an interview with Jerzy Skolimowski & Ewa Piaskowska by David Thompson and a film review by Christina Newland for Sight and Sound, credits and notes on the special features

Ettore, Hola, Marietta, Mela, Rocco, or Tako

The BFI Southbank season, Outsiders and Exiles: The Films of Jerzy Skolimowski, a BFI Southbank season dedicated to the director, presented in partnership with the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival, continues until 29^th April. A selection of films will also be available on BFI Player and EO will be available exclusively to BFI Player subscribers.

Details are on the BFI site… Jerzy Skolimowski is an unique talent who has often had to fight to get his films made but who always seems to deliver something unusual and mood altering just like his viewing of Bresson's film, you will be moved by EO… do not hesitate to purchase!

 

There’s more coming our way too with the BFI releasing two more Skolimowski features: Identification Marks: None (1965) and Hands Up! (1981) – made in 1967 and the film that got him exiled from Poland - will be presented together on a 2-disc Blu-ray on 24 April.

Both are screening at the BFI this month as is EO, see all this on the big screen!

The big sky… Heaven's Gate (1980)

Some people still get cross about this movie as if it’s a personal affront but, come on, did Michael Cimino really let you down? He pursued his dream at ruinous cost to himself and United Artists much in the way of an over-ambitious modern soccer club – even allowing for inflation, his $44 million budget would barely cover the annual salaries for PSG, Chelsea or Manchester City.

What he produced was a commercial failure but one that has had a growing amount of critical respect. Watching the restored director’s cut – supervised by Cimino – it felt like watching a really good HBO mini-series but with extra sky and impossibly huge mountains. Whatever else its failings, Heaven’s Gate is an extraordinary good looking film. 

Having not seen it for almost twenty years, this “new” version makes more sense in narrative as well as stylistic terms. Its pacing and granularity is now explicable as part of the greater whole and Cimino’s eye for detail creates an immersive experience unlike few others before or since.

I feel a tenuous personal connection to Heaven’s Gate as it was partly filmed in Oxford when I was an impressionable student, I knew some of the extras and I remember seeing the cameras and crew at Mansfield College, one of the newer colleges. Oxford’s a puzzling choice to double for Harvard with some of the buildings pre-dating Columbus by a full two decades... but that’s showbiz.

Kris in line at the Sheldonian Theatre and dancing around Mansfield College

This section and the one that closes the film, act as bookends depicting the main character’s class and position. James Averill (Kris Kristofferson who was a Rhodes Scholar at my college, Merton, many years before me…), is an educated man of East-cost culture who somehow gets embroiled in the base conflicts of the West.  The director’s time in establishing this is worth it for the contrast it shows once James and his friend, class wit, William "Billy" Irvine (John Hurt), get involved in the shooting.

The film is based on the Johnson County War of the 1890s although Cimino is going for representational and not historical accuracy, introducing new themes as he presents the conflict of rich cattle owners versus immigrants. The immigrants gather to enjoy life at a tented hall called Heaven’s Gate run by John L. Bridges (Jeff Bridges). Here they roller skate dance and enjoy the little freedom they have from struggle: a slither of Heaven.

Christopher Walken

One of James’ friends, Nathan D. "Nate" Champion (Christopher Walken) is an enforcer for the Stock Growers Association and we see him shoot dead one desperate cattle rustler, leaving his distraught wife as he heads off into the prairie framed by the rip in their sheet left by his shot gun blast.

This man was caught red-handed – literally – as he butchered a stolen cow but the stockmen are about to elevate justice to a whole new level of brutality. They meet and are persuaded by leader Frank Canton (Sam Waterston) to support the despatch of 125 hired guns to execute a list of 125 locals labelled as rustlers. All a far cry from university legal studies and, shockingly, based on an actual death list of 25 small-holders.

Billy witnesses the decision in a drunken stupor barely able to stand, he meets James who responds by laying out Canton… but can he stop the slaughter?

He didn't even bother to wrap it!

James heads back to base presenting a gift of a smart new trap to his lover Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert), who runs the local bordello. The casting of the very French Huppert was apparently one of the first signs of trouble on the film as the producers didn’t feel she could cope with the English dialogue. Cimino put his foot down and carried on doing so as the production ran many times over budget. A sit turned out and as one of the producers now admits, Isabelle was superb – when is she ever not?

Ella also loves Nate but, in a neat testament to the ground rules of the time, always made him pay as a customer. We’re confused to see what we thought was a cold-blooded mercenary so awkward with his feelings.

Isabelle Huppert

James obtains the unlucky list and at Heaven’s Gate reads it out the terrified immigrants. Ella’s on it for the crime of accepting stolen cattle in exchange for favours but, in spite of James’ prompting she refuses to leave.

As tension runs high violence descends as the men ride in and Johnson County descends in stylised late-seventies havoc. Can James really stand aside to let his Eastern friend enforce the rule of law in such a callous and unjust way or will he make a stand with the immigrants? Can he forgive Ella for also loving Nate and the latter for loving the former… will this love triangle doom them all?

The climactic battle

For a film with such perfectionist tendencies you could say that the human motivations seem less than well-defined but then with actors possessing the skill of Hurt, Huppert, Bridges and Walken this can be a positive strength. Life is messy and human behaviour often bafflingly obtuse: they revel in the space Cimino allows.

Kristofferson doesn’t have their range but he more than makes up for this in presence: his face is a mask of masculine resolution deliberately obscuring his thoughts even when he’s angry.

Roller skating was genuinely a craze in the 1890's

It all feels very real and the earnestness you occasionally sense would nowadays be smothered by the hyper-violence enabled by CGI and other digital processing.

And then there’s that big, blue sky and those huge mountains, the dust filled rooms and the huge sets showing mankind in mass transit one their way to who knows where, who knows when. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is exceptional throughout and the film feels whole again.

Huppert and Kristofferson outside a cabin now in Jeff Bridges garden - fact fans!

I watched the 219 minute restored cut which is readily available from MovieMail and other online retailers.  It’s on MGM who obtained the rights from the wreckage of UA… don’t blame Michael Cimino it takes more than one auteur to break the bank and many weak executives to let them: where was the risk management?

The business may have died but the creative lives on.

Hal Hartley & Isabelle Huppert… Amateur (1994)

Sometimes you come back to a film and it’s not quite what you remember. I saw Amateur in the cinema on its original release being a fan of Hal Hartley’s earlier work and, of course, eager to see how Isabelle Huppert fared in another American feature (I'm one of those that like Heaven’s Gate…but not so much Bedroom Window…).

Amateur was possibly too delicate to leave a strong impression or maybe I was wrong-footed by its subtle subversions… either way, I feel it is a more defined and rounded work than I did before viewing it again, two decades and two children later. Funny how memory can change...

Martin Donovan is lying on a side street motionless, a young woman runs out, looks at him and quickly moves off. She thinks he’s dead and so do we but with a start, he wakes up. Staggering to a café, numbed and free of memory he encounters a French woman who has been sitting, eeking her coffee out and writing on a portable word processor (a proto-laptop… ).

The woman is Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) who, it transpires, is that rarest of creatures, a nymphomaniacal nun who writes pornography for a living and has yet to have sex… Thomas has only dutch money in his pockets but Isabelle has enough to buy him food which he promptly gives to her recognising that food is another habit she hasn’t really got into.

There’s a kindness between them in spite of their strangeness and Isabelle, who is searching in her own Christian way for a direction and purpose in life, decides that Thomas will be it.

Isabelle is confused on many things… she wants to write poetry and is employed by a pornographic publisher to write erotica for his magazines. But she doesn’t really know what to write or how to make the stuff she really wants to write, sexy. She’s almost blank and, of course, Huppert is just perfect for this. Nobody does “almost there” as well and I can understand why she was so keen to work with Hartley.

Isabelle has to go on a date she met through a phone dating service and does not know how to respond when her companion for that evening starts to make advances in the cinema. Before she exits we see the girl from the start of the film… off the wall moments abound. The film is funny but in that only one-small-blip-away-from-reality way that Hartley specialises in.

The other woman, Sofia (an enigmatic Elina Löwensohn - hair a marvellous Brooksian bob) is revealed to be Thomas’ wife and a star of adult movies. Thomas’s back story is revealed a little as we find out that she thinks she has killed him and that she is also in possession of certain “floppy discs” (ah, 90’s IT nostaligia…) that will incriminate their employer back in Holland – Mr Jaques.

She calls Mr Jaques and tries to blackmail him in exchange for the discs. Meeting up with her friend and colleague Edward, (Damian Young) she explains the plan and is horrified as he is caught at their drop point.

Edward is one of Mr Jaque’s accountants and he is tortured by two former colleagues who have obviously progressed onto the next stage of their financial careers by becoming assassins… “What happened to you, you were such a good accountant, “ Edward says to Jan (Chuck Montgomerie), the more intelligent of the two. “I saw the light”, he replies.

Jan leaves Kurt (Dave Simmons) to do the dirty work and both believe Edward, who has been electrocuted, to be dead. But, as with Thomas, he revives, Amateur is about confusion, accident and the hap-hazard at this point and it’s also quite funny about torture and porn...

Meanwhile, Thomas has rented one of Sofia’s films and watches it with Isabelle. It stirs something... but he has no idea what. Isabelle senses this too and decides her mission needs to include the girl in the video as well whom she recognises from the cinema.

Like a Paul Auster novel, much is driven by co-incidence and that New York probability of bumping into the same kinds of people in the same kinds of places…

Isabelle and Thomas break into Sofia’s flat and Isabelle instinctively puts on Sofia’s clothes (is she is replacing her in the unconscious mind of Thomas?). The two almost make love but are disturbed by the door opening. Kurt and Jan have found the flat as well and begin to search.
Sofia returns and is captured.

Jan leaves Kurt to torture her whilst he goes to see what is on the discs. Kurt is fascinated by Sofia’s role as a sexual commodity, his financial training momentarily getting the better of him.

Isabelle surprises him by provocatively holding a power drill…Thomas circles round and pulls a gun and shocks Kurt into falling through the window…

The three escape to a safe house Sofia knows. But they are not safe for long as Edward, by now in a crazed and murderous frenzy, calls the number and recognises Thomas’ voice as he picks up the phone. Jan is also on the way having found the address in Sofia’s disguarded handbag…

Everything comes together as (almost) everyone hates Thomas although we never really find out why. Sofia eventually tells Isabelle everything but she has seen a different man and believes in him not who he was. Thomas can still not remember himself but he too is seemingly sure of his new love.

I won’t spoil the ending but it comes with a powerful moment from Isabelle Huppert who has controlled the emotional story all the way through.

The idea of a criminal/assassin figure with memory loss was recently “explored” in a Liam Neeson (excellent actor, Liverpool supporter… maker of lucrative films) vehicle, Unknown in which his memory loss leads to an – unexplained - change of character. Here we’re not sure that Thomas has been “reborn” as a goody; Hartley doesn’t want to push things too far towards the definitive.

There are plenty of blurred edges around the central message that it’s never too late to find your way even if you must travel alone. It’s Isabelle’s journey and she has been changed in a way that is as equally unconscious as Thomas' shift. Perhaps you need to forget yourself to keep moving forward?

Amateur is a film of its time – big phones and big suits – but from this distance it has stood the test of time remaining amusing and shocking in equal measure.

The DVD is available from Amazon, though it’s quite pricey now - time for a re-release! Also worth checking out is Possible Films for details of Mr Hal Hartley’s current work, whilst Martin Donovan also keeps himself busy having recently written and directed Collaborator (2011).

Isabelle Huppert remains the leading actress of her generation.

Isabelle Huppert in Cactus (1986)

Peter Cox’s Cactus begins with one of the most audacious and stunning single takes I’ve ever seen. The camera starts with three people on the balcony of wooden house in semi-rural Australia, it sweeps gracefully away through their garden then up over the trees to view the distance. Onwards and down it comes back to the actors, as two of them go down the steps, get into a car and drive off…

The whole shot is almost five minutes long and sets the visual tone for this remarkable film which is essentially about sight, how we see ourselves and the impact of the external on our internal decisions and direction.

Isabelle Huppert is Colo, a woman holidaying with friends in Australia, who is attempting to re-focus her life after she has resolved to divorce her husband. Her car journey at the start ends in a crash and she loses the sight in her left eye. This loss begins to affect the sight in her good eye and she is told that, unless her eye is removed she will lose the sight in the other. A horrible choice and one she is understandably reluctant to make.

She meets a blind man Robert (Robert Menzies) and they become close as he describes the world of the blind “there’s nothing to be frightened of here”, as she begins to grieve the loss of her sight and to face up to the terrible choice she must make: is she prepared to go blind in order to keep her self intact? And will she stay in her reduced circumstances with Robert or be lured back to Paris by her rich husband: are there more important questions of love and self-realisation than sight?

Throughout Cox’s camera glides gracefully through this beautiful locale, the colours are rich in texture and he repeatedly returns to the view of the horizon central to the opening sequence. These are the pleasures of sight.

More local colour is provided by a mix of non-actors who add some real depth to the cultural circumstances in the way that Michael Powell used “civilians” in Edge of the World and Canterbury Tales. Is this perhaps a legacy of Cox’s documentary-making past? There’s also a debt to Antonioni as well, not just with the opening sequence but also in the depiction of the impact in identity of the central character of her changes in capability.

The story is a very personal one for Cox who’s mother had suddenly lost her sight “…her courage gave me hope and her peace had a great visionary aura.”

The passion and the skill he shows in telling this tale do him great credit – this is a brave film that confronts an uncomfortable and almost taboo subject matter head on. Cox’s direction appears quite contemporary and the film feels timeless not just in its use of flashback but also in its naturalistic technique.

Languid tracking movements through foliage are juxtaposed with a controlled soundtrack that moves “found” sounds in and out of focus – eerie birds’ cries impose themselves on the peaceful landscape whilst characters move from almost silent contemplation through the abrupt noise of traffic. There is no composed soundtrack as such just music that suits including some haunting choral pieces.


The camera focuses intently on the characters’ faces in a very intimate way and there are cuts from past to present in order to show the characters’ thoughts and inner selves. And, has there ever been an actress more capable of performing this kind of tale than Isabelle Huppert? She is superb, so full of human depth and capable of drawing us in to make us think our way through her predicament like a modern-day Asta Nielsen or Greta Garbo. So restrained and yet powerfully nuanced in expression. You feel like you can “see” her thought processes, pretty much in the way Clarence Brown described Garbo at her best.


As a non-French speaker, I’m more used to seeing Huppert in “silent” mode than many modern actors. Reading the subtitles as intertitles you pay more attention to her expression than if you were able to follow her words more quickly and clearly? But she is the perfect film actress in this respect, her great range of expression is always used in a controlled way – her intelligence is always in evidence.

So, it is very interesting to “hear” her in English. A number of her “foreign” language films have been disappointing, Bedroom Window and Huckabees weren’t really worthy, although Amateur and, given a chance, Heaven’s Gate were. Cactus is certainly made for her and Cox plays absolutely to her considerable strengths. She isn’t over-loaded with dialogue – her own challenge to act through a wall of linguistic interpretation – and is the visual fulcrum throughout.


There are a great many close-ups, some uncomfortable, as Colo has her eyes examined and “threatened”… and Cox makes the most of this with, at one point, a clever natural reflection placed directly onto her eye-level after she has walked around the room. Huppert’s face has an endless fascination in our household where her fellow redhead, Catherine, shares its inscrutable power, beauty and grace!

Cactus is one of Huppert’s best movies in English and I shall certainly seek out more of Peter Cox’s work. It’s an exceptional performance from a truly outstanding actress - certainly one of the best of her generation and for my money, almost anyone’s! For, if Isabelle Huppert isn’t the World’s Greatest Living Actress who is?

Cactus is available from Amazon.com Buy it!

Isabelle necessary? ...very!

The greatest French actress of her generation (not just the best called Isabelle...you Adjani fans!), Isabelle Huppert turns in a performance of rare depth and dexterity in Claire Denis's "White Material".

White Material is set on a coffee plantation in a former French colony in central Africa, in the grip of civil conflict and corruption. Isabelle plays Maria, the manager of the plantation determined to hold on to her way of life and to resist the urge to flee back to France and safety.

The sheer peril of the situation with murderous gangs of armed children faced against the controlling militia contrasts with the signature internal intensity of Huppert's performance. She pulls the viewer into her story whilst all around are losing their heads amidst the gathering horror.

How would you respond in such conditions? It seems oddly unbalanced that we focus on one well-off business woman whilst cheap lives are lost but that is the point and, ultimately, we feel compromised in our desire to extend sympathy to Maria. She underestimates the scale of the changes around her and, in the end, falls shockingly short in her attempts to bridge the gap between her own rights and those of her workers, colleagues and family.

It's white here.