JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI’S EO “May all your dreams come true…”

by James Clark  2023

Most of us would say that humans are the powers of planet Earth. They have crafted religion, of course; and science. Our film today presents Earthlings in another way.

It begins with blood red flashes in the dark sky. Radiance. As if another being has made a discovery. Planet Earth, but instead of a foreign visitor, there is a donkey. A thinking donkey, in its own way. Thinking by the gut. Within that shimmer, one could see, despite the confusion, two figures: a woman, Kasandra, kissing the neck of a donkey, EO. Both of them work in a circus–she is a dancer; he is out of place.  (Don’t rush to table this matter, “Surrealist.” Even though we see the donkey having a carrot.)

From the circus of the elements, we land in middling Poland, where love is not a joke. The first of the shocks. She had given him a little candy. He had bumped her in fun… But  the circus had gone bankrupt. What had not failed, was millions of shiny metal objects, lying in their poison and uselessness.

Their comments, several months of irregular work. He had a stint in a large barn, where many impressive horses would be shown. In transit, he saw a herd of wild horses. (How did he feel about it?) He was bought by a farmer with many horses, who simply loved these creatures, and would find pleasure for his children. Perhaps he would have remained with the children for the rest of his life. But one late night Kasandra found him, in the easy-going farm. She was not the Kasandra of old. She had been driven by a motorcyclist, who didn’t bother to look at EO. She was drinking beer out of the bottle. Her remarks stink; but love had a part. The sky was pristine. EO eats some bugs on the feces. Kasandra  says, “I have a surprise for you! “Happy Birthday! May your dreams come true! Be happy!” EO is happy. They snuggle. The boyfriend tells her, “Come with me, or stay with the donkey.” /” I have half to go…” That triggers EO to find her. A hopeless enterprise. A dangerous one. EO cries, with that deep heartiness. EO in the hills, looking for the heights. He cries as he walks. A blue tone. The windy dances of forests. (Close-up of EO’s eye and vision.) Bats in the sky. His exhaustion. Three windmills. Up and down. EO cries to be seen. When seen in a town: “Where the hell did you come from?”

    EO comes upon a football game. The noises of spectators: “Blue and White, they make our day!” (Anticlimax?) “Good placement!… Zenek, you can do it! You’re  doing it! A great shot!” Lightning smart! Very balanced.  (Calling for a penalty.) EO, on a hill, watching. Free Shot. A Score! Much happiness! Much fighting! Much display of Advantage! “It’s all because of the donkey!”

The celebration moves to a bar. (EO becomes part of the parade.) “Blue and White, they make our day! We’re the winners! Losing is for weenies!” EO was dragged into this stupidity, as a cute logo. Screaming drunks. And that was only the beginning. He’s able to get out of the place because everyone’s pie-eyed. But he doesn’t know that a tempest is coming. During the riot he was viciously beaten. (In fact killed. And we have to resort, now, to our philosophist/artist. Along this way  we fill-in what is needed of EO:  absolutely dead; but there are actions later (not involving religion and science.. [Keep watching.]) EO pulled along. The attackers begin. A girl holds him, screaming, A car races up. Then, two trucks.. .. Someone notices… “The fucking donkey, in  high beams…Get the fucker!” EO cries. Someone says, “Die!” EO cries, off-screen. But the expression is shattering.

    At this point of the saga, a double attack upon EO, in order to sustain all the animals who have been given barbarism. And yet, in the second outrage, there is a keenness for truth which presents a mighty surprise.

He’s taken to a barn. “Three hooves up in heaven.” Sorry? (for the poor lack of  civility). One says, “Why should it suffer? (The staff goes by without a blink.) Cut to EO, lying there with stitches all around. Clean and “effective.” A worker hears EO crying. He looks around as if he is in a zoo. EO looks up. He calls quietly… Remembering the cleaning of the farm. A part  of her butcher opens from her eye. His fur, still beautiful, so lovely to touch and caress. Pan over his turf. His memory, being embraced by Kasandra. Her hands on his mane. Much caressing in the memory. The reach to see a loving heart. EO’s beautiful eye. The full reach of the skies. EO’s memory of the red places when being mysterious. “I still think, when there were four legs. Two legs up to the knee, and with another…” EO recalls all his great voyagers.  And the dancing moves to make four! He can do it now, by memory.

The Robert Brisson film, of 1966, presents a donkey under stress, but that Heaven makes it all right. Our EO finds bliss in a completely different way.

    Cut to another stable in the dark. EO in a place that doesn’t care. A cart; and a rider with no heart. EO stands there; he looks at those who will present a vision. As the horror takes its way… (The way of planet Earth. Fortunately, there are planets which are not a disgrace.) Outside of the farm. EO in flight. Being attacked. Carrying EO. “So what,” the  one says. “For a fucking horse!” EO cries. A woman reaches into EO’s cage. EO! One has to imagine… Blood red. Steering the poisonous  car, while intent on advantage. The wild music of the hopeless truck. EO’s wildness. EO’s eye, having seen much. Ludwig van Beethoven. Mountains to the heights. Overcoming distance.

Monster: “Damn,I”ve got a cramp in my hands.” Useless movement. Useless garbage. Useless coward. “Damn, why do I always have to screw up everything.”… A hurricane of blue… The author of nothing ends up in a mansion. Its first sight is a lilly-white priest. He shows us two candles. Back, then, the lilly-white-know-it-all. “Blessed are you. Lord of the Universe, the provider of this bread and fruit of the Earth and human labor.” Another woman appears. They whisper together. “… when he gets into trouble,you keep calling him my step-son. What has he done this time?” (And the cries of EO.) Pan to the priest. An appearance of EO in the foliage outside. Hands. Then eating grass. EO cries out, over and over; a long cry. EO enjoying the rich grass of beauty. (1966: “Besides, he’s a saint.” Recall Robert Brisson’s Balthazar.) The killer is gobbling a huge lunch. Back to the church. Deluxe. Across the table, the owner; her powers. But she only stages anger as a hope. After leaving the table, she takes a precious plate and preciously lets it crash on the marble floor. She can see that the killer has killed. “What did you do…? ” was her gutless move. She allows the excuse: “gambling…” But a pretty boy would never understand. She pronounces that she’s sold the place. She will be going back to France. “You won’t get much. I can’t help you  with your debts. You can take some of the family wealth. This was your home, too. Before you gambled it away.” (Gambling was not his worst vice.) She smashes a table. “Your grandmother got it, during the London honeymoon. Isn’t it quite exquisite? Isn’t that so?” The cutlery… The sister throws a knife. The butcher says, “Stop!” (He rushes to her.) “Please stop! Enough! I’ve never lied! Not to you, not to your father.” He looks down. He touches her hair. He kisses her.

    Quick cut. A garden, impressive. Foliage. A sunny day. EO reaches Kasandra. There would be reflections in the skies. The various stables at night, when the horses and donkey become true, finding their mysterious truth. His first love; not to be long, but deep. Coming to a ladder! How he managed. Over the wonderful bridge. Rushing water. EO embraces it all. To be alive! Cut to dusty cows. It was seen by EO. He could imagine it all. A lamb alone. He saw it. The herd. EO sees, and sees very far.

  Poetry, Language, Thought, being the title of a book by Heidegger. While Heidegger slogs with his academic blindness, there came recently, this film, which opened many poems, languages, thoughts. And once again we turn to Proust, for a step of verve. A verve to link with EO. In the Chapter, “The Captive,” we find topspins. EO never lost a moment to sustain his topspins. Here we go to Proust!

“Physically, too, she had altered… and not kept  their form… For, on the contrary, every morning the ripples of her hair continued to give me the same surprise, as though it were some novelty that I had seen before. And yet, above the smiling eyes of a girl, what could not be more beautiful than the clustering coronet of black violets? The smile offers greater friendship; but the little gleaming tips of blossoming, more akin to flesh, of which they seem to be a transposition into tiny waves, are more provocative of desire.”

    When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from which we spring come and bestow upon us a handful of their treasures and calamities, asking to be allowed to cooperate in the new sentiments which we are feeling and which, obliteration their former image, we recast then in an original creation. Thus my whole past from my earliest years, and earlier still, the past of my parents and relatives, blended by my impure love for Albertine, the charm of an affection at once filial and material. We have to give hospitality, at a certain stage in our life, to all our relatives who have journeyed so far and gathered around us.

It is precisely because this comfort has been necessary to bring grief to birth–and will return moreover at intervals to calm–that men can be sincere with each other, and even with themselves, when they pride themselves upon a woman’s kindness to them, taking,  although, taking things all in all, at the heart of their intimacy, there continually lurks in a secret fashion, unavowed to the rest of the world, or revealed unintentionally by questions, inquiries, a painful uncertainty. But as this could not have come to birth without the preliminary comfort, as even afterwards the intermittent comfort is necessary to make suffering endurable and to prevent ruptures, their concealment of the secret hell that life can be when shared with the woman in question carried to the pitch of an ostentatious display an intimacy which, they pretend, is precious, expresses a genuine point of view, a universal process of cause  and effect, one of the modes in which the production of grief is rendered possible.

    The entry of the young dairymaid at once robbed me of my contemplative calm; I could think only of how to give possibility to the fable of the letter of that she was to deliver and I began to write quickly without venturing to cast more than furtive glance at her, so that I might not seem to have brought her into my room to be scrutinized. She was invested in me with that charm of the unknown which I should not discover in a pretty girl whom I had found in one of those houses where they come to meet one. She was neither naked nor in disguise, but a genuine dairymaid, one of those whom we imagine to be so pretty, when we have not time to approach them; she possess something of what constitutes the eternal desire, the eternal regret of life, the twofold current of which constitutes the eternal desire, the eternal regret of life, the twofold. We  guess, we divine from her stature, her proportions. They are ready and waiting.

So, there is in Dostoevsky , not only people but their homes. Crime and Punishment. But did he ever murder? Those novels of Dostoevsky are not natural.

    The courage of EO introduces a power not understood on this planet, or at least not in effective play. The powers that be have been crazed by cowards and dullards. Other planets surely step forward. But in the dramas of the semi-hopeless, one is seeing. One could be, in fact, in our short lives, a helper. A helper to the cosmos.

 

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