The 95th Academy Award nominees: Eo

I learned early in my education about film that it is a medium of perspectives.  Oddly enough, Hollywood is only coming around to the idea of diverse peoples and their culture,  I expected that, but what I didn’t expect was a film like Eo which not only leans on perspective and personal experience but does so through the eyes of a character who is not even human.

Eo is a Polish film nominated for this year’s Best International Feature (formerly Foreign Film) that takes place entirely through the eyes of a sad-eyed donkey.  This beast of burden is not the Disney sort.  He doesn’t speak, he only observes the half-wit world of the humans that he is destined by the chain of dominating nature to serve.

And we are a strange lot.  What must he think of us an our goings on?  Why would we have a grand opening ribbon-cutting for a local brewery?  Why would a man make a fancy speech and then hand the mic over to another man so that he can make the exact same speech?  We are a strange indeed.  No wonder aliens haven’t come down to meet us.

Oddly enough, the donkey’s perspective is least alien of all.  We first encounter this beast of burden at a circus where he is soon released due to legislation that forbids working animals to death.  Screw that!  He is soon captured an made the mascot for a local football team.  After that he is given over to hauling loads for a horsemeat company.  From there he is captured by a man with a gambling habit that is being bankrolled by his mother (Isabelle Huppert).

All of this is seen through Eo’s blank eyes.  We know that we can’t read expressions, but we are always impressed by how much sadness and boredom and possibly the questions of his own destiny and his place in the natural order.  Its not a sad film in the way of an animal rights documentary but it is a meditative perspective that would turn anyone vegetarian.