Tag Archives: Jerzy Skolimowski

EO

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Director Jerzy Skolimovski

A donkey road movie. Or an allegory, or a political statement on our treatment of animals, or an observation of human beings from the sidelines. Odd, affecting and occasionally surreal. EO, the donkey, is liberated by animal activists from his home circus and, in a series of almost unrelated scenes, moves from Poland to southern Europe, perhaps in search of his earlier life. He encounters as much brutality as kindness from the human world – a world where animals and landscapes are under attack from our activities. Even the gentler humans are contradictory and somewhat self-destructive. Only the children retain innocence.

With Chesterton’s Donkey running through my head, Catholic themes of suffering came to my mind – even at the end when EO moves with the stream of cattle towards what must be an abattoir, from brilliant noon sunlight into darkness.

Deep End (1970)

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Director Jerzy Skolimowski with Jane Asher and John Moulder Brown

There were times in this film when I wondered if I were watching soft porn. I don’t think so (but how would I know?). More a kind of Carry On film stripped bare. A primary coloured black comedy. It was strange and fascinating with moments of comedy straight out of Jacques Tati (bobbing up and down at the hamburger stall) and moments of absolute awfulness. I was hooked from the start: the salacious lingering over the bicycle down tubes and then Mike’s joyous cycle ride in the grey London dawn to his first job (aged 15) as a swimming baths attendant. With a Cat Stevens soundtrack. I could overlook the bad dubbing just for that.

So many impressions. (I wondered if Skolimowski was still snared in the long tail of WWII horror.) An adolescent encounters a gruesome, twisted adult world of sexuality. The grotesque close-ups of middle-aged faces. I remembered how wonderful youthfulness is – the agility and the slimness beside lumbering, lumpen age. The colours were beautiful – Jane Asher’s long hair and long yellow coat. The vibrant (if peeling) paint of the swimming pool contrasted with the grey streets outside. It was like a separate world of the id. Creepy games masters are stereotypical, but Diana Dors – OMG! Asher was poised somewhere between youth and adult – disillusioned and occasionally vicious. And even innocence could act in a deadly way.

I saw afterwards that it was partly filmed in the Müller‘sches Volksbad in Munich. That brought back memories.