The key element of this film (was it a film? or perhaps a novel? I am not sure – perhaps simply a moving story) was its protagonist. Much as I tried, however, I could not remember their name. So, I fell asleep again. Woke up after a moment. This time I remembered the name all right. It was strange, but it was there, firmly in my mind. I repeated it over and over again, just for the beauty of the way it would sound. However, I could not remember why I had needed that name in the first place. This made me feel sad. So I got up, looked at the sun that was just rising above the mountains right in front of my hotel room window, and started thinking about a spy thriller plot in which a group of agents go to extremes in their cleverness, skilfulness, and brutality in order to retrieve a medium sized suitcase with nothing but a small electronic device with a secret code on it. Once they got it, however, they could not remember why they had needed it. This made them feel sad, but I did not care anymore. I focused on the view of the snow covered slope I would soon be skiing down. They call it the Wall of the Sleeping Witches and it is said to be the sleepest one around.
Rather than the Oscars, far more important to me are the Venetian Lions, says Jerzy Skolimowski the day before the award ceremony for the former. And it’s hard for me not to agree with him. Although I may have some problem when it comes to decision making in my life, if I were to be exiled (with the option of hand luggage only) to some remote, heavily depopulated, broad band internet deprived island and therefore had to decide whether to take with me a collection of all the films awarded by the American Academy or a complete Venice award-winning films set, I wouldn’t give the choice a second thought.
Quite unexpectedly, the need for a new film list has arisen, a list of Mirinda’s favourite feature films. Up until now she’s shown some interest in videos made especially for her kin, such as the ones offered by PetFlix, but at the feature films that I enjoy watching she would look the way a drunken passenger might glance at the emptiness of the High Plains, on a rainy autumn evening, from a window of a rocking stagecoach, moments before falling asleep, in a low budget western. Well, she would notice that something is going on there, on the screen, that is, moving to and fro, but she wouldn’t give a shit, shot, whatever. Piaskowska and Skolimowski’s film EO has changed everything. As if some kind of a spirit possessed Mirinda, when she first saw that donkey, she couldn’t take her eyes off the animal until the very end, about an hour and a half later. Consequently, I’ve put EO on her Favourite Feature Film List and now looking forward to the sequel.
P.S.
EO (2022) is a road drama written by Ewa Piaskowska and Jerzy Skolimowski, directed by Skolimowski. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, winning the Jury Prize, and has been nominated for the Academy Award (Best International Feature Film). The plot that follows a donkey on its journey from a circus to a slaughterhouse across contemporary Poland and then Europe has allegedly been inspired by Au hasard Balthazar, a 1966 film by Robert Bresson.
Mirinda is a cat. Her twin sister, being pitch-black, was first named Guinness by us. In line with that, another drink and her tortoiseshell coat earned Mirinda her name.