EO, the Oscars’ oddest nominee, proves we need more movies from animal perspectives

polygon.com:

None of the six donkeys that star in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Oscar contender EO will receive a statue at the 2023 Oscars ceremony, even if the film does pull off an unlikely upset in the Best International Feature Film category against its stiffest competition, Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Animals aren’t eligible for Academy Awards, though plenty of movies embraced by the Academy have featured animal actors, like Terry (Toto in The Wizard of Oz) and Popcorn Deelites (Seabiscuit in Seabiscuit).

But centering EO on a donkey as the subject rather than as an object, as the star rather than a supporting figure, is what makes Skolimowski’s movie a unique experience, both in and outside the context of the Oscars. Whatever does win Best International Feature Film will be downright conventional compared to EO, a movie that makes the best argument yet that films need more animal perspectives.

Skolimowski, the eclectic veteran Polish filmmaker, painter, and actor behind movies like Essential Killing and 11 Minutes (and a bit player, oddly enough, in 2012’s MCU movie The Avengers), filters EO through the eyes of its protagonist, a lovable, lonely, lost donkey ambling around the Polish and Italian countryside. As much as a camera can show an audience the world according to a beast, cinematographer Michał Dymek tries. EO’s eyes are Dymek’s constant, an anchor he returns to repeatedly for reaction shots between representations of humankind’s worst and best. The donkeys playing EO can’t act or react as a human performer would: He comes across as unflappable, placid and cool. But his expressionlessness is an invitation to consider how he sees what we see.

Skolimowski’s contribution to cinema’s “sad donkey” niche joins