1 He came riding on a donkey, he came riding into town;
slow and easy kind of lowly, he came riding with the dawn.
His disciples walked beside him, staying close, a little shy;
not too sure where he would guide them, on to live or on to die.
But all the morning sang his praises; waking birds and dancing wind;
here he is, the Son of David; riding on to take his throne.
Voices United 124
I went to watch a film yesterday. On a big screen. In a movie theatre. Ruth has done so several times during the safer periods of the pandemic, mostly with grandchildren, but this was a first for me, even though I have long loved going to the movies.
We saw a Cannes Jury Prize winner called EO which "follows a donkey who encounters on his journeys good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes." Ruth spotted this quixotic film (hey, didn't Don Quixote's companion Sancho have a donkey named Dapple?) on the roster of the Quinte Film Alternative. So off we went to see a flick with a non-human star who is definitely the strong, silent type, except for the occasional bray.
Why was I willing to give it a try? I read that the film-makers saw EO in a Living Nativity amidst a gaggle of critters and were taken by the quiet dignity of the donkey. In the end they used six different donkeys to portray EO but I found this attraction intriguing because for years a donkey named Cricket was the longest starring creature in the Living Nativity of the congregation I served in Bowmanville, Ontario -- for something like 30 years. When the aged Cricket quit, the nativity ended, and a couple of years later when Cricket went "crickets" we showed her image in Sunday worship and held a moment's silence. Lots of people grew up with Cricket as part of their Christmas.
In our Christian tradition we have our imaginary and real donkeys at the beginning and end of Jesus' earthly sojourn. Devotional art often portrays Mary on a donkey for the journey to Bethlehem and a donkey amidst the critters in the stable. They just ain't there in scripture. Jesus does ride a donkey, or the foal of donkey, into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week.
I realized that as EO moves about he/she is actually a sort of Christ figure, with the story as part Incredible Journey and part Via Doloroso, the Way of Sorrows.If this all sounds bizarre it is, yet it is beautifully filmed and surprisingly moving in ways which would be hard to describe.
Perhaps it's best to leave you with this description of a scene which is mystical in quality from the Los Angeles Times review:
In one of the most astonishing sequences in “EO,” a rapturous hymn to the natural world from the 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, a wandering donkey gets lost in a forest primeval. Night has fallen, but pools of moonlight illuminate this hushed, dark world in all its living glory. A little frog skims along the surface of a rushing stream. A skittering spider spins its web. An owl frowns down at the donkey from its treetop perch, as though registering an intruder’s presence. There are also a couple of howling wolves, a wary red fox and, in time, an array of green laser beams announcing the presence of nearby hunters, whose gunshots shatter the serenity of this woodland idyll.
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