With a plot centered around a meandering mute donkey, the Oscar-nominated Polish film EO has more than a few ambiguous moments, and its ending is perhaps the most befuddling of them all. The entire movie is a series of haphazard twists and turns, as the eponymous donkey stoically navigates the human world. Still, the third act is conspicuously perplexing, as subplots seem to enter and exit Eo's journey with greater frequency and gravitas, only for the film to end in a sudden and tragic fashion. It is confusing and unsettling, and yet a deeper reading of the ending demonstrates its connections to the film's most crucial themes.
'EO's Third Act Opens Up Several Subplots Before an Abrupt Ending
After Eo kicks a man unconscious at the end of the film's second act, he finds himself in the back of a truck, en route to his next location. Along the way, however, criminals rob and murder the truck driver at a gas station. Once the police show up, a drifter named Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo) passes by the crime scene, takes a liking to the donkey, and sneaks him away from the crowd. They travel to his hometown, where it is revealed that Vito is a priest who has a tenuous, yet romantic relationship with his stepmother (Isabelle Huppert).
At long last, the film seems to have found its human leads. However, just as the story establishes these anthropocentric dramatic stakes, Eo runs away once more, and Vito and his stepmother are never heard from again. After a beautifully crafted series of shots of the rogue Eo standing before a rushing waterfall, the final scene commences with Eo walking through a cow pen. Eo is the only donkey amongst the herd of cattle, but this doesn't seem to faze the present humans, who edge Eo along with the cows into a slaughterhouse. In the last shot, Eo enters the building and the screen cuts to black over the sharp, unmistakable sound of blades slicing together. It is a troubling dénouement, leaving little mystery to the fact that Eo meets a violent demise.
Despite the disturbing straightforwardness of this final shot, its bluntness leaves the audience questioning the purpose of everything preceding it. Why bother including the drama of the truck driver's murder or developing Vito and his stepmother so thoroughly as characters, just for it all to be irrelevant in the end? What is the point of Eo's detours if they lead to nowhere but death? And finally, why didn't the humans outside the slaughterhouse seem to notice that there is a donkey in their cattle herd? And why did they willfully lead him to his fate?
The Donkey's Fate Highlights the Film's Animal Rights Message
The answers to these questions boil down to two integral themes explored throughout the film: animal rights and the serendipitous nature of animal life. The film emphasizes the topic of animal rights from its very beginning. Eo is introduced to the audience as a circus donkey, and although we never fully learn about the circus' treatment of their animals, the second scene shows the circus being shut down over a new animal rights ordinance. Thus begins Eo's journey, where he encounters a variety of people who treat him with either affection or abuse. In the periphery, he also intersects with hunters and trappers, all of whom come across as loathsome for their willingness to kill and commodify animals.
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A couple of times in passing, characters also mention the fact that salami can sometimes contain donkey meat. While the fact is stated innocuously, it connects to the final scene, explaining why the people outside the slaughterhouse did not care that there was a donkey in their livestock. In their eyes, donkey meat could be turned to ground beef all the same, thus exacerbating the film's motif of unethical animal treatment and consumption. This becomes all the more conclusive just after the screen cuts to black, and text appears dedicating the film to animals in danger or duress, and encouraging people to rethink their assumptions about animal life.
'EO' Forces the Audience to Question the Animal Mind and Heart
That emphasis on animal life and humans' conception of it is the film's second paramount theme, and it narratively justifies Eo's long-winded, aimless detours. All throughout the movie, Eo moves in and out of people's lives, sometimes making an impact and sometimes not. Regardless, the donkey remains seemingly indifferent. Even when the truck driver gets murdered or Vito has a supposedly life-changing interaction with his stepmom, Eo's story moves forward with little to no consideration for his human company.
The human subplots in Eo's third act are thus intentionally tangential, and they end prematurely because they are irrelevant to Eo's life and story. Director Jerzy Skolimowski wants audiences to notice this in the most jarring way. As much as people may like to believe that there is a soulful connection between the wandering Eo and the vagabond Vito, the former's fleeing just when the latter's story begins reflects how apathetic Eo (and animals at large) can be to humanity's woes, troubles, and triumphs.
Is Eo the Hero of the Movie?
This is not to say that Eo is antagonistic. Conventional readings of the film would actually see him as the hero. However, a more critical evaluation sees that the donkey simply has no conception of heroes or villains, and instead exists in his own plain of non-human intelligence. While other Hollywood explorations in anthropomorphism like Homeward Bound, Babe, or The Bear might lean into the warm parallels between the human and animal psyches, Eo takes a more realistic approach. All moments of identification with the creature are dubious, forcing the audience to question what animals think and feel.
All the same, one can hardly meet the final scene without strong empathy for Eo. As the donkey enters the slaughterhouse, questions regarding his emotions and intelligence reach a haunting zenith, and the movie's two foremost themes collide. For all the debate surrounding what Eo is capable of understanding, we feel for him in his final moments, demonstrating how empathy can transcend across species—regardless of whether it is reciprocated or how we might choose to respond. That is the ultimate message that EO raises, and the unanswerable question that its ending leaves us pondering.
