It was the eyes that did it. Filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski had decided some years ago that his next film was going to be about an animal. He and his wife and co-writer, Ewa Piaskowska, had been getting bored of traditional movie structure and dialogue and wanted to do something different.
They didn’t know which animal to choose, though. Cats and dogs were out. That’s been overdone, they thought. Then they came upon the donkey, an intelligent, stoic creature with historic significance in not only religion but cinema as well, most famously in Robert Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece “Au Hasard Balthazar.” But it was those massive, expressive eyes that convinced them they’d found a star who could hold the frame.
