Essential Killing

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
Writer: Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski
Cast: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner
Theatrical Release Date:
Criticwire: B-
On The Web IMDB Entry

Synopsis: "Essential Killing," Jerzy Skolimowski’s exercise in pure filmmaking, begins with a helicopter shot following three US soldiers on patrol. The parched, desert-like landscape, riven by gullies and canyons, could be Iraq or Afghanistan. They are on the hunt for the enemy, and soon find him. Portrayed by Vincent Gallo, he is a tribal soldier, bearded with a turban, who could be Taliban or Al-Qaeda. What follows is a struggle for survival that can also be read as a desperate fight for freedom, and Skolimowski is very careful to avoid any prescriptive interpretation of his narrative.

No one is named in "Essential Killing" and there is virtually no dialogue as we follow the capture, incarceration and interrogation of a “terrorist,” who is swept into a military system that controls his every moment. Hooded and shackled, stripped of his clothes and clad in bright orange prisoner overalls, he is shaved, questioned, tortured and beaten before being transported by plane to an unknown destination – which could not provide a greater contrast to his native environment. It is winter, snow is everywhere and the landscape is immense.

After making his escape in a moment of confusion, the rest of the film follows his trek into the snow-clad forests, pursued by helicopters, soldiers and dogs. With no food or water, his journey is one of sheer survival and a spirited bid for freedom. Skolimowski follows the grim, often surprising and occasionally hallucinatory adventures of a man who refuses to die or give up. It could well be a parable of what NATO is confronting in the grim struggle for Afghanistan.

Skolimowski’s visual imagination is stretched to the fullest, with the sheer magnificence of the landscape providing a beautiful, silent backdrop to the character’s heroic battle to stay alive. In a harrowing performance that must have been immensely physically demanding role, Gallo conveys reservoirs of courage and determination without uttering a single word. [Synopsis courtesy of Piers Handling/Toronto International Film Festival]

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Reviews

Toronto Review | Afghan on the Lam: "Essential Killing"

So little happens in Jerzy Skolimowski's "Essential Killing" that it barely exists as a movie. Instead, the story of an escaped Taliban fighter (Vincent Gallo) wandering through the forests of Europe meanders along as a succession of scenes. At times engrossing and not without palpable suspense, it ...
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F.X. Feeney | October 15, 2011 7:29 AMReply

ESSENTIAL KILLING A lone Afghani man, fearing that he is about to be killed by a small detachment of American soldiers, panics and defends himself with a rocket-launcher that he plucks from the burnt hands of a dead insurgent. Boom: The next thing he knows, this unlucky bastard is bagged under a pointy hood, tortured with a water-board, and shipped on a fast-track for some unmarked kennel in hell akin to the jails at Guantanamo. Double Boom: A sudden reversal of this misfortune allows him to break free of his captors and flee into the snowy wilderness of eastern Europe. What ensues is a fierce adventure, by turns tragic, allegorical and even (when it can catch its breath) madly funny. Director and co-writer Jerzy Skolimowski is best known in this country for Deep End (1970) and Moonlighting (1982), as well as for having been the principal writer on Roman Polanski’s debut film, Knife in the Water (1961). Prior to becoming a filmmaker, he was a successful boxer as well as a poet. All of his work is marked by a toughness, a hard-eyed but elusive stance true to both professions. Here, with cowriter Ewa Piaskowska, he fashions a masterfully non-verbal film. We overhear snatches of American radio chatter and eavesdrop on bits of dialogue between Polish wood-cutters, but these bits are nearly inaudible. Words here merely pepper the atmosphere; they do not provide hard information. Vincent Gallo creates this man purely by the mute agony and rage in his eyes, and body. Indeed, he is so physically right in this role that you may not recognize him, right away, and even if you do, it never distracts. The same is true of Emmanuelle Seigner, who appears in a vital cameo role. Her vulnerable face speaks volumes in an eyeblink of what her character has suffered, long before this fugitive ever crossed her path. For all the thrilling, purely cinematic simplicity of its story – that of a man alone, who could be any man, merely trying to escape alive from an impossible situation – Essential Killing balances a multitude of haunting complexities across its span, like a family of bicyclists atop a tightrope. We’re given a protagonist who is strictly speaking, The Enemy – especially if one is from the United States or one of its allies, such as Poland – yet he wins our sympathy in a most basic way, because his every action in the story (including several murders) are done purely to survive. This is the essence referred to in the title. He is not excused for this. From the beginning, he is landlocked within a geography of cruel fate. Yet Skolimowski invites us to consider his dignity – to breathe it, become one with it. He is always original, always passionate, but I believe this to be the best picture of his career. – F.X. FEENEY Essential Killing will screen as part of the 2011 Polish Film Festival at the Sunset 5 in Hollywood, Wednesday October 19th. F.X. FEENEY is an American film critic, based in Los Angeles. His work is often published in L.A. Weekly, the Village Voice, Variety and Written By, the magazine of the Writer’s Guild.