Essential Killing – review

With Essential Killing, Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski has created a raw, pulsating pursuit-thriller driven by an astonishing performance from the artistic enigma Vincent Gallo, who delivers desperate emotion without a single word of dialogue.

The basic premise is that an apparent rebel [Gallo] is captured in the desert, water-tortured and flown to a stark, freezing environment in Eastern Europe. He is imprisoned for killing three American soldiers in the curious opening scenes, but during his ground level transportation, one of the convoy trucks careers off a rough road and crashes and he escapes his captors.

This leaves the bewildered prisoner a difficult task of battling the extreme conditions of the vast, frozen forest landscape in order to avoid recapture – especially as he has had his eardrums perforated by a rocket blast, which led to his original capture.

What follows is a dramatic battle of man against the elements, extreme survival techniques, more “essential” killing and a touching encounter with a kind, pretty and seemingly deaf lady, played by Emmanuelle Seigner (wife of notorious Polish director Roman Polanski), who is willing to take him in and tend to him and his injuries, despite the obvious threat he poses and the communicational issues between them.

The film is an initial adrenaline rush, which eventually becomes an existential and aesthetic experience that is supported by a gripping, dramatic soundtrack that matches the suspense and despair perfectly. The viewer is dragged along in the chase and the protagonist’s fight for survival through various horrors and animalistic practises that genuinely shock and induce empathetic anxiety.

As well as Gallo, director Skolimowski is also an enigmatic individual. Essential Killing is only the second film he has directed since the early nineties – his film-making hiatus filled by his painting – but this is an acclaimed symbolic and artistic picture that has a realism comparable to Gus Van Sant and Lars Von Trier and yielded a three-award haul at the 2010 Venice Film Festival.

Although left wanting to know more about the main character’s back story than a few very brief flashback images, it is still an engaging watch. Skolimowski’s purpose clearly resides in the portrayal of man’s resilience and the link between the body’s physical tolerance, cerebral concepts of fear and pride and the animalistic survival instincts – as well as the religious symbolic undertones.

Essential Killing (12A)
Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski
Starring: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner, Stig Frode Henriksen, Nicolai Cleve Broch, David L. Price, Zach Cohen.
Running time: 84 minutes

Essential Killing is showing at the Rio Cinema until 14 April.