Essential Killing is one for hard-core cinema fans, but if you accept its crazy, self-imposed limitations, it becomes a gripping study of how far a man will go to survive in the wilderness.
Skolimowski’s minimalist film stars the weird and wonderful Vincent Gallo in a performance that is mute, apart from a few grunts. Gallo is a Taleban fighter who is tortured by the Americans and whisked off to Poland under extraordinary rendition. He escapes into the brutal, beautiful snowy forests, equipped with nothing but guile. The military hunt him with dogs, and he is forced to extreme measures to survive.
Scenes featuring hallucinations, chainsaws and breastfeeding are on the queasy side — indeed, some cinemagoers ran out during my screening — but there is a psychotic poetry to the whole affair.
Jerzy Skolimowski, 18 (87min)