Everything Will Be Ok

There are no two ways about it, Rithy Panh’s Everything Will Be Ok is a visceral assault on the senses. Experimental in form and ruthless in content, the experience of watching it on the big screen allows one some insight into how Malcolm McDowell’s character Alex must have felt in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange when forced to watch scenes of graphic violence set to classical music as a means of psychological conditioning, if not torture.

There are recurring threads that run through the film. Clay figures of people and animals populate model village scenes, although it’s not through stop-motion animation that these figures tell their story, only through shifting placings as they are periodically revisited. Giving “voice” to these characters are guttural pig noises that Panh reportedly recorded from real animals while they were “shouting” to one another, when hungry or having sex, and, well, sound as off-putting as one might expect. But the bulk of the film is a tapestry of archival footage, sometimes filling the entire screen, sometimes cut up into six squares showing alternating scenes. In utter contrast are the dulcet tones of a female narrator, whose poetic incantations contain many a philosophical nugget but only incidentally connect with the imagery on display.

And then to what this footage consists of: animals being tortured and slaughtered in horrific ways, chicks being liquified through grinders to feed to other animals, people filming themselves eating live octopus. There’s also footage of dictators: Stalin, Hitler, Hitler’s adoring listeners, genocide, nuclear explosions and their aftermath. The animal figures watch these scenes and eventually rise up to overpower the human race and conversely inflict those same dictatorial regimes on their former oppressors.

But what does it all mean? By resisting narrative conventions, the film seemingly offers few straightforward answers. More, through its kaleidoscope of horrors, this is an unavoidable, urgent shock to the core in the cinema form. It forces the viewer to look and contemplate the impact of humankind’s greed for power and its ruthless ability to wield it, not only over their fellow man but over animals and nature. If there is a central message, it’s something along the lines of: everything will definitely not be ok. Not if we continue to live as we do now. History will inevitably repeat itself. Our democracy, our precious earth, our humanity are all at risk. His dystopian creation is in fact a mirror held up to our world, and the reflection is little short of terrifying.

As a satisfying, pleasurable cinema watch, Everything Will Be Ok won’t be high up on anyone’s list. As a beyond-the-pale jolt to spur viewers into action and prevent impending self-destruction, it’s about as subtle and effective as a sledgehammer.

Sarah Bradbury

Everything Will Be Ok does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2022 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.

Watch a clip from Everything Will Be Ok here: