It is the most surprising, the most daring, perhaps unfortunately also the most visionary film of the Berlinale. Everything will be okayby Franco-Cambodian director Rithy Pan, is also in the running for the Golden Bear, which will be awarded this Wednesday evening, February 16, at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany.
With Everything will be okay, Rithy Panh tells us brilliantly and with mind-blowingly simple means the ultimate end of the history of humanity. Like the actors – replaced by clay figurines – all hope is dismissed. Man will be mistreated according to his own long-established logic against animals and nature. The long-announced break is here. Man is no longer the center of the world. A cynical boar – in other words very “human” – seated on a throne has taken over the scepter to rule the world, like the former dictators parading in archive footage on the big screen: Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong , Pol Pot…
The atrocity of images
Because it is the animals, formerly condemned to the role of innocent people massacred by men, who have taken power and set up their totalitarian universe. So, in turn, human beings will be enslaved, caged, eliminated… Everything that has been experimented with animals will be applied to men as always: total surveillance, selection of the strongest, concentration camps, machines to to torture, to crush, to conquer the world and well beyond… The unbearable realities compete with the atrocity of the images.
From the beginning, everything is done to shake us up, to confuse us. Here we are immersed in a universe where everything that is related to humans, to humanity, is discarded, eliminated. The protagonists are small figurines. An uncompromising choice, the soul of the figurines will be infused with clay, no special effect or cartoon offers us the chance to escape the terrible story. For Rithy Panh, the world is a fable. And it is he who tells us (with the wonderful voice of Rebecca Marder) this story of our people called humanity with sculptures and mini-installations worthy of a cabinet of curiosities populated by myths…
Living the end of human history
Rithy Panh has prepared a sensational dystopia for us to experience the end of human history. “Sensational”, because his film forces us to face the excesses of human beings. The ingenious editing of archival images documents the sinking of our civilizations and does not specifically address our heads, because it directly attacks our emotions and our senses. ” What is incredible with cinema, we really touch this part of childhood that is in each of us, explains Rithy Panh. This clean, pure part, this part which is not yet polluted. It awakens old senses. We even feel the apprehension of the world. Cinema can do that. He can show you a flame and you daydream with it. It’s interesting to experiment how we can get people to experience these sensations. »
Everything will be okay is also an intelligent study in the soul and power of image and cinema. The clay figurines remain static, it’s only the movement of the camera that gives life, bringing the breath, the action, the spontaneous gesture, the unexpected emotion. The images multiply in time and space, even the big screen will be divided into six smaller screens, but capable of blasting our reasoning. Thus is born the totalitarian universe that will consume us.
From “the missing image to TikTok »
” We humans have mistreated nature, animals. When you watch my film, you see the progression of this mistreatment inflicted on the weakest. Today it happened on TikTok. Last year there was a Food Contest, a food contest. People wearing makeup start eating live octopus, raw meat, dripping blood… They film themselves and then they post it to get more likes. It is the supreme obscenity of this world of consumption, of this multimedia world where we function only according to the immediacy to tweet or post stuff. We never take the time or the distance to really think. »
Already in The missing picture (2013), Rithy Panh, the Cambodian orphan who took refuge in France and in the cinema, brought figurines into the ground to resurrect the souls of his family members. And in his previous film, The nameless tombs (2019), Rithy Panh traveled to the land of his ancestors to reconnect with the wandering souls of the dead of the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.
Hope, that vanished star
Today with Everything will be okay, he places the massacre suffered by his people in Cambodia in a global historical context. Thus, he dissects the inherent logic and projects us unceremoniously into this terrible world that human beings have built for themselves. By the way, the situation of the viewer has changed too. The hope of a better world is no longer possible, because the images persist and signify: the end of the world has arrived, even if our often voluntary blindness prevents us from seeing it. Our last glimmer of hope turns out to be a star long gone, whose light can still be seen on the horizon.
“Men today, have they already lost their place? asks the Franco-Cambodian director. Not yet, but do they deserve this place? In the meantime, the battle for images continues. Rithy Panh rotates, diverts and turns the images: “ I often even use propaganda images to make counter-propaganda. Yes, it’s a fight of images. Image against image. It’s a fight of thought versus thoughtlessness. It is one ideology against another. It is poetry against ideology. It is art against obscurantism. It’s cinema with its lights against brutality, obscenity… »
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