Everything Will Be Ok

This film was included in THE ANIMATION SHOW VOLUME THREE--a compilation of short films arranged by Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge. Overall, this is a very impressive DVD--and much of it is due to CITY PARADISE.

Even for Don Hertzfeldt, this is a super-strange short film!! While it is not funny like the films you find on Volume One, it is so incredibly creative and bizarre that it's also quite compelling.

EVERYTHING IS O.K. is a surreal stream of consciousness which features the usual Hertzfeldt stick men drawings. However, instead of violence (which we love) in this film, it's more about a guy who's going crazy. He's either got schizophrenia or a brain tumor (more likely) and you see through the course of this film as he looses his mind. What I particularly liked was his use of multiple screens to show how this sick man perceives the world. Some may find it all quite funny--I just found it strangely compelling.

The banal life of a young man is represented by stick figures and described by a monotonous narrator. We hear about his moments of awkward social behavior, the silly ideas that occur to him, his goofy thoughts about death and dying; the stick figures and the narration make the banality funny. The audience laughs.

Then the one-joke premise overstays its welcome. We're waiting for this thing to end, barely aware that the writer and director Don Herzfeldt, through his narrator, is sneaking in some disturbing items on the list of banalities. It hits most of us that something is seriously wrong when the young man notices a trickle of urine sliding down his pants leg. Is he sick? It turns out he is, both mentally and physically; and it seems he may die. We see, and hear about, the reactions of his mother and uncle. They buy a casket for him. He loses control of his mind.

I found this animated short about illness and madness very moving. I know how I feel about it, but what did I think of it? Did Herzfeldt intend to make a short that initially appears to us as a one-gag cartoon? Whether he intended it or not, was this a mistake? Did it add to or subtract from our reaction to the second half? Did Herzfeldt intend to amuse us, then bore us, then frighten us, then sadden us? Is telling a serious story with stick figures a kind of joke? Or were the stick figures the most effective way of telling the story? Or both?

In asking these questions, I think I've come up with my own answers. I think Herzfeldt intended the effects he got, and I think they were good ideas. This film is highly recommended.

Hertzfeldt continues to completely out-do himself in a style that is all his own. Complex animation which looks incredibly simple. Dense sound layering over a beautiful narrated story. "Everything Will Be OK" continues themes that are touched upon in "The Meaning of Life" but expands upon them, going deeper into very real human emotions that are created through simple but complex character and action. A cartoon version if you will of Miles van der Rohe, in that 'god is (most certainly) in the details'. It could easily be his magnum opus but something tells me a year from now he will once again have left audience's around the world in soul shattering awe. Simplistic and existential.

When I first watched this, the rest of the trilogy had not been completed yet, so I viewed this short film just by itself. At first it seems to show the inner life of a rather strange stick-man with whom some of us can relate. Then it goes completely off the rails and shows that he has a serious brain disease that is making his reality completely fall apart. This becomes terrifying and very affecting. I did not know that it would lead to another two great installments but even by itself, this is a truly terrific piece of animation.

Hertzfeldt delivers a singularly disquieting and unflichingly powerful portrait of mental illness told in a bleak, surreal urban setting. This marks the first chapter of a trilogy, preceding I Am So Proud Of You (2008) and It's Such A Beautiful Day (2011).

We see introduced to our protagonist Bill, an ordinary man in the form of a stick figure leading an ostensibly mundane life with anecdotes told through constantly nonchalant narration, as increasingly disturbing hallucinations and dreams manifests and leads him down the spiral of madness.

This symphony of visual and auditory cacophony, Hertzfeldt's unique stylistic visuals paired with unsettling sound design, captures Bill's intense internal turmoil terrifyingly well. As they reach their boilling point, the nightmarish and incoherent assault both the eyes and ears.

As we think all hope is lost, the film pulls back and returns to its primary mood. Its resolution serves as a sort of reprieve while the soothing (albeit, intentionally, ever slightly discordant) music washes over you.

As the title of my review says, a remarkable, eye-opening trip to say the least. Masterfully executed start to a trilogy, the rest of which I'll be happy to experience if only I can find a copy of it somewhere.

Although this can be watched on YouTube for free, please give Don Hertzfeldt the money he deserves by buying the Blu-ray of his short films!