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.

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.

Life appears to be a nightmare. Bill, the stick figure character, goes through life, doing on mundane thing after another, redundant action being his pall. We are given a tour of his psyche and it is horrible. I'm convinced, as I've said before, that David Lynch portrays his own nightmares. But that's what is happening here as well. I really enjoyed this, but because of my age, it became a bit much for me. Crushing.

I shared with one of my children, a digital art affectionado, hoping that she finds inspiration and meaning

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.