Playtime
Two years after premiering his documentary ‘Irradiated’, Rithy Panh is back in Berlin to present another work that reflects on human atrocities and is bound to be just as divisive.
Directed by: Rithy Panh
Year: 2022
Country: France, Cambodia
Length: 98 minutes
Cambodian director Rithy Panh blends all of his styles we’re familiar with together in a chaotic dystopian docudrama that holds up a mirror to the viewer, confronting them with all of humanity’s wrongdoings in the last century. The director mixes his clay figures, as seen in Khmer Rouge documentary ‘The Missing Picture’ with the unique split-screen style montages of cruelty as seen in ‘Irradiated’.
Everything Will Be Ok is set in a reality where animals have taken control and enslaved humans, after all cruelty that has been done to them. They remove all forms of art, architecture and crafts made by humans, in order to rid themselves of the past. Meanwhile, new leaders arise, new statues get built and it seems that the animals are falling into the same kind of patterns as humans when they were in power. Most of the time the animals find themselves studying the history of mankind on a mosaic of tv screens. Panh deliberately makes it ambiguous as to whether they’re looking at this footage to learn from the mistakes of the humans or whether they’re using it to rise to power by observing humans’ tactics.
This sci-fi dystopia, incorporating elements from Panh’s previous film that weren’t loved by all, will naturally divide audiences. The constant split-screens filled with violence may be off-putting to people. However, what Panh does here with those montages is one of the most impressive things he’s done in his career. The way Panh himself edits the different screens, creating patterns, contrasts and combining complimentary images in a constant rhythm is mesmerizingly hypnotizing and pulls the viewer into some sort of trance if they’re invested enough in what they’re seeing. Looking at the material, it won’t necessarily be a rewarding experience and isn’t mean to make one feel good, but the experience is unlike any you’d ever have experienced before.
It’s a film with quite a misanthropic view of the world, which isn’t too surprising, coming from a director who lost many during the Cambodian genocide. So much hurt is shown on the different screens. Hurt against humans, animals and to all nature around us. It seems that none of humans’ wrongdoings are left unmentioned. Discrimination, fascism, genocide, the current COVID-19 pandemic and even the act of eating live animals during so-called Mukbangs are uncomfortably present in Everything Will Be Ok. However, in the end Panh does offer a small glimmer of hope; a sign of kindness and harmony. Panh seems to argue that a world without all modernity would benefit the way we treat each other and that the primitivity of the past may not be so primitive after all.
Everything Will Be Ok premiered at the 2022 Berlinale film festival as part of the official competition, where it competes for the Golden Bear.
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