In his new film Everything will be Okay, Rithy Panh uses again painted and static clay figures like he did in his autobiographical masterpiece L´Image Manquante. On the other hand the film has like his previous one Irradiés often the form of a collage, sometimes even like an art installation. The work with clay figures is now integrated in a very complex and very detailed miniature landscape which also includes buildings. The soundtrack appears as complex as this detailed miniature design: Thunderstorms, diverse animal sounds, shots of machine guns and other firearms and electronic sounds. And there are also the spoken over voice- texts and the music. In this miniature world even computer and tiny monitors are installed. The image-making apparatus itself has a strange presence. In the social medias one can see some production photos published by the director himself which gives an idea about the tremendous amount of work which was already done before the first images were recorded. Beside that and like in his previous film there is a lot of archive footage and excerpts from other films. Panhs documentaries or his two early elegiac masterpieces Neak Sré (The Rice Field) or Un Soir après la Guerre and even L´Image Manquante in which he directly tells from the off his heartbreaking story in the Killing Fields are together rare cinematic reflections about the Cambodian genocide. His last two films are more abstract and multilayered and it is evident that he tried a total new artistic approach.
The narration is a kind of dystopian fantasy about a world were animals have overpowered mankind. And what began as a revolution leads to a grotesque travesty about the atrocities (especially from the Twentieth Century) of men against other species or against the own kind. He uses the very old form of storytelling, a fable as one element for his modern film essay.
Each review on this film can be only a provisional one and it does not matter if you like it or not if we take the challenge of this film or not. I wonder how quick some reviews on Everything will be Okay were done with this film and how reckless with their judgement and very unsophisticated phrases. What means the film is “overloaded?” For my side it means I have not understood everything and the film deserves a second viewing. Some critics complained that the over voice texts force certain thoughts on the audience, which is indeed total nonsense. The poetic texts might be Panhs thoughts and reflections or better -poetic formulated streams of thoughts. He uses spoken language in his last two films a bit like Marguerite Duras, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker – and yes as well a bit like Terrence Malick. How Panh uses over voice- texts are streams of thoughts but during watching the film, they meet our own streams of thoughts. If we don´t have any or if we are to lazy to generate some, than we are hopeless lost in films like Everything will be Okay and in much more other films as well.
What is visible of archive footage on the miniature monitors, (in some moments some film frames are split or even divided in several frames) is indeed hard to bear. But the challenge, this feeling of discomfort quite appropriate for this subject is something we have to go through or we have to abandon it. If one does not feel like to see the film or review it, I can live with this. But stupid phrases like “dull” or “narcissistic” like some critics called this film is pure cynicism.
The great sentence from André Bazin about film criticism: “It is not about serving the truth on a silver plate but to extend the shock, a work of art has left on us.” goes as well for this film and especially for films like this which just has its world premiere.
The film is not a provocation, it is the nightmarish continuation of Panh´s previous body of work. I do not believe that Rithy Panh evokes here any mood, feeling or thought he he has not felt himself.
Among the very few known examples of famous but heavily traumatized filmmaker through certain historic events whose body and soul were really endangered like Rithy Panh, the Indian Ritwik Ghatak or Chileans like Patricio Guzman or Marilu Mallet come to my mind. Almost their whole body of work is to deal with traumata as individuals who suffered under it but as well as witnesses of history against the forgetfulness. Beside their exposure to certain cruel historic processes, all of them are as well cultivated and intellectual artists who are as well always looking for new forms to express what their experiences and the echo it left in their soul in in their minds.
What I admirer in Rithy Panhs work is despite he uses the technological options of the image-making apparatus to its full extent but has always the courage for a certain vulnerability. Panhs esthetics in his two last film and especially in Everything will be Okay is not one to overpower the audience, it is first of all a very unique form of “Caméra Stylo”. Despite the gigantic artistic efforts, despite all the diversity of facets Panh has saved himself as well a certain delicateness, a sense of vulnerability which still shines through.
Rüdiger Tomczak
No comments:
Post a Comment