Everything Will Be OK

Bill is an ordinary man. He gets up in the morning, goes to work, waits for the bus, does his shopping and comes home in the evening. Then things start to change. He mixes up words, cannot recognise people he knows, cannot be sure of what he sees, and goes to hospital. A diagnosis is made. Bill does not understand it and those around him do not quite tell him what it is. The narrative carries the breakdown of his perception directly onto the screen. Don Hertzfeldt writes, directs and narrates. The short dates from 2006. The drawing is deliberately simple, at the level of stick figures; technically, though, it is complicated, because the screen works in divided frames and the effects were made in camera. Hertzfeldt works without a computer; images produced by multiple exposure and masking were shot on an old camera. The narration is read flat and without feeling; humour and tragedy sit in the same sentence. This short is the first of a trilogy; it was later joined with the other two parts into a single feature. The matter it treats is how illness looks from inside, and the narrative explains nothing. The ending is left uncertain and the later films continue it. Who it is for: viewers who like independent animation and unusual narrative forms. Who it is not for: the drawing is crude, the subject heavy, and the humour very cold.