If your third eye is a googly eye, so be it. Image: A24
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a film that you have to hit right where it is. It’s not a subtle film, and it demands that upon seeing it, you expose all your disbelief at the door. As the director duo Daniels (Swiss Army Man) propels us through a wild variety of universes, audiences gasp as we are snapped back and forth to the family drama at the emotional heart of the film.
Michelle Yeoh is an undeniable star in this film, and we meet her character, Chinese immigrant Evelyn Wang, who tries to navigate the American tax system to keep her business afloat and prevent her family from breaking up. In a moment of crisis, Evelyn becomes aware of the existence of the Multiverse – and specifically the Alpha-Verse, working together to stop the rise of Jobu Tupaki, a powerful chaotic many-many-verse master whose motives are: of course, inexplicable .
When the alpha-verse version of her husband Waymond Wang (played by an incredibly insightful and wonderful Ke Huy Quan) tries to explain the multiversal order to Evelyn, she slaps his hands away and tells him she doesn’t have time for any of that. When Jobu Tupaki is revealed to be the alpha version of Evelyn’s daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu, in an absolutely stunning performance), Evelyn realizes that she cannot ignore the alpha universe. She may not understand it, but she knows that Joy is her daughter and that’s enough to make her accept everything else without explanation.
Even though Yeoh is the big name of this movie, Quan and Hsu are not overshadowed in any scene. The film marks a stellar return to Hollywood for Quan, known for his roles as a child in classic ’80s films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Short Round) and The Goonies (Data) and when he isn’t In the next five years, I’ll be rampaging in a dozen action movies. Also present is the legendary James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China) as Gong Gong, the patriarch of the Wang family.
After realizing that her daughter’s alpha version is an interdimensional evil, Evelyn imagines that it is Jobu Tupaki who controls her universe’s Joy Wang. As she becomes convinced that Joy is more or less obsessed with this other version of her daughter, the film turns inward (and outward and everywhere else) as a slow-moving archeology of Evelyn and Joy’s relationship. Evelyn, an immigrant to the United States who has a daughter in America, wants her daughter’s life to be more than she imagines. As she places her own hopes and dreams on Joy’s future, she imagines a life that is entirely fictional and created by Evelyn herself. When Joy comes home with a tattoo and a girlfriend and an emotional wreck, Evelyn just can’t understand why everything went wrong. This clearly means that an interdimensional, multiversal being with extraordinary power and unknown motivations possessed her daughter. For Evelyn, this is an easier explanation than accepting that her daughter is her own person who owes Evelyn no explanation for who she is now. As Evelyn taps into the abilities of all of her branched lives in the multiverse, her self-esteem threatens to crumble. She delves deeper into the postponed possibilities of her life, laments the choices she could have made, and finds that her current self leaves much to be desired. Eventually, she decides that she doesn’t care about her self-esteem. Your daughter is more important.
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When you watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, you can feel the frenetic energy of inspiration. The cuts are quick, the references are lightning fast and you’ll miss them, the costumes are eye-catching. And the action scenes? Perfection. They combine mind-blowing 70’s Hong Kong kung fu comedy with sex toys and it’s like nothing I’ve seen before. It doesn’t hurt that martial arts absolutely whips across the board, keeping you on the edge of your seat every time someone tries to start shit with Evelyn. (I would kindly draw your attention to this fight scene from The Magnificent Butcher, which will give you a good idea of how absurdly wonderful these fight sequences are.)
And beneath this throbbing frenzy of sci-fi concepts and nods to Chinese cinema, lies the story of a family struggling to stay together, an emotional arc that beats right out of your chest. As Evelyn escapes and pursues her daughter across the multiverse, Joy keeps showing Evelyn who she is and who she isn’t. It’s a tour de force of nuance around the immigrant experience, the struggles of first-generation American children, and the struggles of queer kids coming out to their parents and desperate for them to understand who they are. Love is really what ties this whole movie together. With wild aspect ratio changes, costume changes and fight scenes, love is always the most important thing.
Everything Everywhere All at Once takes place in many different universes, some of which only last a few minutes on screen. The three main universes, however, are the timeline in which Evelyn is first introduced, where she and her husband own a ailing American laundromat that is at risk of foreclosure by Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis), an IRS inspector. In another, Evelyn is a Chinese movie star supported by her doting husband with no daughter in sight. The third universe is one where Jobu Tupaki rules as a sort of cult leader, the entire set an all-white temple dedicated to the everything bagel – an everything bagel with literally everything on it. Earth. The idea of fear itself. Every dream that ever dreamed. Sesame seeds. Salt. All.
In each of these universes we see a different kind of love that surrounds Evelyn like a hurricane and threatens to tear her apart. There’s a moment in the universe when Evelyn is a movie star (when she and Waymond never emigrated to America and never have Joy) when Quan employs some of the most devastating linework in the entire film. For most of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Waymond is portrayed as a mild-mannered weakling, someone who has a hard time communicating with his much more passionate wife. But there’s a scene where Waymond explains that he’s strong because he’s kind because he’s gentle compared to Evelyn’s ambition and hard edges. He would have been happy, he says, to have stood out in an expensive suit, looked extremely handsome and dignified, and done laundry in America while it was with Evelyn.
The romance of this scene built the entire film. It’s subtle, but the climax here is great. Here are two lovers struggling to connect in an alleyway behind a movie theater after a big hit while it’s raining, a lit cigarette held nonchalantly by Quan, the vibe here is frankly second to none. This universe is particularly reminiscent of the Wong Kar-wai films (which Quan was working on during his retirement from acting) and soapy C-dramas. When this idealized Waymond confesses his love, admiration, and even regret to Evelyn, who spent most of the film physically battling both the Alpha Verse and Jobu Tupaki, she finally understands that Waymond is not weak, he is kind, and the difference between the two is so often seen as razor-thin that Evelyn herself has tipped over the edge, imagining her husband to be shorter than he is. After this breathtaking scene, Evelyn is finally able to accept that it is not her ability to tap into the abilities of her other, branching lives that makes her powerful, but her ability to love, even when that love is beyond her comprehension.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a metaphor about how we break ourselves to be lovable. The way we only show parts of ourselves to our families, our friends, our partners. As Evelyn accepts that Joy is everyone’s part of her all the time, she finally realizes that she is too. Evelyn not only accepts Joy, but allows her to be her own person, without explanations, without understanding, but with kindness and love. This movie is also a stormy sci-fi movie, and this family drama stands firmly in the eye of the storm. As the multiverse cyclone delivers gong around Evelyn, Joy, Waymond and even Gong, the film delivers emotional dialogue like debris flying by, surprising you with the absurdity and simplicity found in moments of reflection. As it all falls apart, hold onto the excellence across the board to the Wang family and hope that somehow Evelyn can bring them all back together.
Ultimately, Everything Everywhere All at Once doesn’t ask you to understand it. Not really. So many questions remain unanswered, so many specifics ignored in favor of the broad dynamics of the plot. All you really need to know is that Evelyn loves her family and will do whatever it takes to keep that love alive at all times.
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