Here is a kaleidoscopic ride through the multiplicity of an individual’s possibilities that will amuse and astound you with what a life can be. Try to find a more imaginative film out there today or in recent memory. You won’t.
Everything Everywhere All at Once depicts a Chinese immigrant, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), empowered to travel multiverses to confront the many selves she could have been in order to save the world and more importantly her family. Like Lars Van Trier’s Melancholia, this fantasy is an answer for what to do about clinical depression: Face your many demons and vanquish them with the sheer power of love.
Everything is more impressionistic than narrative, offering exotic takes on our culture like satirizing the animation Ratatouille by placing a raccoon on the head of a chef and calling it Raccacoonie (Jason Hamer) or having Jamie Lee Curtis play Dierdre Beaubeirdra, an out-of-control IRS agent storming the Wang family’s struggling laundry. Directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, labeled as “Daniels,” have taken their Swiss Army Man to a manic level even that quirky film couldn’t imagine.
In comments on the world as we perceive it, Everything references the popular theme of rediscovering family, so prevalent in super hero movies and elsewhere. Yeoh as Evelyn is a perfect heroine because her current self, which she considers a failure, becomes an active psychic traveler cum martial arts dynamo experiencing the lives she could have led. The branching choices she can make at any moment propel her into different outcomes. It’s what we oft have thought about the many possibilities we have within our grasp every moment of our lives.
Easy to see the themes bounce out, like becoming all you can be and loving family, such as her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), whom she strives to save from the negative forces of the world. Similarly, she struggles with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), to serve him divorce papers while every step of the multiverse he travels proves to be dangerous and loving.
In the chaos each day brings, destruction around each corner, madness omnipresent, the film manages to lard its scene with kindness sneaking through each frame. Gone is the tyranny of the pandemic; here is the chance for salvation through charity that accepts our weaknesses for the sake of love.
Here is The Matrix reimagined for those still reeling from the perceived mania of the Trump era. Buttplugs and an alpha version of Evelyn’s boring husband are two of the many running gags that challenge us to think of our personal multiverses as not just daily apocalypses but containing everything to help us through to the best universe of all—a loving one.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is everything cinema should be: stunning, challenging, witty, amusing, and true to life in its infinite forms.
In theaters, thank goodness, because of the brilliant images and mind-capturing sound.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Directors: Dan Kwan (Swiss Army Man), Daniel Scheinert (Death of Dick Long)
Screenplay: Kwan, Scheinert
Cast: Michelle Yeoh (Gunpowder Milkshake), Stephanie Hsu (Shang-Chi and the legend of the Ten Rings)
Run Time: 2h 29m
Rating: R
