Directors Daniels
Review Ray Chan
The concept of a multiverse – a hypothetical dimension consisting of a number of universes, of which our own is only one – has been expanded on in many movies of late, most notably in various Marvel cinematic offerings.
But for each super-hero variation, there is a similar doppleganger for the everyday person. That’s where Everything Everywhere All at Once takes us to: a realm where everyone exists in a myriad of realities, each with their own experiences.
It’s the story of a married couple, the strong, peremptory Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and milksoppish Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan), who were born and raised in China and came to the US as adults. Their laundromat is losing money even as they grow distant from each other, while putting on appearances before Evelyn’s father, who’s visiting from the homeland. Their daughter Joy is a college graduate whose homosexuality is hidden from her grandfather by Evelyn, which fractures the mother-daughter relationship.
The Wangs find themselves in tax trouble with the IRS, as aggressive auditor Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) threatens to seize their business and personal assets, giving them one final chance to reorganise and re-submit their claims.
But then, unexpectedly, Waymond transforms into someone like himself but who’s not exactly himself, and we soon realise it’s one of the husband’s other iterations from the multiverse.
In intricate exposition, he explains his presence to Evelyn, and says she’s the most important version in the cosmos, and needs her help as she is the only one who can curb the butterfly effect that is causing all the other ones he’s known to have met violent deaths. She can do this by tapping into all the infinite Evelyns out there, using their talents and doing battle with a mysterious, cross-dimensional warlord.
Armed with a set of instructions that will enable her to enter the parallel worlds, and share the alternate lives that she could have lived, Evelyn makes way to the portal: a janitor’s closet down the hall from Deirdre’s desk. The launch involves switching shoes to the wrong feet, special scans and earbuds, a murder in the closet, a punch in Deirdre’s nose, and a fight with security guards in which divergent Waymond uses his fanny pack as a lethal weapon.
Evelyn’s travels on her astral journey are a manic pastiche of her meeting her counterparts in a race against variant daughters with the help of variant husbands and grandfathers. Her adversaries generally take the form of Dierdre, plus her own daughter, whose body is claimed by an incarnation of Joy with vengeance on her mind.
Indeed, the most enjoyable parts of the movie involve the different routes that other Evelyns have taken. The funniest alternate domain is one in which Evelyn and Deirdre are lovers, with fingers as hot dogs squirting mustard and ketchup. Deirdre plays the piano with her toes, while being caressed on the face with Evelyn’s own tootsies.
There’s another reality in which no life existed and Evelyn and Joy are just rocks on a cliff; one in which they are piñatas dangling from a tree; one in which they are Disney characters; and another in which security guards get their kung-fu power from trophies stuck in their rear ends.
The journey round the multiverse includes one poignant and ironic road: Evelyn, instead of leaving China with Waymond, stays home and becomes a movie star in martial-arts films, reflecting real life where Yeoh is well-known for her martial arts movies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and recently, Shang Chi) as well as being a glamorous starlet. The scenes are interspersed with actual footage from Yeoh’s red carpet history.
The emotional resonance of the film is couched in the second-guessing Evelyn feels — mirror-image Waymond notes the reason she is the most special rendition is that she’s the first he’s met who’s failed at everything she ever started, making her a perfect sponge for absorbing the others’ abilities. Yeoh’s versatility shines in her portrayal of a woman who is tragic yet aspirational, silly while heartbroken, especially in the final scenes she shares with Joy.
The film is directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, who both grew up on Hong Kong cinema. And the influence of that heritage shines bright in the movie. The title itself is a very Westernised translation of a Chinese phrase, while typical Chinese movie tropes, clichés and visual gags abound, such as physically-challenging slow-motion pirouettes, action scenes with little sense or logic, pinky fingers with biceps (because they’re so powerful), and reviving unconscious people with the whiff of worn-out shoes.
However, it’s not just straight out slugfests and slapstick. Symbolically, there is a proliferation of spherical shapes: googly eyes, references to bagels, items on tax receipts circled in black marker. What do they mean? Because they have no beginning and no end, round structures have come to represent the eternal cycle of life, where in this case nobody is alone in the multiverse, which turns out to be a place where families can work on their issues. The circle, of course, is also zero in our system of numbering, and signifies the embryo for change, as in Evelyn’s life. Or maybe the Daniels simply meant them to indicate unity: when people want to come together and support one another, they form a circle. That way, everybody is visible to everybody else, meaning they can communicate openly and extend a sense of togetherness.
The kaleidoscopic madness lasts for two hours and 20 minutes, a length of time that will have viewers fidgeting in the seats if they can’t get into it. But if they persevere, they will be rewarded in the closing act, which proves to be a surprisingly touching salute to appreciating the life we have and the people who make it special.
The ambition behind the production can’t be denied, nor the fact it’s certainly one of the most wildly creative genre movies to hit cinemas in some years, so brimming with invention and ideas —where even vignettes that last less than a minute could be whole films — that it’s dazzling to behold.
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