*This piece is part of our Critics In Conversation series, where two writers offer different perspectives on the same film. Read Lucia Ruan’s review here, and Wesley Stenzel’s review here.*
Do you ever question your existence—like, really weigh the pros and cons of being alive? What about the struggles that ultimately brought you here? Were they worth it? If this thought-train alone is not enough to make you fantasize about the carefree life of a rock, Everything Everywhere All At Once most certainly will. And bonus points if you’re Asian, because it’ll probably make you cry, if not at least stir up some dormant emotional baggage (unless you were raised in a completely healthy household by 21st century western standards, in which case: congratulations! But I kind of don’t believe you).
That being said, Everything Everywhere All At Once lives up to the sprawling grandeur of its name. Directed by Daniels, a filmmaking duo composed and cleverly-titled by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, this cracked-out masterpiece of a film tackles generational gaps, existentialism, and being Asian—with a twist of multiverse mechanics and radical humor..
In a sci-fi layer where protagonist Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) discovers she can and must access inter-universal versions of herself, the multiverse is thematically integral to the plot. But the real achievement of said multiververse is that, in all its visual and conceptual splendor, it still manages to exist symbiotically with struggles grounded in the mundane, neither one displacing the other in importance. As hinted by its title, this movie strives for both breadth (the multiverse) and depth (a cultural experience rooted in reality).
Evelyn is a mother, wife, laundromat owner, Chinese American, and—as we come to find out together—everything else she can imagine. She speaks perfect Chinglish—Mandarin for the family she created and Cantonese for the one she was born into, her English filling in wherever it best fits. From the first mid-sentence code switch, Daniels makes clear their commitment to accurate representation. The special care with which they write this multicultural family—even in dialect alone—affords to each character the dimension they deserve and deepens their portraiture of the Asian American household to a sculpture-worthy rendering, textures and contours included. But language is just the beginning.
Like many immigrants who’ve uprooted their lives in pursuit of something better, Evelyn has sacrificed a lot for new life—both her and her family’s. In the midst of preparing for her father’s visit, organizing a Chinese New Year celebration, and defending her messy paper trail in a tax audit, Evelyn is tired. The roles she juggles wear her thin and harden her into a no-nonsense, constantly bombarded yet strictly dutiful awareness that she simply does not have the time or bandwidth to sit with. As Evelyn shuffles from task to task, we see how her web of tedious callings split her apart. In their auditory heft, each noodle stirred, receipt shuffled and washer door shut pines for your finite attention as it does hers.
Oh, and her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is sitting on divorce papers. Her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) also wants to introduce her gay partner to Evelyn’s straight-outta-mid-century-China father Gong Gong. Yet Evelyn shoulders the weight of these stressors with poise because it’s what she must do; if she falls apart, so does her family. The fate of the multiverse is also in her hands, as she learns, but it’s inextricably intertwined with her family, so they’re actually just the same problem, which makes it arguably less frustrating than her taxes.
In all seriousness, her family and the universe are equally important, which is part of why this movie works. It’s kind of along the same lines as that Gandhi quote, “if you want to change the world, start with yourself,” except this film’s version of that would be, if you want to stop your daughter from destroying the multiverse, start with your own generational trauma.
And that’s where the plot twists: Joy has an alter ego, an omnipresent, nihilistic native to the Alphaverse by the name of Jobu Tupaki. She’s presumably a first generation Chinese American daughter in this universe as well, which kind of tells us as much about her upbringing as the other descriptors. Jobu Tupaki, whose verse-jumping capabilities have been pushed beyond capacity by Alphaverse Evelyn, wants to confront this universe’s Evelyn and/or destroy everything in her path, because in her omniscience she sees everything and finds nothing.
Yet Hsu’s Joy wears her darkness like a queen—a sympathetic one at that. Hsu unveils in Joy the timid emotionality of a daughter who wants nothing more than her mother’s approval, which dangles before her like a carrot on a stick. But the Jobu Tupaki in her would more likely compare her plight to the curse of Sisyphus, adding a dimension of tormented, maniacal futility to her every move. I mean, if your mom shamefully hides your queer identity and calls you fat in an attempt to address your hurt feelings, you’d probably at least consider annihilating the universe too. While it may seem unrealistic at first glance, this exchange tore open the tear ducts beneath my almond eyes—once calloused by clumsy words much like Evelyn’s. Everyone with an immigrant parent knows not to take these onslaughts personally, but no one has quite figured out how to stop them from leaving bruises.
With deliberate nuance, however, Joy is not portrayed as a helpless victim. She’s a grown young woman (and an omnipresent agent of chaos, let’s not forget) who understands the cultural and generational gaps at play. But the poignancy in her and Evelyn’s dynamic is that no amount of knowledge or maturity can fully subdue the hurt of a parent’s misplaced disapproval. After all, Evelyn is a full-grown, independent woman herself, and she’s carried her father’s disappointment deep into her own motherhood.
But there’s much more to Evelyn than motherhood, daughterhood, wife-hood, and the trauma she shares with Joy. The middle-aged-mother-and-wife archetype is so often defined by its relationships with others, but in this film Evelyn is not. Sure, she plays an integral role in running the family and laundromat, which she once-upon-a-time risked everything for—but what about the many talents she never got to tap into and endeavors on which she never got to embark? That’s where multiverse theory meets existential philosophy, and where this movie unravels before it coalesces. Evelyn’s ability to jump between alternate lives across universes reminds us of our own limitless potential, and how every decision we make funnels us into a particular version of ourselves. It’s absolutely terrifying, when you think about it, and it lends itself to the nihilistic place where Jobu Tupaki finds herself sitting with a question to which she has no answer.
To Daniels’s credit, I’ve never seen a film illustrate the paradox of choice—all the regret and wonder it yields—as artfully and humorously as Everything Everywhere All At Once. On one hand, this paradox adds weight to each and every decision we make, because who knows—maybe you’ll end up a kung fu master if you leave your boyfriend at the right time and place. On the other hand, the limitless possibility of every moment is absurd to the point of comedy, because if someone came up with the idea of Ratatouille in this universe, there must necessarily exist a Raccaccoonie in another, where instead of a rat in Paris, it’s a racoon in a hibachi restaurant. It reminds me of the time my mom referred to Kanye West as Western Kenyan, and how that combination of words itself might have been our universe’s first glimpse into a very specifically different pop culture landscape.
Speaking of the limitless possibilities unlocked by multiverse theory, the use of unlikely algorithms to trigger verse-jumping is pure genius. As characters staple office supplies to their forehead and dive rectum-first onto sleek trophies, laughter is effortless. It’s the best way to get through all the absurd shit that life throws at you, after all. Along with this exquisite procedure, each and every fight scene played out like it was born from the imagination of an unhinged child and actualized by the mastery of a seasoned filmmaker. A Jackie Chan-esque Ke Huy Quan weaponizes his fanny pack in the first fight scene, and Jamie Lee Curtis brings with her hints of the same terrifying aura she showcased in the Halloween slasher series, this time with a dash of inhuman athleticism and durability. Not to mention, nearly every surface in this film is just brittle enough that any projectile body can and will fly through it, yet rigid enough that it never fails to splinter upon impact.
In the balance between cartoon-worthy action and brain-tickling hypotheticals hangs the wide reaching artistry of Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s both high and low brow, oscillating between to your most esoteric ponderings and primal vices, yielding as much giddy entertainment as it does brain-food. Stylistically, the movie exists somewhere between heartwarming Pixar and fleetingly picturesque Wong Kar-wai, deftly paying homage to both iconographies in its own maximalist fashion.
Then it draws you back to the undercurrent from which the chaos flows: In an existence where “everything we do gets washed away in a sea of possibility,” and every new discovery makes us feel smaller, what’s the point? At the end of the day, the gap between your limitless imagination and the person you eventually become only grows larger, until all you’re left with is an everything-bagel of a black hole from which nothing can seem to escape.
The only plausible answer here is love, of course, because it’s the one thing that doesn’t need to make sense for it to compel us oh so deeply. (Un)surprisingly it’s sleeper-agent Waymond who breaks this through to Evelyn. And thus we unlock another layer to Waymond, who prior to this point is more or less a squirrel. Once disguised as naivety, his wide eyes and big heart reignite hope in a jaded Evelyn, and again she finds meaning.
“Here all we get are these few specs of time when anything makes sense,” muses a Joy who’s found her own glimmer in the chaos.
Amidst everything, everywhere, all at once, the film pulls back and leaves us with something, somewhere, sometimes. For a movie that spends the majority of its runtime deliberately blowing and melting your mind, it’s a remarkably simple yet comforting way to end.