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Everything A24 touches turns to gold, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is no exception. The title itself is a mouthful, and the movie viewing demands similar patience and attention to detail. The directive duo known as Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, respectively) responsible for Swiss Army Man are made mightier by their partnership with the respected production house. In their latest film, the directors’ enormous ambition begets immense achievement.
Everything Everywhere doesn't transcend genre, but blends it, striking an improbable balance between action, science-fiction, humor, and whimsy without muddling any one of them. Daniels reimagines and reinvents typical film tropes, demonstrating an understanding of movie-making that is as encyclopedic as it is eccentric (Scott). Imagine the mother-daughter relationship of Freaky Friday with the what-ifs of It’s a Wonderful Life and the action and absurdity of Scott Pilgrim v. the World. This familiarity aids viewer acclimation to Everything Everywhere’s otherwise unruly cinematic universe. Or rather, universes.
The film imagines a scenario in which humans have discovered how to access other worlds — places in which the characters have followed different paths and lived out their what-ifs. At the center of the swirling storyline is Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese immigrant bogged down by a number of obligations — to her nagging husband, her faltering business, her teenage daughter, her ailing father, and most immediately, her unfinished taxes. In other realities in which, Evelyn stays in China, doesn’t marry Waymond, and becomes incredibly wealthy and famous. When she gets a glimpse of these possibilities, she becomes rueful and resentful of her painfully average life in America. Yet it is exactly Evelyn’s normalcy that makes her such a compelling protagonist and, Waymond says, ideal candidate to defend the multiverse.
Evelyn’s husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), has selected her to defend the multiverse against the tyrannical Jobu Tupaki. Over the course of an elevator ride to the tax auditor’s office, Waymond transforms into Alpha-Waymond, the most advanced version of himself, and recruits his wife for the mission with a list of inane instructions. By the time the doors reopen, he has returned to his usual, timid self and has no memory of speaking to her as his alter ego.
Jobu Tupaki moves through universes effortlessly — and stylishly, sporting an elaborate new outfit in practically every scene. She makes for an amusing, endearing antagonist, especially when her real-life identity is revealed to audiences, but I won’t spoil that here. In Everything Everywhere, there are no villain origin stories or radioactive spider bites. The abilities of the characters are not attributable to a single life-altering event, but a series of infinitesimal choices that have spawned new worlds. The film drives home the randomness of decision-making and the flimsiness of time. As viewers learn alongside Evelyn, characters may move between realities or tap into abilities they acquired in another lifetime. Doing so requires an act as preposterous and undesirable as you can imagine — eating an entire tube of chapstick, for instance.
The whirlwind plot is grounded in a simple theme: love. Audiences know intuitively that Evelyn has love for her husband, daughter, and father, but their on-screen interactions throughout much of the film are characterized by bristling frustration or outright indifference. It is evident that Evelyn’s marriage has grown brittle, and at the onset of the film, Waymond proposes the possibility of divorce. Their daughter, Joy, bristles with angst, and the mother-daughter relationship is fraught by Evelyn’s frustration with Joy’s behavior, tattoo, clothing, and girlfriend. Finally, the family’s aging grandfather — who discouraged Evelyn from ever marrying Waymond and immigrating — has recently relocated to America in order to be taken care of in his diminishing physical condition. Each relationship brims with authenticity, and I found myself rooting not for Alpha-Evelyn to single handedly save the universe, but for everyday Evelyn to mend the relationships with people closest to her.
Given the grand scale of the film, each actor is tasked with portraying several versions of their character — doing everything, being everywhere, all at once. Their ability to do so is impressive, and makes it challenging to accolade a single actor. The entire cast works together in a way that is complementary. This cohesion is especially remarkable given that filming began over two years, in January 2020, and was suspended temporarily due to the pandemic. Even when production resumed, actors, directors, and editors contributed from different locations.
As the story progresses, Everything Everywhere’s initial oddness begins to make sense. Amid serious and sentimental moments, Everything Everywhere is most often exceptionally silly — it’s so silly, in fact, that the abyssal black hole is an everything bagel with literally everything in creation on it. Yet the film is not lacking in depth. The Daniels imagine the possibility, and subsequently create a reality, in which seriousness and silliness are not antonymic, but complementary and, at times, codependent. At the risk of sounding incredibly corny, this idea is also true of life itself. The Daniels know how painfully cliche their message is, but it’s embedded in a story that’s so spectacular no one would dare scoff at it.
Over the course of Everything Everywhere All at Once, characters spend much time on-screen trying desperately to escape — Waymond from his marriage, Joy from her mother’s expectations, and Evelyn from the guilt of abandoning her father. Yet when the film concludes, Evelyn embraces the life in which she already lives — taxes and all. Everything Everywhere manages to underscore the smallness of humanity and the vastness of the universe without falling into a pit of pessimism. As Evelyn repeats in the film’s concluding scene, most of our lives are stagnant and unremarkable; it is those handful of thrilling, satisfying moments that make the whole thing worthwhile. For me, watching Everything Everywhere was a moment like that — it made being alive feel glorious. Everything Everywhere All at Once is poised to become a cult classic, or at the very least, a personal forever-favorite.