In Film Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once
“An Utter Mind-Fuck. In a Good Way”
minor spoilers ahead
San Francisco's premiere of Everything Everywhere All At Once took place on a chill evening this past Sunday and was nothing like you'd imagine your regular premier. There were no red carpets, no paparazzi, no people yelling, just folks minding their business, managing their excitement while queueing quite literally around the entire block of Castro Theater. The only downside of that evening was that from the moment I set my foot in that queue, it was just lines and lines for the next two hours; endless lines to get inside, get a drink, get to the bathroom, get to the seat. Yet, it's a minor discomfort I forgot all about while living in the city where almost everything is convenient and logical. But by the end of the next two and half hours of the film's running time and an additional hour of Q&A session with cast and crew, all the fires of the waiting hell that broke loose underneath Castro's Theater Spanish Colonial roof was put out with tears of joy and salvation that overflown the auditorium.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is the new film from a directing duo known as The Daniels (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert) that brought you Swiss Army Man. It's starring the hilarious and amazing Stephanie Hsu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), legendary Michelle Yeoh (Crazy Rich Asians, Memoirs of a Geisha), and Ke Huy Quan, who has been absent from our screens for nearly 20 years, which makes this film a promising resurrection.
Michelle Yeoh's character Evelyn Wang is a protagonist struggling to manage her family relationships, failing laundry business and taxes. We follow her on that journey and right into a metaverse, where she finds resolution to all her concerns and emerges better on the other side. No, it's not a Marvel movie, although Scott Pilgrim's level of superhero vibes are at present.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is impossible to pin to a genre. It's listed under the Adventure/Sci-fi category – sure, I get that. But it's also a twisted comedy, in which the humor was elevated since Swiss Army Man quite a notch. Yet, it's still a world where anything from fanny packs to dildos serves you as a weapon. It's also a tender portrayal of generational trauma; a meditation on kindness and the power of love and acceptance, done so masterfully and creatively that for the majority of the running time together with the rest of the audience, you find yourself exploding in laughter, only sobbing collectively at the end. It's an emotional rollercoaster, and Paul Rogers' complex editing does the trick to amplify the stomach-twist feeling. If the editing is your rollercoaster tracks, the cinematography is the bars that hold you to your seat.
Larkin Seiple did a masterful job. It's tight, controlled, and simply amazing. While being inventive in lighting and moves, it doesn't take you out of the story. But the music does. The movie is heavily soundtracked, especially during the fighting scenes. Yet, in juxtaposition with the phenomenally thoughtful sound design, it elevates the latter. Specificity of sound is a part of many elements targeted to extract a physical response in the audience. Physical response primarily being a contraction of your body from cringe-worthy scenes, like when Waymond, Evelyn's husband and Ke Huy Quan's character without hesitation grabs a piece of gum from under the desk and chews on it or when he needs to perform not one, but four papercuts in-between his fingers to transcend between the verses and access his other-self. I would not be surprised if Mr. Quan pulled those stunts himself, considering that he didn't have a professional cover for him in his first fighting scene of the movie. To put it bluntly, this fact and the scene are both respect-demanding. It involves a fanny pack mentioned early and was performed from the beginning to end by the actor himself. Believe me, when I say you'd be astonished when you see it.
Another noteworthy performance is that of Jamie Lee Curtis. She plays Deirdre, a villainous IRS agent, for whom Roz from Monsters University seemed to be an idol or at least a significant inspiration in outfits and attitude. According to the directors, Jamie Lee Curtis took great care in character development and wanted to portray the IRS agent with humanity. She did succeed. Ultimately, Deirdre is a villain in at least two of the many universes. Still, she gets a character arc in the main one, and her soft side, although humorously, is exposed in the universe, where people have sausages instead of fingers. Please don't ask me.
And, of course, Michelle Yeoh. Needless to say, she was greeted with a long-lasting standing ovation when she emerged on stage both before and after the screening. But as I watched her during Q&A, like the rest of the cast, dressed all in black, a blazer-type dress, its sleeves decorated with fringes that dangled all over following her gesticulation as she bubbled with excitement, I couldn't believe this sophisticated delicate woman is the same woman I just watched on the silver screen. Evelyn Wang is a daughter, who struggles to take care of her father and keep the peace between the three generations; a mother, who doesn't know how to handle her kid and pushes them so far it "fractured the mind" and causes the child to become the main villain; a wife, unaware her husband wants a divorce; a business-woman, failing to keep the family business afloat. And Evelyn, who kicks ass. Michelle Yeoh thanked the directors for writing such a complex and empowering part for an older woman of color. I do too.
The first draft of the Everything Everywhere All At Once script was over 240 pages. It took at least six rewrites to bring it to what it is: a tender, thrilling, captivating, and complex story, inventive both in narrative and in cinematic techniques. It's a rollercoaster, a kaleidoscope, both visual and emotional. It contains a beautiful message: kindness, acceptance that overlooks anything "weird or unconventional," and love overpowers all. It takes its characters on a journey to distill that message, and that journey is not a cheesy, trope-polluted one. It's complicated with its ups and down, where the characters are met with rejections even when they ultimately do the right thing, but, and not to spoil anything, it has a happy ending. It is a well-earned one too.
The host opened the night, claiming, "It's a proud day to be Asian." It's both a sad and a heart-warming claim. Let's hope this movie is just one of the first ones of many more to come that would amplify diverse perspectives and give a platform for creators to grapple with matters we might have encountered before, but never in such an imaginative and tender way. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a definition of progress in storytelling and film. And that's what you get when you give underrepresented people a chance to broadcast, and that's what you get when you approach whatever you have to say with dedication and care: Nothing. Nowhere. Never Seen Before.
