I am writing this after having just watched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. For those who haven't seen it yet, this is arguably one of the best films of last year. One of those once-in-a-lifetime movies that defies everything that's "supposed to be a story".
It's a nonsensical tale that begins as a family drama, then becomes a sci-fi/martial arts story about failure, existentialism, and family feuding, as Everything Everywhere sees a multidimensional black hole unraveling at the center of the multiverse. Though the hows, whys, and who's after it, all center around the family drama.
Told from the perspective of Evelyn, an Asian mother and the movie's unlikely heroine, one fateful day, while having to pay back money owed to the IRS for the Wang family laundromat business, Evelyn's reality fragments mid-meeting, with her husband from another reality arriving essentially revealing that she's the chosen one meant to bring balance to the universe.
Alternate reality Evelyns can range from being a successful martial artist actress, to a teppanyaki chef, and then, hot dog-fingered lesbian. Getting to synch with an ability means tapping into improbability, making it pretty out there as a film, with lots of funny acted moments, but also, a lot of heartfelt diatribes. For every moral lesson of finding happiness in the beauty of the now, there is also a dildo-slapping butt-plug-bearing scene of battle-ready stupidity. Which is kind of the point of everything everywhere all at once.
I spent a long time avoiding this movie because I knew whenever I finished it... I'd be forever changed.
The best way I can describe the movie is that it's about learning how to be okay with yourself in the now, which I was not super ready to handle.
Acknowledging this as someone who's likewise, felt like he never lived up to his own potential, I think what works so well about the movie is how most of it is framed into little chunks of time.
Histories, moments, and missteps frame every alternate's characterization and abilities. All focused on moments of Evelyn's life defined by her relationship with her family.
I relate to this a little too much... I think most audience members do.
See, when I was younger I was really into superheroes. This idea of right and wrong, saving the day and making everyone happy. I liked to pretend to be an adult, and what that meant to young, dufus, Christian, was that you had to expose yourself to traumatic things.
I was particularly into Batman the animated series as a child. My older cousins really liked how 'adult' and 'grown' up the Dark Knight was, and the movie: Batman Returns, was one of the first VHS tapes I think most of my extended family members bought in the late 80s and early 90s. A first purchase owned by every first-generation Filipino American parent...
The first big superhero... for everyone.
Then, in college, I read a lot about existentialism. Superheroes, while a childlike interest, were less of a concern to me as I'd begun the journey of discovering who I was supposed to be in life. I'd begun with cognitive psychology, but soon after, moved into personality theory and abnormal psychology. Where Martin Heidegger's Being In Time became sort of this template of what exactly that meant to be in the moment...
Philosophy was something I obsessed over into my early 20s. A passion that oddly, came back into superhero comics once I began reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman... though that's a story I've already shared here. Soon after, I sort of studied more about writing and became obsessed with the hero's journey, which is, by all means, is rooted in almost every superhero story.
All of these moments. Ideas that the surrounding worlds of experience, the things that built and shaped you into the continuously experiencing being. The I, that in turn experiences the world in this exact moment in time, making decisions, influenced by culture, reflecting and reacting and engaging in an endless dance of what it means... to just be.
Culture changes. Narratives shift. The classics of today's reform become rehashed stories told a million times over. Every movie is just Star Wars. Your influences will disappoint you. Who would have thought J.K. Rowling would turn out to be such a horrible person? Or that my own cinema hero in my 20s, Woody Allen - whose works I obsessed over and studied religiously as they implemented existential psychology, would likewise prove to be a horrible human.
They say never meet your heroes...
I say these things not to be cruel but to adapt. To stress all of these weird little moments. These changes. Things that were important then and the things that have become important now... Like family, and friends, and living a balanced life.
Every story of finding yourself is a piece of that time of the here and now. Moments encapsulated forever in the art that the words, ideals, and beliefs of the person come out to be.
It's Everything. Everywhere. All at once.
And that's a beautifully tragic thing.
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