In another timeline, ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ once won an Oscar

How a hyperactive epic about a woman struggling with her taxes became the frontrunner at the 95th Academy Awards, scheduled for Sunday.

Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat in the United States. She struggles not only with her taxes, but also with her family life. His daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) has a non-Chinese girlfriend and Evelyn fears her father Gong Gong will take offense to her for several reasons. Meanwhile, her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) tries to file for divorce. Gradually, Evelyn begins to accept that life has nothing more to offer than that.

The salvation of Everything everywhere all at once reads like that of a dark drama, but directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (as a duo known simply as “Daniels”) have crafted this into a hyperactive spectacle that transcends genres and ultimately delivers a positive message. This approach paid off: with a profit of one hundred million dollars on a production cost of 25 million, it became the A24 studio’s biggest production to date. Moreover, the film has a chance of winning no less than eleven Oscars. An overview of the ingredients used in Everywhere had such success.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is like an all-in buffet: everyone sees something they like.

Multiverse

Evelyn is catapulted through all sorts of parallel universes in the film, where she’s confronted with every possible version of herself she could have become. Including an Evelyn with hot dog fingers (makes more sense when you see the movie). In this way, the Daniels responded to a trend that had been going on for some time. In the Doctor Strange and Spidermanmovies were already pulling Marvel heroes into parallel realities and also rick and morty deadlines overlap.

The Daniels began pondering an alternate-reality story in 2010. In the meantime, they’ve been overtaken by Marvel and company, and the directors have gotten a little bored of it. “All the ideas that I thought were original had already been implemented,” Kwan sighed in interviews. In retrospect, this may have worked to the blockbuster movie’s advantage: everyone could follow the wild concept more easily because they already knew about it elsewhere.

Maximism

The title already suggests it: Everything everywhere all at once it’s a lot. Despite a game time of 2.5 hours, there are hardly any rest points. Meanwhile, the film crosses as many genres as there are parallel universes: from drama and comedy to martial arts spectacle and existential film of ideas.

This way the film never has the chance to get boring and it appeals to a very wide audience. Superhero fans are excited about the multiverse premise. Fans of kung fu movies are thrilled that Jackie Chan was originally meant to play the lead role (in the end, the Daniels settled on a female lead). Those who love absurd comedy already knew the Daniels from their previous film Swiss army man. And for movie buffs, there are references to the work of Wong Kar-Wai, among others. A film like an all-in buffet: everyone sees what they like.

Opportunities

The underlying philosophy of Everything everywhere all at once is nihilistic: life in itself has no value. It sounds depressing, but the film puts a positive spin on it: anything can have value, as long as you decide for yourself. Also a life in which you have little more than laundry and your family. In a sense, the Daniels translated the absurdism of Albert Camus into a blockbuster.

So the multiverse is more than a gimmick. It’s a fitting way to tell this story. Yes, there are endless ways your life could have turned out differently. But why dwell on it endlessly? There’s a lot of beauty to be found in your own timeline.

mother-daughter relationship

although Everything everywhere all at once At first glance deals with many different themes, under all this emphasis hides an intimate story: that of the eternal conflict between mother and daughter. Joy tries to just be herself and involve her friend in her family life, but Evelyn fears her already fragile family will crumble further. This leads to a family conflict in which the two must make an effort to understand each other, across the borders of the different universes. It’s no coincidence that Jobu Tupaki, the mysterious enemy who attacks Evelyn in the multiverse, bears a suspicious resemblance to her daughter. Colliding in all the timelines, the two eventually come to understand each other.