Everything Everywhere All At Once is...geez, a magical realism action/sci-fi comedy family drama? Fuck me. Anyway, stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Wuan, James Hong, and Tallie Medel.
Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) owns a laundromat with her earnest husband Waymond (Quan), and cares for her elderly father (Hong) who recently arrived from China. They also have a daughter, Joy (Hsu), who is disaffected, sullen, unhappy, and gay, none of which are of much interest to Evelyn. And they're being audited by a very thorough, very condescending IRS agent called Deirdre (Curtis) and facing the very real possibility of losing their business.
And then Waymond is possessed by a Waymond from an alternate universe and tells Evelyn that there are an infinite number of realities, created every time anyone makes a choice. He needs this Evelyn's help to defeat Jobu Tupaki, a nihilistic omniuniversal being that seems to be able to exist in any reality, manipulate matter at will, and oh yeah, is Joy.
This movie freaking floors me. It's so smart, it's funny, and a scene with two rocks talking to each other in subtitles (because rocks don't talk, of course) makes me cry. Evelyn initially assumes that Jobu Tupaki is some kind of monster that possessed her daughter, but the truth is that she pushed Joy to become Jobu in another universe. So the obvious conclusion is that she wants revenge, right? No - she wants help. She wants her mom to offer her hope, something to make the chaos meaningful. And holy shit, I get that. But there's no easy answer, no "let the bagel consume everything" (it makes sense in context), no "ignore the chaos", no "just be kind" (Waymond's strategy, although it does work to a degree).
There's a lot to take away from the movie. The script is amazing, the flips between universe are dizzying but the movie doesn't really get overwhelming until the third act, and that's intentional. The performances, though, holy cats. If Michelle Yeoh doesn't get a Best Actress nom this year I'm gonna be annoyed (really, she, Hsu, Quan, and Curtis should all get nominations, along with Screenplay, Director, and Best Picture, but we'll see). Quan, especially, does a fantastic job of being recognizably Waymond from universe to universe but showing how the different events have shaped him, and Michelle Yeoh is by turns fascinated, horrified, and exhausted by everything happening to her.
All in all, it's a movie that prompts interpretation, and mine is that it's easy to get lost in chaos and possibility and lose track of what's immediate. It is possible to have too much perspective on life, and you have to choose which bits of the chaos to be part of, even if those choices turn out to be wrong in hindsight.
My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium-high
Next up: Foul Play
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