SXSW 2022: Everything Everywhere All at Once
What if everything that ever existed, in every universe, depended on a single family's emotional baggage? In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniels (the directing duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) combine all of their ideas and experiences into one magnificent explosion of awe-inspiring visuals. Add to that a beautifully-centered story of one family and a woman's mid-life crisis, and you have a film unlike any you’ve seen before.
Evelyn Yang (Michelle Yeoh) is a middle-aged Chinese immigrant struggling to keep her laundromat above water while her family life falls apart. The film begins as her business is being audited, her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is considering divorce, her elderly father (James Hong) is visiting from China, and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is desperate to find a bond with her mother. As she enters the IRS to present stacks of crumpled receipts to her auditor, Deidre (Jamie Lee Curtis), things take a turn for the weird when an alternative version of her husband tells her she’s the only one that can stop “Jobu Tupaki” from destroying everything.
When the film truly takes off, transforming from a family drama into science-fiction, the Daniels throw every late night brainstorming session they’ve ever had at the screen, and the creative whiplash you feel is exhilarating. Split-second cuts throw you from universe to universe, giving you the splintered sensation of Evelyn’s psyche. As she cycles through each version of herself, from laundromat owner, to renowned Martial Arts actress, to...a literal rock, the audience clings on as the film keeps going at a rattling speed. But the tempo isn’t non-stop and emotional beats cleverly interrupt heavy action scenes.
At the heart of Everything Everywhere, there is a family reaching its breaking point. Despite the break-neck speed of multi-dimensional martial arts fights, each deteriorating relationship in Evelyn’s life is given time to come to the forefront, letting both sides finally communicate their feelings. Most notable of these many reconciliations is Evelyn’s renewed love and understanding of her husband. When Evelyn thinks she’s reached the end, and there is no way out, Waymond makes the impossible happen, just by being kind.
The cast is so central to making a film like this work. In the end though, Ke Huy Quan stole the show for me, playing multiple versions of a truly layered character. Waymond is introduced as a fool. In comparison to Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn, he is weak and simple. When he is possessed by “Alpha” Waymond, he becomes the man Evelyn wishes her husband was—capable and collected. This shift in performance by Quan is only the beginning of the nuance and ability he showcases throughout the film. Quan’s Waymond acts as the moral core of the film, and despite being surrounded by Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and Jamie Lee Curtis, he definitely has the most complicated performance.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is messy, but not because it’s poorly structured or made clumsily. How could a film that strives to encompass this much complexity, from scientific theory to human nature, not be a complicated mess? Somehow silly gags like a universe with hotdog fingers or one where cows are extinct are the cherry on top of a touching story about mending a family from the brink of destruction. After a lifetime of holding in their anger, resentment, and disappointment with one another, the near-end of all that they know brings them back together.
If you have complained about the lack of original, creative, and IP-less films, you need to go see and support Everything Everywhere All at Once because this is what the future of film-making should look like.
