Studio A24 released a new sci-fi comedy 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' at the beginning of the month, about family, the meaning of life, and the multiverse. Almost immediately after its release, it became known that the company had joined the ge...
It's been over a month since the major studios suspended their releases in Russia. The ranks of movie fighters have noticeably thinned, and it seemed like there was nothing left to watch on the big screen (excluding blockbusters that came out before the ban and old Russian films that quickly filled the screening schedule). But no. 2022, together with something, prepared a real cinematic gem for our country.
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Open materialThe unfairly underrated film 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' was released on April 7th, but even without competition, the Russian audience hardly noticed the movie from the Daniels. The theaters were nearly empty, and online, you'd rarely stumble upon a mention of the film or an article about it. This fact brings melancholy, because the director duo has created, arguably, the best film of 2022 (so far).
What's the Plot?
Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese immigrant, lives with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) in a provincial American town, running a local laundromat located beneath the family's apartment. Evelyn has a huge pile of worries: she tries daily to please the eccentric customers, find time to care for her sick, disabled father, and talk to her daughter about her relationship with girls. But the most important thing is to urgently deal with a mountain of taxes.
It's not a life, but sheer gloom mixed with exhausting routine. The chosen path in life has led the Chinese woman somewhere she never wanted to end up. She can't connect with her daughter, there are problems with the business, and her husband is constantly hovering around, trying to talk about divorce.
It would seem that things couldn't get any worse, but on the day of the visit to the tax office, Waymond suddenly changes and begins frantically telling his wife about some terrible danger, the multiverse, and giving some unusual instructions for what to do next.
Right in the middle of talking to the tax inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is transported to another dimension, where an alternate version of her husband hastily tries to outline the seriousness of the impending threat. Evelyn doesn't understand the point and doesn't believe what's happening until Waymond, under the gaze of the entire floor, eats a tube of lipstick and, using a fanny pack, tosses around several armed guards in a fight.
Now it's easier to believe in the existence of parallel worlds, but Evelyn still has no idea who is hiding behind the mask of the main multiversal evil.
Madness of the Multiverse
'Everything Everywhere All at Once' is a truly insane film, filled with action, references, and sometimes rather lowbrow humor (in a good sense). You wouldn't expect this from a studio known mainly for auteur projects like 'The Green Knight', 'C'mon C'mon' or 'The Lighthouse', which have next to no drive or dynamics. The thing is, the directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert aren't presenting an unusual film to the world of cinema for the first time. Their debut was 'Swiss Army Man' starring Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse capable of performing a host of necessary functions with its body. You'll agree, it immediately becomes clear why the film stands out from the usual A24 catalog.
The Daniels' second feature-length work astonishes the viewer with its two-hour fireworks display of parodies, quotes, and genres. On screen, we see 'The Matrix', 'Ratatouille', '12 Monkeys', 'Kill Bill', 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' (in which the star of 'Everything Everywhere All at Once', Michelle Yeoh, acted). With a closer viewing and a desire to do so, one could expand the list with other films.
In addition to the above, 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' also taps into the nerve of multiverse films, which have become fashionable recently. There are indeed many worlds presented in the project. More than in the first films on this topic that spring to mind. For a moment, an animated version of Evelyn even flashes before your eyes, but the film's gems are undoubtedly the universe where people have hot dogs instead of hands, and the universe where life never originated at all, so the consciousness of intelligent beings belongs to rocks scattered across a barren planet.
Kwan and Scheinert skillfully combine comedy, drama, action, and science fiction in the project, while also touching on topics popular in cinema today. They talk to the viewer about feminism, LGBTQ+ issues, parent-child relationships, the meaning of life, and the value of humanity on a universal scale. In terms of the abundance of themes raised, 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' resembles Adam McKay, and the title itself screams that you shouldn't be surprised by anything; we promised to deliver everything.
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You won't get bored while watching, and you don't need to be a big cinema connoisseur for the film to make you fall in love with it. The film is so multifunctional (some kind of 'Film — Swiss Army Knife') that everyone will find something they like and remember for a long time.
No Way Home
I'm sure most people have a pressing question: 'How can you possibly fit such a crazy idea into a single film lasting about two and a half hours, and also give the viewer a coherent logical explanation for what's happening?' It turns out that for the duo, such a task is easily solvable. Or maybe not?
Obviously, the biggest problem with multiverse films is the questions that remain after watching. When these are questions that provide food for thought about life, the world order, and the importance of choice, it's undoubtedly a successful outcome of encountering the film. But when the questions concern the project itself, confuse the viewer, and leave them without clear answers, it ultimately becomes uncomfortable. You get the feeling that we've been deceived and, by playing on our emotions, they don't want to share the promised candy.
The theme of the multiverse is incredibly complex, and on the one hand, the viewer understands that there are an infinite number of versions of different worlds, and each world has its own version of a particular person who made a choice that somehow determined their life path. But on the other hand, the very moment of contact between different versions of the same character is only understandable within the context of a particular plot, but outside the runtime, the clarity of that contact collapses. And both in the Daniels' film and in other similar projects, questions remain that you want to ask the author personally.
Could none of Evelyn's versions have realized the splitting of her own consciousness and felt the borrowing of skills? How, after what happens in a particular universe, does the life cycle normalize at all? Can everything really go on as usual after such events without any consequences? I couldn't find answers to these confusing questions, which affected my overall impression of the film. Although, of course, it's nice that 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' raises serious topics for the viewer to ponder.
So, on one side of the scale lie the incredibly important tasks of the film, focused on analyzing the material watched, and on the other, agonizing questions like 'So, but how exactly...?', which distract from the analysis itself. Undoubtedly, under the mask of comedy, the ground for thought was presented extremely elegantly. Where else can you see one of the project's key dialogues carried out by two rocks in complete silence? Or hear a conversation about the importance of family support against the backdrop of an epic slow-motion fight, in which the victims have their main life wishes fulfilled next to a giant donut-black hole?
What If...?
Every viewer has asked themselves the question 'What if...?'. After watching 'Everything Everywhere All at Once', it becomes relevant again in your life. But I want to think not about the private questions of one person (like 'What if I had hit that thug first at school?' or 'What if I had enrolled in a different city?'). I'm interested in formulations like 'What if the lead role hadn't been played by Michelle Yeoh?', 'What if the authors hadn't highlighted the importance of the supporting characters at a certain point?' or 'What if A24 had decided that the Daniels' film was too crazy and there was no need to start production?'
Of course, it's easier to find answers to these questions than to those that have already changed or will not change the course of an individual's life. But thinking about my 'What if...?' scenarios, you realize how terribly sad it would have been to lose such a good project. Without Michelle Yeoh, the film would lose its main star and spark. Even if another actress brilliantly played the role of Evelyn, she would hardly be able to reach Michelle's level and carry the entire film, playing multiple roles. 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' is definitely a benefit for the Malaysian actress.
Without the development and highlighting of the supporting characters' importance, the film would become dull and lose a large part of its positive emotions. Waymond and Joy, for example, are extremely important figures on this chessboard. At a given moment, it becomes clear to the viewer that the characters weren't created just to hover around the main heroine, but are indeed an integral part of the plot. The fearless Jamie Lee Curtis also evokes positive emotions, which leads to thoughts about the exceptional acting merit of the female cast.
And if the studio had deemed the script crazy, the project simply wouldn't have been released, or it would have changed beyond recognition, and only the Universe knows if it would have won over viewers and critics. So, if circumstances hadn't worked out so favorably, the duo's second full-fledged work would have turned out bland, inexpressive, or wouldn't have happened at all.
However, as a result, we have an excellent action comedy that stands out among other multiverse films. Marvel will have to work hard to reach this level with their projects and, importantly, give up on shoddy work like changing or breaking their own rules on the fly.
So What's the Verdict?
Summing up the film 'Everything Everywhere All at Once', I would like to advise every potential viewer to watch it, because it's damn unfair that the release of such a high-quality film is sluggish and unnoticed. It seems that, thanks to the departure of blockbusters and the release of the Daniels' project during this difficult period, the domestic audience is able to discover something new and unusual in terms of cinema. But practice shows that the populace seems unable to see beyond the typical 'Avengers' or 'Fast and Furious'.
Does the Universe only contain heavily advertised, big-budget films, and everything else is either 'nonsense for connoisseurs' or 'brandless rubbish not worthy of attention'? If you live by this principle, then you might as well stop looking for anything tastier than chicken Caesar salad and Carbonara pasta in restaurants. Why try something new if everyone is eating it?
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