The Choice to Love Everything Everywhere All at Once

As the title may have hinted, I'll be exploring some parts of the film Everything Everywhere All at Once in this week's newsletter. I would normally flag a spoiler disclaimer at the top for this type of discussion, but as the review from the New York Times points out: "Spoiling it would be impossible." Explaining the plot would take longer than the film's runtime (which is a kidney stone-inducing 139 minutes), yet even if I tried, my analysis would still pale in comparison to seeing the spectacle firsthand. Because how can I cleanly summarize a story about infinite possibilities, one that yes-ands every outrageous turn down the rabbit hole? How would I catalogue such an ambitious, strobing, genre-fluid masterpiece of technicolor improbabilities taken to their most complicated and illogical ends? It's an impossible task, and yet the spirit of the movie compels me to speak on it all the same. In any case, if you want to enjoy the ride sight unseen, save this newsletter for some time after April 8 when the film is released nationwide.

For the rest of you, I'll do my best not to ruin too many surprises, of which there is an abundance. And abundant feels like the closest descriptor that gives justice to this film overall, that seems to capture the method to the maximalist madness promised in the title. Some detected more madness than maximalism, though, as a common critique online is that the movie lacks focus and depth in the storytelling, and in turn any sense of heart and identity feels forgotten amongst the frenetic visuals. But I'd argue that the audaciously wide scope of the film is not only a deliberate identity, but a device that serves to underscore the film's message of making peace with the choices we make.

While the directors have described their work as "a cosmic gumbo" and "a turducken" to capture the melange of themes and emotions swirled into the film, I would extend this food motif by likening the movie more to a visual Baumkuchen: it is an innumerably layered sci-fi action coming-of-age and coming-out family dramedy(?) set against the backdrop of a modern day wuxia romance immigrant story(??) in which our protagonist Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is guided by her husband-from-another-dimension Alpha Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) to tap into the potential of the multiverse(???) in order to mend her broken relationship with her own father (James Hong) and her adult daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) to prevent the looming threat of cosmic obliteration(?!?!?!?). If your head is spinning from that sentence, I'd suggest you slap on a scopalamine patch before you head to the theaters. But when we consider some of the other work from the director duo Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), such as the music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon's "Turn Down for What" and the 2016 film Swiss Army Man, where the main character befriends a flatulent corpse in the process of trying to escape from a deserted island, the feverish surrealism becomes a little more recognizable. Frenzy now shifts from mess to stylistic choice, to a distinct intentional aesthetic. And Daniels dial the frenzy up to one hundred here, landing a barrage of disorienting sucker punches to the senses as we're hurled from scene to scene. You'll find yourself volleying from stunned laughter to quiet bewilderment to somber tears as the characters "verse jump" between dimensions and as the movie similarly shapeshifts between genres. To some, this fluidity makes it challenging to parse out the main storyline amongst the already hydra-like timeline splitting within the multiverse, and the result is utter disorientation. It's like being swallowed up by a tornado, except our feet never return to familiar ground and instead we're spat out into the stratosphere, hurtling thousands of lightyears away from everything we have come to know.

Despite this disorientation, where I landed at the end of the film didn't feel quite so distant or unfamiliar. Aside from the multi-hyphenate parallels with Joy's narrative of being a queer-Chinese-American, I resonated with the implication that our choices are what brings meaning to the madness in the world. And in a film predicated on abundance, one of the pleasures of watching was to self-determine how to extract meaning from this cinematic Rorschach test, to choose my own adventure from the many laid out before me.

Central to the film is the inherent value of choice, not only as an antidote to nihilism but as a mode of survival. We see this with Evelyn as she chooses which reality she wants to access at any given time, each supplying her with unique skills, knowledge, and experiences. In some realities she is following her passion to sing or act but ultimately is lonely in her success; in others, she is surrounded by loved ones but mired by the strained relationships with them and her own sense of wasted potential. The movie shows us that life can be wildly junctured by every decision we make, from something as grand as the pursuit of love to something as minuscule as which shoe goes on which foot. It takes the question of "What if...?" and responds with absurdity and generosity. What if life had turned out differently? What if we had followed our dreams? Our choices matter deeply because they determine how we bring order to the chaos around us. Waymond knows this, and implores us to choose to be kind despite our panic, our rage, and our confusion. And if we repeatedly choose kindness--all of us, in our own little realities--perhaps the accelerating entropy of the universe would feel a little bit more bearable.

In an era tethered to the internet and social media, where seemingly everything is available everywhere all at once, today's algorithm often engages us with the content that will most shock or enrage us, which is otherwise tempered by boredom or ethereal moments of pleasure. We are beholden to the magnifying sadness of the world, which is collapsed into the funniest joke ever written, unbridled violence, baby photos, and sheet pan dinner recipes, all of it endlessly scrolling by in the palms of our hands. The menagerie can all feel so darkly meaningless. But where social medial fails in its supposed attempt to democratize and unify (while in fact making society more corporatized and divisive), Everything Everywhere All at Once offers a kernel of earnestness--however trite and saccharine it may be--insisting us to consider a different perspective. When you fear the world around you feels empty and meaningless, what more radical action is there to take than to choose kindness over further chaos? Why not choose kindness, above all?

But choice, of course, is a luxury, so much so as to be entirely inaccessible to some. Joy shoulders this inequity intimately, struggling to balance the person she is with the person she is expected to be, to the point where her pain fractures not only her own life but the lives of everyone around her. Ultimately, it is the choice between accepting one's circumstances or hoping for an alternative that both divides and unifies the relationship between Joy and Evelyn, that allows Joy the peace of death in some universes and allows her to make amends with Evelyn in others. There is no value necessarily assigned to each alternate reality, no "right" or "better" path to take. All that is left are options, and it is Evelyn's choice as to which world she wants to fully inhabit with her now omnipresent consciousness.

While I disagree with the ableist idea that happiness is a choice, I do believe we get to choose what role it plays in our lives: whether we continue to chase that which eludes us or adopt discontent as an identity, whether we choose to endure our pain or try to transform it. Where Joy sees her own existence as an inescapable black hole of everything and nothing, Evelyn instead comes to see her daughter as a essential part of living. There quite literally is no joy in a world without her daughter. The small splendors--realities where Joy is at peace, where mother and daughter can be together, however improbable that scenario may be--are the realities in which Evelyn is the most present, the most accepting, and the most kind. It's where the movie concludes, and it's where I also hope we eventually come to find ourselves.

Thank you for reading and subscribing to There's Room. For questions, comments, and critiques, you can reach me here: asktheresroom@gmail.com