Mediocrity defines the first Evelyn. Her business is on the cusp of failure – she faces an IRS audit – and her personal relationships do not fare much better. Constant nitpicking is her coping strategy, much to the chagrin of her husband and daughter. The ambitious sci-fi film Everything Everywhere All at Once lingers on Evelyn’s mediocrity because what shakes her out of it is extraordinary. Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as the Daniels), this film is equal parts ambitious and bizarre, just like their memorable debut, Swiss Army Man. True to its title, there is a lot going on here, leading to dizzying formal qualities and a deeply complex narrative. But by shrewdly grounding the insanity in their characters, no matter how bizarre they may seem, the Daniels find actual emotional resonance that usually eludes this increasingly popular multiverse premise.
Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn, and in the opening scenes, there is little sense of the charismatic actor who has captivated audiences for decades. Her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) can barely hide their disappointment, while the IRS officer (Jamie Lee Curtis) treats her with resigned contempt. In the IRS office where most of the film takes place, something strange happens to Waymond. He suddenly acts alert, focused and hurried. It’s as if he is a different person, which is almost correct: the “new” Waymond is in fact a Waymond from a different universe, temporarily occupying the body of the man she married. He tells Evelyn her reality is one of many, and that one destructive force seeks to destroy all these realities – aka the multiverse – in a massive act of destruction. The mediocre Evelyn might be humanity’s last hope, and soon she gains the self-awareness to bend reality toward her will.
The Daniels do not attempt to hide their influences, which is shrewd way of guiding the viewer through its byzantine plot. Evelyn’s arc of becoming superhuman is a lot like The Matrix, with her as Neo and Waymond as a Morpheus-like figure. Many scenes involve characters seeing something extraordinary among everyday things, a concept that Michel Gondry explored in his early films. Once the Daniels lay enough groundwork and make the concept easy enough to follow, they depart their influences and develop their own thing. There is a funny, borderline puerile playfulness to their sensibility: at one point, the insertion of butt plugs become a significant plot point. The only limits to the Daniels’ multiverse are their imagination, so we are treated to weird realities, like one where everyone has hot dogs for fingers. No single idea overstays its welcome thanks to their editing, which jumps back and forth between planes of existence faster than the speed of thought.
If Everything Everywhere All at Once has a secret weapon, it is Quan. He is best known for his child roles in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, except he quit acting until Crazy Rich Asians convinced him to consider trying again. As a middle-aged man, he nonetheless possesses the energy and confidence that made him so much fun to watch in the first place. Transitions between goofy Waymond and competent Waymond are amusing enough, and then he and the Daniels elevate the film with a memorable action sequence, one where Waymond uses a fanny pack to lay some IRS guards on their ass (The Daniels are solid action directors, giving the actors and stuntmen enough time and the right camera placement to showcase their skills). Yeoh is the everywoman in the film’s lengthy opening act – confused, frightened, willing to play along – so it’s Quan/Yeoh’s confidence in him that guides us through the chaos. The film would fall apart without him.
Despite the world-building and nonstop action of the opening act, the film’s true ambition does not become clear until the second half. We learn the true nature of Evelyn’s adversary, which raises the stakes in painful terms. One problem with the concept of a multiverse is how it has the unintentional effect of diminishing suspense: what’s the point of caring about one hero when there are infinite copies of her? The Daniels solve this problem by sidestepping the infinite, putting the drama entirely in the relationship between flawed people who disappoint each other, and must finally learn to forgive. Still, they realize that style and comedy are tools to help guide us through what essentially amounts to a family drama: there are echoes of Wong Kar-wai and the animator Don Hertzfeldt in how the form ultimately works in service of the dramatic tension. While many films use the multiverse to reward the viewer’s capacity for pattern recognition (i.e. “I understand that reference!”), Everything Everywhere never loses sight of its deeper purpose.
By cross-cutting between realities, Everything Everywhere All at Once nearly repeats itself more than it should. The Daniels have great affection for their material and ideas, wanting time to highlight how they take silly concepts and treat them seriously. In fact, their insistence on being serious about silliness only deepens the stakes: the film’s MacGuffin is a literal bagel, for example, and the surrealism of the idea means we must look beyond it for any real meaning. While Quan carries the load for the first half, Yeoh finally makes this good film into a great one. There are scenes where she must literally convey all emotions in a matter of seconds, and she finally projects a mix of empathy and calm that is both comforting and otherworldly.
After temptations from other universes where she is more glamorous and successful, the mediocre Evelyn ultimately settles on the world she was first given. How and why she arrives at that choice leads to the rarest thing: a film that could inspire its audience to lead better lives.
Photo courtesy of A24
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