Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

 

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Director: Daniels

Stars: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Tsu, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis

 

Short Review, no spoilers

Even as it draws on diverse multiple influences, Everything Everywhere All at Once was a breath of fresh air on its cinema release, a blast-off out of Covid and general world-weary fatigue with an exuberant challenge to the Marvel movie factory output and stay-at-home-forever streaming services. Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis are both versatile by simultaneously dowdying it up and kicking ass in an all-round display of excellent performances, which also feature a welcome return to the big screen in both treasured 1980s childhood icon Ke Huy Quan and legendary Chinese Hollywood actor James Hong, as well as an assured turn from the next generation in Stephanie Tsu. A wonderfully entertaining and wry tribute to Chinese-American relations - in everyday life as well as popular film – the Daniels provided an exhilarating mix of the bizarre and the ordinary that resilient cinemagoers could see under persistently restrictive circumstances.

 

Full Review (spoilers)

A heroine in the form of a Chinese-born American laundromat owner is brought to the forefront of Daniels’ story - and movie-watchers consciousness - in this noisy and apparently chaotic blur of sci-fi existentialism, action and comedy. Through the knockabout spectacle of a Jackie Chan movie double-energised by rapid-cut editing and flashy visuals, the Daniels address an underrepresented community with contemporary dynamism, as if to say – ‘Yeah, you know all that martial arts stuff you love so much Hollywood, that elegant violence you’ve capitalised on over the decades and continue to utilise? From the same culture that started out in America washing shirts for Gold Rushers in the 19^th century.’* Except here the Wangs are the stars of the show in both their glorious ordinariness and their ass-kicking alternate identities. It’s a unique approach, drawing on the enduring popularity of martial arts in film while simultaneously tempering the exoticisation of East Asian characters by promoting working-class strugglers to the forefront, something that appears to be having a significant moment, most noticeably in South Korean cinema with films like Parasite and Shoplifters. The latter two carry universal messages for other divided societies also, but here is a heartfelt tribute to a more specific experience of generational Chinese immigration in America, acknowledging light-heartedly but also pointedly some of the tensions that arise between the exchanged flow of various distinct cultural values. It begins with language, the film opening with a Cantonese conversation speckled with English between spouses Evelyn and Waymond Wang (Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan); later, Evelyn’s elderly father Gong Gong’s (James Wong) criticism of his granddaughter, the American brought up Joy (Stephanie Tsu) for speaking worse Chinese every time he converses with her; and Evelyn’s protestations that her reference to Joy’s girlfriend as ‘him’ is a faux pas in English but irrelevant in Chinese as him and her is the same word.

Ke Huy Quan’s return to the big screen is a joy to behold for fans, a middle-aged man now but still displaying the same energy, enthusiasm and physicality as he did playing Short Round and Data, an earnestness that is a significant part of an intriguing mix of old school action movie performance and the ‘whatever’ postmodern irony displayed by Waymond’s millennial era daughter, Joy. In this spin cycle of old and new and Asian/American cultural crossovers, the film combines the light-hearted approach to action of the afore-mentioned Jackie Chan movies with the more recent shift to adult humour in Hollywood movies like Deadpool, the latter a part of a shift that has rescued superhero movies from the dry, imperious drudgery of the Serious Phase kick-started by the crushingly boring critical darling that was Dark Knight. Reminding us that action movies are supposed to be fun, what the Daniels also pull off here in unique and successful fashion is a serious talent for silly, amping rudeness to the max when Joy uses a massive double dildo in her mighty-morphing fight scene with Evelyn, and peaking with a wildly hilarious scene involving Deirdre’s tax auditor of the year award and some very determined ass antics.

The most explicit reference to other movies however is one that involves Ratatouille of all things, as Evelyn’s endearingly mumsy mispronunciation and misrecognition unexpectedly subverts the more obvious comparison she appears to be trying to make between her situation and The Matrix during an urgent attempt to explain it to Waymond and Joy. It gives birth to a hilariously nonsensical running gag and yet more surprising poignancy, much like a sequence that involves a bizarre relationship fantasy between versions of Evelyn and Deirdre who inexplicably have hot dogs for fingers. And less weird but as romantic is a tribute to the Asian arthouse excellence of the 1990s in sequences featuring Evelyn and Waymond re-enacting In The Mood for Love, with Ke Huy Quan making a surprisingly dashing Andy Cheung.

At the heart of the film, underneath all the flash and bang, chaotic visuals and elaborate sci-fi universe-jumping twaddle is a simple story, reflecting a very real human tendency to overcomplicate. What this wild and sprawling existential crisis can be boiled down to is that Evelyn needs to appreciate her silly husband more and get over her daughter’s gayness. There are a few other things too, like not caring about her father’s disapproval and finding ways to negotiate with their auditor, although there maybe should be a disclaimer of ‘Please don’t try this at home’ should anyone think convincing yourself you love your auditor will necessarily save your home and livelihood. Of course, forgiving this hilarious and welcome unrealism is as necessary as the forgiveness of mess, as Evelyn tells her daughter in her ultimate moment of self-realisation. It deals with regret in a pleasingly ambivalent way - glimpses of life as an opera singer or glamorous martial arts star are not delivered with patronising disclaimers of the downsides of fame and wealth, and when ‘In the Mood for Love’ Waymond tells ‘Maggie Cheung’ Evelyn that he wished he’d had the life with their daughter and dealing with tax audits, there is no response either way from Evelyn. Disillusionment is made funny when Evelyn is desperate to tell Waymond she has just discovered that her life would have been better without him like an astonished and eager child who has found the door to a secret garden. Likewise, when Alpha Waymond tells her earnestly that out of all of the Evelyns across parallel universes, she is remarkable for the one that is living her worst life is a nice twist on the contemporarily popular phrase.

The black hole/bagel can be read as a symbol both of depression and of the emptiness of modern existence, and is exemplary of the film’s compelling mix of puerility and pathos. Joy’s frequently changing and increasingly outrageous costumes speak of the desperate identity-seeking of the millennial in a world threatening to sink her in to bland oblivion – underneath the showy façade is a black hole, inviting the viewer to look more closely at the power and potential, the seemingly endless possibilities and ease of transformation apparently available to the youth of today, but that really just covers over the risk of falling in to despair if not interrogated.

As an example of cultural diversity, Everything Everywhere All at Once comes from a genuine place, and does what all good art should do by throwing up challenges to dominant discourses rather than merely inserting non-white peoples in to artificially created scenarios. By referencing Chinese presence in the USA both through the laundromat that was established in the earliest stages of building America, as well as the martial arts that continue to inform action choreography in movies, Daniels’ offer a clever and distinct challenge to the mainstream. Also, it is a chatty dialogue rather than a pedagogical speech running throughout the film: while acknowledging the failings that impact on the harmony of a culturally mixed family, Evelyn also demands understanding in ways perhaps unfamiliar to Westernised minds. She nags Joy about being fat, but then at the end explains that it is because she worries about her being unhealthy, an idea foreign to Western ideas where fatness is predominantly associated with appearance, especially when it comes to girls and women. In fact, for Western audiences and otherwise, to see a young woman kicking ass that isn’t elfin or squeezed in to a body suit that shows every svelte curve is also refreshing, and Stephanie Hsu is as cool if not cooler than many a 2-bit female action heroine.

At a time when to focus purely on black under-representation would appear for some to solve the diversity issue, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a refreshing reminder that diversity is a vibrant and multi-racial issue, and one most interestingly explored by those who know and who have the talent and creativity to bring it to us all entertainingly. Chris Rock wrote excellently on black inequality in Hollywood, but also took the time to acknowledge the taken-for-granted presence of Mexican immigrants performing menial services but who are also offered little to no opportunity for work in the film industry.* Likewise, the Wangs represent the laundromat history of Chinese immigration to America but in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniels also reference the impact of Asia on the popular film industry, even if in an alternate reality.

Further reading

·         *Search these: How Childhoods Spent in Chinese Laundries Tell the Story of America:

The laundry: a place to play, grow up, and live out memories both bitter and sweet.

BY EVELINE CHAO JANUARY 3, 2018

·         *This story first appeared in the Dec. 12, 2014 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

·         The west misses the point of Everything Everywhere All at Once – it gets the Asian psyche by Bertin Huynh

An illuminating and rightfully challenging article if a little bit sweeping in its damnation of Western ignorance. More responses like these, such as from the perspective of Asian/Asian-Americans themselves, is always welcome.