‘Everything’s Everything
‘Doctor Strange’ may be getting all the attention but Daniels’ trippy, bonkers, family drama on meth is the multiverse movie to see this year.
Everything everywhere all at once
Directors: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Daniels) • Writers: Daniels
Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong, Tallie Medel
USA • 2hr 19mins
Opens Hong Kong May 19 • IIA
Grade: A-
Everything Everywhere All at Once has a lot in common with recent films like Leos Carax’s Annette, Julia Ducournau’s Titane, and Pablo Larraín’s Spencer. Each is the film these filmmakers wanted to make, and to hell with anyone who disagreed with them. You don’t have to like the final product, but you have to respect the artistic cojones it took to make them in the current filmmaking climate.
At its very core, in its fundamental DNA, EEAAO is a gonzo, multiverse-hopping story about a mother and daughter trying to find common ground and live their best lives. But directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – AKA Daniels – who made a splash in 2016 with the lunatic Swiss Army Man starring Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe as a farting corpse, bury that so deep in an adventure about saving the Alpha ’verse by channelling our alternate selves and their skills it’s easy to miss. I mean, come on. Daniels throw in (in no particular order) butt plug-shaped employee awards, a universe where we have hot dogs for fingers (it’s very disturbing), a rock planet, a dildo beatdown, some fight pixelation (chill, that’s supposed to be there) teppanyaki chefs with raccoons on their heads, murderous fanny packs, yappy dog as weapon, and, of course, googly eyes. It’s manic mindfuckery at its very best and in its meticulous way it’s exactly what Daniels wanted to do.
Who hasn’t wanted to do this at the tax office?
So the story is simple (hahahahahaha) enough. Evelyn Quan (Michelle Yeoh, eternally luminous) is one of those women who’s overwhelmed by her unsatisfying life. She’s trying to be a good daughter to the ailing Gung-gung (the absolutely titanic James Hong), and an understanding mother to her aimless, gay daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu, familiar to most as Soo in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings). Meanwhile, she doesn’t know it yet but her kind and sensitive husband Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan, still best known as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) is about to file for divorce. And to just slap the icing on the cake the IRS is breathing down her neck over her laundromat business’ taxes, and they’ve sicced Deirdre (a gloriously unflattering Jamie Lee Curtis) on her.
To detail much more would be to spoil the film’s nuttier joys, but Evelyn (who was originally conceived as a dude played by Jackie Chan!) is eventually called upon to save the multiverse from chaos agent Jobu Tupaki, who is also Joy, and her black hole of an all-dressed bagel (just… you’ll see). And who calls? A far suaver, badass alternate universe Waymond. Cue martial arts fights, mostly in an IRS building.
No, this is not Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Or is it?
Everything Everywhere All at Once is exactly that. Daniels pack so much formal and visual absurdism into the film it’s easy to lose track of its more emotional pleasures. If the mother-daughter drama is a river, then the film’s tributaries run to themes of the meaning of life (that little subject), embracing what’s at our fingertips, regret at choices made and not made, and depression. But the film is a clinic in how to use tech and VFX to help tell a story, and the way Daniels, production designer Jason Kisvarday and DOP Larkin Seiple change up aspect ratios, stock and speeds among other technical elements goes a long way to creating Evelyn’s other lives and making you understand her remorse when she realises what she may have missed: like soft focused domestic LGBTQ+ harmony and retro, textured Wong Kar-wai-esque images for life as a movie star (where Short Round does a major foxy flex). The heightened drag queen costuming of Jobu Tapaki’s lair is similarly astounding.
James Hong. Legend
Holding all this together is Yeoh, in arguably a career best performance that exploits her martial arts strengths as well as a warmth she rarely gets to show off. Her most high profile roles lately have been as the pansexual murder spy in Star Trek: Discovery (which, however, more please), the icy matriarch in Crazy Rich Asians and the wacky, niche shop owner in Last Christmas. There’s nuance in Evelyn, and Yeoh makes us “get” her when she throws tantrums, tries to dodge her destiny, navigates her fraught relationship with Joy and displays all manner of messy behaviours. And that might be Daniels final message. We’re messy beings. Deal.
For all of EEAAO’s boggling fun – and there are many, many laugh-out-loud moments – Daniels could have exercised a little restraint; like almost everything to grace any screen these days it’s about 20 minutes too long. There are lingering moments peppered throughout the film that could have been excised and had zero impact on the final wallop editor Paul Rogers gives the closing frames, but I guess if you concoct something truly refreshing, creative and wholly entertaining you’ve earned the right to indulge some (moderately) bad habits. DEK
Wow, that Short Round sure grew up good