Why Embrace the Chaos of Everything Everywhere All At Once, review

Why Embrace the Chaos of Everything Everywhere All At Once

Everything Everywhere All At Once (or “everything, everywhere, all at once”, more or less). Like the feeling of overwhelm that explodes in the mind the moment we start thinking about our life, about our failures, about what we could have done and haven't done, about fantasies about what could have been or will be, while the world seems crush us under the rubble of all regrets and "if only ...". The Daniels film produced by A24 is not, however, a film about defeat, about the self-denial of individuals towards a present of routine and defeat, or about how sometimes our feeling of nothingness makes us mean to those we love. This is a story of possibility and love and of all the good that can be obtained from that chaos that our lives have become over time, on a background of martial arts strikes and inconceivable leaps between universes. So find out with us why you absolutely must watch this film. Let yourself be overwhelmed by the visual and emotional explosions of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Embrace the chaos.

A question of perspectives

In March of this year it turns out that in the States a film entitled Everything Everywhere All At Once was released in cinemas. If the title already seems something unlikely, even the trailer contributes to confusing ideas, with a Michelle Yeoh overwhelmed by a whirlwind of events that toss her here and there through the most disparate situations. From it, it emerges that the plot has something to do with multiverses (a concept with which today's cinematography seems to be getting married, especially in the MCU), with the fights and with this woman who, in spite of herself, is dragged into crazy jumps among the realities that make up his existence, although his only concerns are taxes and the management of his laundromat. It also turns out, however, that this film is much more than it seems. The public who has had the opportunity to see it is quite in agreement in the positive judgments. The takings are fine. Over time Everything Everywhere All At Once therefore began to no longer seem such an absurd title and curiosity increased in Italy, at the news that the film would also arrive in our country.




Probably, however, nothing could prepare us for what we witnessed with its projection. Everything Everywhere All At Once, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (aka the Daniels) and produced by the independent A24, is a wonderful eulogy of the surreal and the improbable. A film that on paper looks like a martial arts action with journeys in the multiverse in between, but which actually crosses the boundaries of any possible category with stunning originality and a riot of chaotic, dazzling creativity. It's easy to compare it to the Wachowski sisters' Matrix and say "it's just the Matrix with gags", thus nullifying all the inventiveness that Everything Everywhere All At Once brings with it. Yes, there is also the Matrix in the Daniels film, how can you deny it? And yet this almost out of nowhere film in our news feed on upcoming movies is much more than its inspirations and the quotes it makes, even to the very mechanisms that move the seventh art (for example: making an arts expert martial arts a beautiful movie star). Original, crazy, ready to amaze just when you least expect it: in short, you cannot simply reduce Everything Everywhere All At Once to the baggage of filmic knowledge to which the registers wink.




Roughly, the plot is this: Evelyn Wang owns a laundromat, which she runs with her husband Waymond (Jonathan Ke Quan), but of which she may soon be expropriated. Tax evasion is the specter that hovers over the business. While Evelyn is too busy avoiding getting to the bottom of it, she doesn't notice that Meanwhile Waymond is preparing the divorce papers and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is dying inside every day more from lack of attention. of his mother, as for the embarrassment his homosexuality causes in Evelyn. If the taxes to pay seemed a nightmare, everything falls apart when Evelyn is approached by a Waymond from an alternate universe who spits an absurd truth in her face. She could be the only one, among countless versions of herself, who can save every existing universe from the threat of Jobu Tupaki: a being who has seen and learned everything in the multiverse and is able to live all versions of herself. simultaneously, in search of total annihilation, his and anyone else's.




The problem, with Everything Everywhere All At Once, are perhaps the expectations to which years of cinema about multiverses, fighting, superhero action from cinecomic, have accustomed us and practically addicted. To watch this revelation film of the A24, instead, you have to sit in the room abandoning everything you have learned so far, letting yourself go to the unpredictability, with twists so kitsch as to be brilliant, at an uneven pace that nevertheless manages to balance the " dead times ”with an explosive action and a brilliant and spectacular visual representation. Already the only theory of a multiverse in which each version of itself can be interconnected and mutually learn memories and skills from the others, is a real cunning that not only serves the purpose of a plot that is heavily based on fighting (even with little fingers ! Little fingers with muscles!), But it is also visually satisfying and engaging in editing. Not only that: in Everything Everywhere All At Once there are also humorous ideas that arrive without warning, so much so that they leave the two extremes of a crackling laugh or a paralyzing daze. In this regard, we call into question the man who threw himself into a bomb dive exactly above a butt plug, thus acquiring the art of kung fu. Or the sequences where Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh have sausages for fingers and perform every action with their feet. In short, you have to change your perspective and not expect anything already seen: get comfortable and enjoy this journey into the absurd.

Everything Everywhere All At Once: love and hate

A journey into the which we are accompanied by interpreters who astound. Michelle Yeoh is a mother, a wife, a fighter and a perfect diva: if in the initial plans of the script the casting envisaged to include Jackie Chan as the protagonist, we do not see now how Everything Everywhere All At Once can be the same without Yeoh. Jamie Lee Curtis is astounding in her credibility as a tax employee, only to overturn everything we knew about The Body when we see her throwing herself like a bestial wrestler against her new enemies (and no, they're not tax evaders). Maximum admiration also for James Hong (Big Trouble in Chinatown), in the role of Evelyn's elderly father, who from the height of his 93 years demonstrates the readiness of a man at least twenty years younger. But also for Stephanie Hsu: icy, disturbing, a diva like Yeoh, she breaks the screen with a strong presence adorned with outfits that are costume prodigies. But on the podium he goes: Jonathan Ke Quan (The Goonies), in the role of a husband who gets the punch of a phrase like “I saw my life without you. She was beautiful ”. That he never abandons his peaceful and good-natured nature and suffers and makes us suffer for this, breaking the banks of tears. And he knows how to interpret his character, written exceptionally, both when he is a defeated husband, and when he is an agent of the multiverse with a wide range of moves to show off.



EEAAO_AR_03132020_0250.ARW

But why, in the end, should you embark on the vision of Everything Everywhere All At Once? Because the Daniels' film is not science fiction action, gags and theories for their own sake, however creative, spectacular, surprising (and delusional). But a film that exploits its explosiveness to point a finger at our chest, look us in the eye and tell us "it's not over, you still have a lot to do and a lot to give, you are important for those who love you so see that you are also important for yourself ". Things have to be said as they are: at the end of the film, certain concepts are expressed in a redundant way and the timing seems to have been stretched and squeezed to make as much "feel juice" come out as possible. In short, at this stage the timing could have been reduced and the final effect, we are quite sure, would not have changed. That is, that effect given by taking our heart and squeezing it in a fist, after deceiving us that we have so far been in front of an action-comedy.





Because Everything Everywhere All At Once is about love, that for the family and what we missed for ourselves when it was needed most. And then it also speaks of hatred, the one that arises from feelings of guilt, from feeling inadequate, misunderstood, failed, grows and feeds itself and that hatred for oneself becomes a black hole (or a bagel, as the case may be) capable of engulf us and lead us to self-destruction. And all this love and this hate comes from our every, tiny and apparently insignificant action: everything we do or don't do has consequences. And it is of the countless possibilities that the Daniels film talks about: the ones we shut ourselves off when we didn't feel up to it, the ones we still regret, the ones we have the choice for now but scare us to death for the future. .

We find ourselves in front of a mirror, we become Evelyn and at the same time we hate her and in embarking on this whirlwind journey through her interpersonal relationships with her husband, daughter, father, we can only admit how much she is difficult to love and love, in the light of the choices that have led us to today and have changed us, also changing our perception of others. Tears, we warn you, are guaranteed, so indulge in the emotions that Everything Everywhere All At Once provides and let it hurt you. Because only by embracing her painful truths will it be possible to understand that, if whoever is next to us now is the fruit of our failures, then perhaps we are not so failed.