If this is the multiverse, I am in! Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Where do you begin with a film like this? I want to say that there has never been a film like this, but the Daniels wear their influences so well and rework them into something so wholly original that I’m chary of saying that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” reminds me of any of them. Was that a torturous sentence or what? 

You are a Chinese immigrant woman who moved to the United States with her husband to run a laundromat. You have a daughter. You had dreams. You are a singer, a dancer, a novelist. And none of these have worked out. Even the laundromat is failing and under the scrutiny of an IRS audit.  Your elderly father has come to live with you and in addition to having to discuss the precarious situation of your business today with an auditor, you also have a Chinese New Year celebration for your customers and the neighborhood. Oh, and there’s your daughter. Why can’t she be normal but it’s okay. Her girlfriend seems nice enough and times are different. It’s just that your father is not going to understand, Gong Gong is very traditional and set in his ways. 

And Waymond. Why did I have to marry such a - a - nice guy but so - useless? 

Everything happens at once. Joy shows up with her girlfriend just as Gong Gong wants breakfast, and what is Waymond jabbering on about? Can’t he see I’m busy? Oh, great, Joy brought the girlfriend and gets angry when I call her a he…we don’t have pronouns in Chinese! Becky is nice but oh great that big nose woman needs her laundry. All these receipts and where’s her laundry and why all these damn googly eyes on everything? Oh, Waymond, why are you such a child? You thought her laundry would be “happier” upstairs? 

Ugh, why does that big bearded guai-lo have to tell me that the perfume I’m wearing is what his dead wife wore? Bod gai! Oh, dear, Gong Gong is down here in the laundromat! Oh, dear, and Joy wants him to meet Becky?! NO! NO! Not now, Joy!

Great. Now she’s angry with me because I introduce Becky as her “close friend.” Why did I say she’s eating too much and getting fat? Why did I let her drive off? She was supposed to come to the IRS with us to interpret (we’ll be fine, our English is fine).

Well, we’re here. Gong Gong in his wheel chair and Waymond and me are really cramped in this elevator. And what on earth? Has Waymond lost his mind? Why did he open his umbrella in the elevator? Why is he babbling about the many verse? Multiverse? What the heck is that? Oh, he has lost his mind or he’s playing games at the worst time. Why would I want to got the janitor’s closet? Why is he passing a note to me? Like what, we are in school? He’s falling apart. He’s not a very strong man and this IRS business has gotten to him. We are going to lose the laundry.

No. I’m not going to the janitor’s closet. That’s stupid. But why does it feel like I should? Ugh, this woman is awful; she just confuses us with brig words. That’s how they treat us; no respect, no understanding. Gong Gong thinks the laundromat is foolish but then, everything I ever done is always foolish to him. I am just a foolish woman. What is happening? I AM IN THE JANITOR’S CLOSET!!! And Waymond is jabbering at me about the multiverse again and I am somehow supposed to save it? What? WHAT IS HAPPENING? He is pinned with his back against the door and arms are coming through the door! They’re killing him! OMG! It’s Mrs. Deirdre! She’s not an IRS agent! She is a demon!!!

I am paying attention. I am in front of her as she is gong on about something. Gong Gong, leave me alone; I know what I’m doing. I - what is she talking about? Didn’t she just..? What are those things on her desk? You don’t get one unless you’ve seen a lot of s.h.i.t. She is very vulgar. Wait. What did Waymond say to her to buy us more time to file? We better go. 

In the janitor’s closet, Waymond told me to be ready to fight. Is this Deirdre going to hurt us more? Oh my god! She’s coming after us! Okay, fine. I’ve seen wuxia movies. I can do this. OW! Punching someone in the face is hard! But I knocked her down! 

Waymond! You told me to fight so I am fighting! Great. Security is coming! Deirdre demon is yelling at us! Get on the floor, Evelyn! Why did I hit her? Because Waymond told me to fight! Wait, what is he doing? He’s - where did he learn kung-fu? Oh, my. This is not my husband. 

We run. But what about Gong Gong? He tells me my father will be okay. Then he is telling me that he is Alpha Waymond and that there are versions of us throughout the multiverse. My Alpha died? That’s horrible. But why does he think I can do anything? I have to learn to version hop? Version jump? We have to run! Quick! The stairwell! Oh, no, Deirdre demon is coming (“tell her you love her; that’s how you’ll jump! You have to mean it though!” I try but now as she is flying down on me, I put my palms together and tell her that I do love her and suddenly I know kung-fu; I version jumped to a place where even a pinky can be kung-fu.) 

Jobu Putaki is the big bad person I have to look for. Alpha Me pushed her too hard and now she wants revenge; she feels everything all the time all at once and it has messed her up. She splinters. I do, too! But that she is so powerful and coming for me is terrifying. I am very afraid.

I pass through my past: I am born, the doctor apologizes; “I am sorry - it’s a girl”, I meet Waymond, we leave for the West, we open the laundromat, we have Joy. I jump into another time, another place, another past. I am a movie star! I am glamorous! I am assured, beautiful! And there, at this premiere, at the top of the stairs is Waymond. He looks so handsome in his black formal suit. He is stunning like Tony Leung!

We talk. We knew each other many years before. I tell him that if we had gone off together, our lives would be failures. We would struggle with a crappy laundromat and our life would be hard.  

Somewhere - back in the ‘normal’ world? Jobu Putaki comes to me, for me. OMG! IT IS Joy!!! MY DAUGHTER IS JOBU PUTAKI!!! She is beautiful but scary! She says something about an everything bagel! She tries to take me there but I don’t want to go! She tells me that by putting everything on a bagel, she thought it would collapse in on itself but it didn’t. The world is full of this dark round circle. 

Mrs. Deirdre circled the totals on a receipt and whenever I see Deirdre Demon, she has a circle in the middle of her forehead like a third eye. And then, other people have the circle! So it is all about the bagel?

All of this so confusing. Why me? Why Joy?

Why does she keep calling me by my name? I am her mother. No, she is Jobu Putaki, not Joy. 

I version jump again and again. At another point, I am in an alley outside the movie premiere. With Waymond who is smoking. Smoking?! It is like that Wong Kar-Wai movie; very romantic but very sad.

I am fighting Jobu with kung-fu. But I am strong. She took me to a white temple to see the bagel and now we are there again. She says I feel the same things she does. She just wants someone to feel what she feels, and we are in the bagel! And then, we are two rocks in a universe where life didn’t evolve but we communicate with our thoughts.

So much other jumping. It is like being everywhere all at once. I have hot dogs for fingers. I saw a scene in a movie like that. A love story. I am in the love story with Deirdre who is hurt by my callousness. I do love her. We split up. We reconcile. 

Ew. When we kiss (this is nasty, but we really suck each others’ fingers), mustard comes out of our mouths. But there is love.

And then somehow, Joy and Waymond and I are back home. I get some packing tape and tape her to the chair. Gong Gong appears in his wheelchair and tells me I have to kill her! She is Jobu Putaki! I take a box cutter and approach her. Can I do it. I cut her loose. Gong Gong reproaches me. I am weak, he says. Always, in every universe! My father! I am his disappointment. 

In the rock universe, Joy and I think-talk. She tells me that there are always more discoveries to make us feel more insignificant like shit. 

There is so much pain. But in this rock world, there is quiet. 

I am working hard in the ‘normal’ world on the receipts. Joy Jobu comes in and we fight. She drops onto the couch. Waymond comes in and is upset that the IRS stuff isn’t ready and the party is happening soon. 

But Waymond in this world and another also brought me divorce papers. Alpha Waymond wrote instructions on the back of them when we were in the elevator. Why should I care. I told Waymond in this world that I had seen what my life without him would be like and it was beautiful. Later, he agrees with me; that I would be happier without him. 

So, so much pain in this world. So much confusion. I am like a broken mirror, one face here, another next to it, and another, and another.

In another version, we are cornered by the IRS security guards and customers from the laundromat. I need to protect Waymond. Alpha Waymond was shot but now my Waymond is standing and telling everyone to just be kind. That he knows they are afraid but it does not have to be that way. This is my Waymond.

Jobu Joy is at the top of the stairs and tells everyone to attack but as I go to fight, Waymond reminds me not to hurt anyone. I am able to help people as I run up the stairs after Jobu Joy. I feel only wanting to help. And love? I guess? But it works. I am even able to use acupressure to help a security guy with his neck problem. I get to the top of the stairs and grab Joy. She resists and tries to fight me off. Oh, god, what is wrong with us?

I am in the laundromat with the party. Deirdre and the police show up to serve papers and take the laundromat and arrest me. Fine. I don’t care. I just don’t care. I have always hated this place. They place me in handcuffs and I sit by the window. 

Waymond in my Wong Kar-Wai movie world walks away from me. I want things to be alright but I am done. I am not strong enough to put up with this foolishness. Even in the Japanese steak house, the other chef who was so good at his job because of the raccoon that guided him is in trouble and afraid because I exposed his trick (the raccoon was hidden under his chef’s hat the whole time!) and they are taking his raccoon away. 

Waymond and Gong Gong are holding onto me as I hang onto Jobu Joy. I cannot let her go.

Deirdre is talking to Waymond in the laundromat. What is my silly husband saying to her? She tells the police to let me go and she goes outside to sit. 

Joy is still mad at me. I introduced Becky to Gong Gong at the party as Joy’s girlfriend and Joy ran away from me. “Good for you, Mom! You are figuring your shit out!” I think I understand this word more. But Joy, Joy. She just wants to vanish. No, she wants me to feel what she feels. 

On the rock world, I am able to move closer to her. It freaks her out. I think that is the word she uses. Her rock scoots away and falls over the cliff. 

In our world, I follow her to her car where she says all that stuff about what she is feeling and I know I have to let her go and be who she needs to be. 

I go out to sit with Deirdre. She gives me her vape thing and tells me how to smoke! It burns and I cough. I hugged her. I ask her what my silly husband said to her and she tells me about how her ex-husband served her divorce papers after driving his car into a neighbor’s house. She calls us bad-ass bitches. But we are more. She deserves love, too.

By the car, Joy cries. I cry. We embrace. Waymond, too. 

I left Becky with Gong Gong after Joy ran off to the car and I see her pushing Gong Gong in his wheelchair. On the stairs, somehow Gong Gong had cornered me. He was angrily keeping me from Joy with all these machines wrapped around him. LEAVE ME ALONE! I want my daughter and I don’t care what you think of her! She is your granddaughter, old man!

There is so much pain but there is great love in all of us. For all of us.

This is as close as I can get to telling you what this movie is like and what it means (to me, anyway.) It puts Marvel and the Matrix to shame with its multiverse hopping and splintering of realities. Because it is just us. Who hasn’t felt this way? But how much more for the Chinese woman who came to this country with her husband, who failed at everything but whose other alternative versions lead lives of depths and wonder? Just like her. 

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn inhabits the role of a lifetime. Those of us who have followed her since her beginning have known what a great - and I mean great - actor she is. This is so very much her due, and perhaps the apotheosis of her career; it is a kind of summation and a shot fired across the bow to announce to the rest of Hollywood, that yes, Michelle Yeoh is here. She always has been but never given the opportunity to lead an ensemble to the peak. 

And what an ensemble. There are so many exceptional performances and everyone shines. Stephanie Hsu is a revelation as Joy/Jobu Putaki. If she has proven herself a riveting presence as Joel Maisel’s love interest in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, she goes into a whole other realm (or series of realms) here. Ke Huy Quan as Waymond has grown into an actor of considerable depth. No flies on his work in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” or “Goonies” but then again, he was a child then. He brings the funny here, but also tenderness and pathos.

James Hong as the patriarch does what he always does; fleshes out a full human being in a few strokes like a master painter. Four hundred fifty or so performances he’s credited with in IMDb and I guarantee you that most of them are jewels In his 90s, he still radiates freshness as though he continues to discover something new in his art each time out. I suspect this one must have really made him happy. 

Finally, Deirdre. Jamie Lee Curtis can literally not turn in a bad performance. Is it selfish that I want her and Yeoh to go on the road as a two-woman show? There was a moment where I was convinced that Deirdre would be a throwaway role. After about half an hour, I realized nothing was thrown away or cast off here willy-nilly, no matter how mad as muffins this movie gets. 

And oh, it is mad. But what splendid, beautiful madness. The Daniels sophomore effort amplifies their command of storytelling and shows disciplined hands behind the Loony Toons kineticism that drives the film. To provide a film like this with so little tonal whiplash given the themes and visual inventiveness requires remarkable control in all the right places. 

Larkin Seiple’s cinematography for “Swiss Army Man” supported the Daniels’ vision admirably there, but see also his work on “I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore” and any number of the music videos he’s lensed. He is also the DP on the forthcoming “Gaslit” about Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts!) 

Paul Rogers editing deserves special mention, as well. A movie like this couldn’t long survive without a rhythm to sustain the momentum and tension between the cross-cutting of action sequences and character beats and do it so seamlessly. Editing is the visual analog of the musical score and Rogers’ work here is pretty damn awesome.

Speaking of scores, Son Lux is just a freaking inspired choice. They are a great band but there’s so much more going on here than just a swell bunch of background music. There’s a kind of sonic geography that we journey through across the length of the film. (Even the end credits is genius with a collaboration on a new song with Mitski and David Byrne!) Genius. Just pure genius.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is the first genuinely great film of 2022. I was predisposed to like it; I wasn’t completely sure how it would come off. “Swiss Army Man” is a work of restrained genius (certainly by comparison) and I was worried that with a bigger budget and cast, eccentricity might overwhelm humanity. I didn’t anticipate such a fully human and empathetic opus. 

Click here for my Oscar Post-Mortem.