Everything Everywhere All At Once: Two Views

By:  ARIANA THORNTON ’24

“You’re capable of anything because you’re so BAD at everything!” This is just one of the oxymorons that deftly theme the absurdist Asian-American sci-fi comedy-drama film Everything Everywhere All at Once. 

The film thrusts us into the world of Evelyn Wang, a working-class Chinese-American immigrant mother who can only give a few seconds of attention to each of the many things on her plate: her struggling laundromat business audited by the IRS; her husband, Waymond, trying to serve her divorce papers; her demanding father here to visit; and her daughter, Joy, trying to get her mother to accept her girlfriend. So much is going on, and Evelyn has no time to think at all. She simply acts— she delegates, interrupts conversations, and scurries around in a precarious balance between efficiency and complete chaos. 

It is on this day that Evelyn discovers the multiverse. “Alpha Waymond,” her husband from the Alphaverse alternate reality, arrives to tell her that a great evil, Jobu Tupaki, is threatening the multiverse, and only Evelyn can turn the tide of the war. Why? Jobu Tupaki was once Evelyn’s daughter in the Alphaverse. A brilliant scientist, Alpha Evelyn pressured Joy to participate in a “verse-jumping” experiment gone wrong. Stretched past her limit, Alpha Joy’s mind fractured, damning her to experience everything, in all the alternate universes, at the same exact time. Jobu Tupaki therefore finds that nothing matters—there is always another alternate reality that is almost exactly the same. 

As Alpha Waymond recruits Evelyn to fight Jobu Tupaki, Evelyn’s world becomes a mind-boggling superhero-esque fantasy. Yet in that absurdity, Evelyn has more power to think and choose than ever before. When Alphaverse agents threaten her daughter’s life, Evelyn takes a stand. No. I’m doing this my own way. She hardly knew anything about multiverses or verse-jumping, yet Evelyn had all she needed to know: her daughter is in danger, and she wants, needs, and chooses to save her. 

Jobu Tupaki, a second-generation queer Chinese-American, and Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant mother, have something in common: a profound dissatisfaction with their lives— so profound it’s a growing internal malaise— yet they try desperately to hold themselves together. Throughout the film, they each grapple with their tense, sometimes inexplicable realities: of being lovable or unlovable; hopeful or hopeless; compassionate or bitter; boxed up or fantastically messy. They are a daughter and mother in a failing laundromat. A kung fu apprentice and a master. A jailer and a convict. Two characters in a child’s doodle. Pinatas spilling candy on the ground. 

“I’m tired,” Joy says to Evelyn. “I don’t want to hurt anymore and for some reason when I’m with you it just hurts the both of us.”

This movie threw me into sobs the first time I watched it with my mother. A cultural connection to the movie’s premise isn’t necessary; it hits the existential core of every human being. 

How do you reconcile with your regrets? How do you find stillness in the world’s ever-present noise? How do you protect the meaning in places that seem to have none? How do we heal generational trauma? What does sacrificial love look like? These are all questions Everything Everywhere All At Once seeks to address. But above all, the film emphasizes kindness. Kindness to yourself and to others.

“Of all places I could be, I just want to be here with you,” says Evelyn to Joy/Jobu Tupaki. Their embrace comes together as a collision of apples, of googly-eyed boulders, of larger and smaller planets. It’s something cosmic and all-powerful. An intimate beauty. Because this film is also about family—the balance of messiness, fierceness, healing, and forgiveness.

By CHENGYUE ZHANG ’24

Spoiler Alert…

On my plane ride back to the United States this August, I watched the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. I curled up in my seat and didn’t bother wiping away the tears streaming down my face and dampening my mask. This film artfully captured the nature of a relationship between a mother and a daughter with its weird erotic moments, hurt, and attachments.

Evelyn Wang is a first generation immigrant running a laundromat with her husband Waymond. She is already struggling to keep up with her daily troubles. Then Alpha Waymond — that Waymond from the alternate Alphaverse— shows up. Somehow the fate of the infinite universe now lies on her shoulders. Somehow, as the worst version of herself in all the possible multiverses, only she can defeat villain Joy/Jobu Tupaki, her daughter from Alphaverse. Evelyn had pushed Joy into hyperawareness-induced insanity. 

We the viewer are never given a chronological narrative tracing all the past conflicts between Evelyn and Joy. The chaos compounds when Jobu Tupaki’s appearances are marked with extravagant, sparkly make-ups and surreal costumes. Everything about her screams chaos, craze, absurdity, and danger. Jobu Tupaki kills and flirts: “If you really put everything on a bagel it becomes this— the truth…Nothing matters.” 

The mother and daughter travel the world. They are two broken piñatas hanging beside each others’ spilt candies. They are two stones next to each other on a cliff in the valleys. They are escaped prisoner and jailor, they are mother and daughter pulling at each other’s hair, they are chasing and laughing. “I am your daughter, Evelyn. Your daughter is me,” Jobu Tupaki says. 

The screen flashes through all the multiverses. All the random multiverses that Evelyn had jumped into make a comeback and are shown to go towards a happy ending. As the moment builds, Evelyn confronts her father, introducing him to Joy’s girlfriend. And then, things do not work out.

“This is all just a pointless swirling bucket of bullshit, Evelyn. The bagel is where we finally find peace.”

“Stop calling me Evelyn. I. Am. Your. Mother.”

“Stay back! Please! Just stop!”

The loud music that is building up comes to an abrupt end. Joy storms into the empty parking lot, and Evelyn follows right behind. Such a story, absurd in every way, is tethered down to reality by a genius moment. Joy says “Mom, just stop.” “I’m tired.” “Just let me go.”

However one would wish to make sense of their life and to wrap up their life in a little bow tie, it doesn’t work. Especially if you are still living your life, the struggle and pain that you are experiencing do not go away magically in a climatic moment like in stories. Even if your logic tells you you will be fine, and things will work out, your senses just keep telling you it hurts and hurts and hurts. At that moment the pain seems to never stop. This scene leaves the space for these emotions. 

“Okay.”

“Out of all the places I could be, why would I want to be here with you? It doesn’t make sense,” Evelyn says. Mothers are never required to be there for their children. They are human, and they have a choice.

“Maybe there is something out there. Something that explains why you are still looking for me after all this time.” Evelyn says. Despite calling her mother by first name throughout, Jobu Tupaki is but a child. 

“You can do anything anywhere. Why not go somewhere where your daughter is more than this… This.” Joy says. It’s clear that no matter how independent and powerful Joy may be on the outside, she still yearns for Evelyn’s understanding, comfort, and approval.

And here Evelyn has a choice. She chooses to recognize her bond with her daughter, but also that the two of them are ultimately leading separate lives. They are both full human beings, so much more than the roles they play. They need to let go.