top of page

Everything Everywhere All At Once: The Screenscape of Asian American Mechanics

Writer's picture: Dr Dipsikha BhagawatiDr Dipsikha Bhagawati

Updated: Jan 31

Asian American film and media scholars evaluate the work of Asian American filmmakers of the 1970s who sought to change racist images, engage in racial equality politics, and advocate for more Asians in the film industry. They pioneered Asian American cinema in the 1990s and in the 21st century. Asian American film and media studies, like cultural studies, treat Asian identities as necessary realities that can support the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in film and media, while also addressing inequalities such as class and gender inequality. Marginalized groups are able to be considered as a citizen group, participate in social resources, find themselves recognized in popular culture, and finally express their oppositional politics through racial, linguistic, and generational integration in Asian American tradition. The film uses the nihilistic symbolism of animism to expand its range through the integration of various transpacific film genres. These include dystopian sci-fi, martial arts, kung fu, superhero, anime, romantic comedies, alien dramas, arthouse films, and nostalgic romances. To keep her multi-ethnic community and family from falling apart, Evelyn must play leading roles in every genre—a task worthy of Asia’s biggest movie star, Michelle Yeoh. By transforming this film into a collective story about a family’s struggle and learning compassion across different worlds, “Everything Has Its Time” achieves what other Asian-American films have failed to achieve: box office success, awards recognition and mainstream representation of Asian Americans.




“You are not unlovable. There is always something to love. Even in a stupid, stupid universe where we have hot dogs for fingers, we get very good with our feet… the universe is so much bigger than you realise.”


The multiverse Is a theoretical concept in physics and cosmology that suggests that there may be multiple parallel universes that co exist alongside our own. The idea is based on the collagen that there may be an infinite number of possible configurations of matter and energy

The film Everything Everything All at Once explores the concept of metaphysical world in astounding myriads. Behind apparently constipated threads, there’re stories deep down. The parallel universe or the multiverse – the synergistic struggle of a woman to save her native planet and to weigh her family balance, the philosophical theories of Buddhisim, existentialism and nihilism and a bizzare blending of multiple sub plots are a challenge to the Marvel universe, to the Hollywood ostentation of blend and serve gourmet culture and a tribute to the cult art of Asian filmmaking. The concept is rooted in modem physics and cosmology, but EEAAO has elevated the theme thousand times further by exploring the idea that our choices in one universe can have an impact on the entire multiverse.

 

Throughout the film, Mei, a struggling laundromat (played by Michelle Yeoh) is guided by a mysterious figure called “The Weavers”, who exist in the metaphysical universe. The weaveras are able to see all possible realities and help Mei navigate the multiverse in order to safe existence itself. This concept of beings existing in a metaphysical territory beyond our own physical phenomenon is ubiquitous in many sci fi movies like the celebrated “The Mood For Love” (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and to reinforce our collective memory, the unit creates sets such used at “The Matrix”, “Kill Bill” and “Die Hard”.


EEAAO is a film text with the aesthetics of beautifully chaotic photography, capturing the backdrop that look like a Hong Kong alleyway with textural nuances, it has taken on westem impacts but has also preserved and reinterpreted traditional Oriental conceptions. The directors pay tribute to the long history of Asians in the United States through a unique and repetiable story. The entire film is shot on Arri Alexa Mini, blessing it with stunning visuals. To accentuate the difference between parallel universes and make them feel fortuitously more extreme, they used various lenses: both spherical and anamorphic, fluxing between two styles.





The film can be one lined as “Michelle Yeoh and the multiverse of sadness.” This is not the first movie to use multiverse as a storytelling device, rather one of its exclusive kinds that uses the parallel universe to depict several genuine themes about everything from 24/7 digital culture instead of using it as a door to the intellectual property of a corporate world and to denote the gap between the parents and the children. One of the directors has said that it explores his own adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and how it has effected his life. But what really appealed to the audience is the way the film explose two of our essential philosophical fibres: existentialism and nihilism, and when we have to talk about these two spicy components,  EEAAO has done something extraordinary in using the multiverse to explore the metaphysical implications of these components, with a constant dealing of two simultaneous threads- existential despair and portraying prayers for nihilist bagels that put us out of our perennial misery.

“Does anything means anything anywhere?”

‘The Swiss Army Man’, the marvellous debut film from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan had conceived just a foetus of the question of probability and possibility of existential omnipresence:

“You just have to remember that we’re all here for a purpose, and the universe picks its time. Everything everywhere matters to everything”.

…and in a hiatus of just six years, Everything Everything All At Once has made it a circular chant amongst a cortege of psychotic multiverse. Daniels have given their audience such an optical authenticity that everything seems to happen everywhere in a blink. Michelle, the Chino American immigrant was interested to connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse as audited by the Internal Revenue Service, In her abstract joumey throughout, she had to deal with numerous physical and psychological crisis including that of her near and dear ones. Her lesbian daughter Joy (Stephen Hsu) and her relationship, her affable husband Waynond (Ke Huy Quan) curn the tritagonist of the sci fi and his coasted efforts to bring back some worth to their married life along with Jobu Topaki (Stephanie Hsu), the deuteragonist of EEAAO. She’s the alpha counterpart of Joy Wang whose mine has been fragmented into numerous possibilities. Torned amongst myriads of finite infinities, Michelle realises the essence of kindness through her husband's voice that whatever the situation is, kindness pays off-as stated by her in an interview


This is like a roller coaster, right? Put away your phones, put on your safety belts. With the Daniels, I had to see if they were certifiably insane, in the best possible way. It’s very important that I feel the director is a visionary and I’m one of their tools”


Behind the filmy transit of one of the wildest of the year, the protagonist’s battle to prevent the cataclysm of a quantum universe parallely teaches us the hundreds of roles to be played in one single life and the constant battle with the numerous minions of different temperatures that are the part of our own self along with this grand vista. To authenticate the portrayal of alternate universes, Daniels have made brilliant use of subjective devices of googly eyes, hot dog fingers and conversing rocks that are real challenges of mainstream film making.

Each of the characters are going through their own types of existential crisis right off the best and before the fibre of reality starts to get decoded, Evelyn embodies the type of mundane empirical despair, a great lot from the vibes of a character from a Camus or a Sartre novel. The audience sense parallels in the films antagonist Jabu Topaki, who’s another example of what’s everything that’s happening at all time. But instead of giving him some greater sense, truth or meaning, it has made her absolutely miserable. Every character is invested in searching their physical and psychological location in a cosmic level. The rationalist and the idealist school of thought believed that structure of reality was something that was cognizable through human consciousness-coined as metaphysics. The post period of German idealism propagated timeless thinkers like Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche who tried to decipher the nature of the absolute and the four procedures of truth: Art, science, politics and love to enable people to find out ideas for a life of worth. The universes, the complex yet subtly blended genres of ambitious storytelling such as action, comedy and drama comprised in Everything Everywhere All at Once are rooted in one honest moral that even we’re trapped in some finite condition, we have infinite possibilities within those, and the consequences of our actions and choices determine the fate of all existence.

28 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page