| USA, 2022 | Mindfuck | Mainstream | Trailer |
Roughly 3000 years ago, century up, century down, a very wise civilization living in the Gangeatic basin coined one word in an attempt to describe and understand a phenomenon they interpreted as a determinist, divine law of the universe: Everything is connected in space and time. A deed anywhere, anytime, propagates and results from its happening are carried on further away from it. Its spiritual successors would add to the former definition: The way you perceive the world, is the way the world responds to you. I won’t effort in naming that concept, because its connotations after being appropriated by the Western New Age movement and its subconsequent usage until today’s internet culture do disgust me. But, if you dig deep into the roots of Eastern philosophies, back then when priests intended to fuel the universe to avoid its decay, you will for sure find its parallelisms with how quantum physics conceives the state of our cosmos.
What distinguishes todays global civilization with the ancient Vedics and their children is the postulate mathematical basis we have for it -which incidentally has a high level of conjecture-. This has nourrished the fantasies of many inspired storytellers and -creators in order to venture to explore a kind of voyaging that allows a worldbuilding with an apparent freedom of events and twists while being loyal to a set of well-established basic rules. The concept of multiverse is trendy and sexy! And fantasies involving this kind of world can open place for stories with a strong degree of mindfuck and crazy, foolish fun when crafted by makers with a well-structured creative sense.
Everything Everywhere All At Once immediately awakes a deep sense of vast, of grandness with its sole name, but also suggests chaos and dynamic disorder. However, there is a slight addendum to be made: Chaos does not equal random. It has its fixed set of crazy, wonderful but solid laws that result in the unexpected happening. I couldn’t find a better name for this movie, considering that it embodies precisely what it suggests. You guys know my love for postmodern, oblicuous storytelling and mindfucking premises.
Starting with the classic archetype of ordinary person is thrown into a bigger-than-life situation and succeeds precisely because of their ordinary condition, this wonderful movie branches, ventures, dares and gifts and rewards. Continuing with the theme of chaos, the footage feels like a mélange of genres that has been purposedly crafted to look funny and ridiculous but epic and heavy at the same time. Michelle Yeoh, a truly eclectic actress, is given the chance to show the extraordinary within the ordinary, the possibilities of being a diletant. She is the movie as much as the movie is her. She can display all the talents she has gathered in her acting history to show different versions of herself, to the point that we don’t know if her character was made with her in mind, or if the character was modified to fit her.
I swear, there does not exist any boundary between fiction and reality, between perception and objectivity, between meta and movie -sans the fantasy shown, of course-. All the possibilites of what could be or had been, in and out, exist in the story we witness. We can really perceive that the obvious farce and fanservice that exist in Everything Everywhere All At Once taste strangely real.
I am aware that what I am describing is difficult to digest and understand if you have not seen the movie -and i wouldn’t blame you-, but this kind of abstractness is also part of it. Deep within the fun and laughter, the raw emotions of enjoyment and pleasure we get every single damn second of the footage, subtle, ethereal concepts are manipulated -and I am not talking about the laws of multiverse leaping now-. Everything Everywhere All At Once, ultimately, shows us a dichotomy that is as important and perturbating today as it has been throughout all humankind’s history. When we learn that there is nothing in this world that depends on us, that we can’t control a shit, that we are nothing but dust which is your reaction? Emptiness and despair, or fullness and peace of mind?
Nihilism vs. Perennialism is a true debate. And here is where we return to the beginning of this text. The world responds to you the way you perceive it. Everything Everywhere All At Once is added to the large list of wisdom pearls that finds something in the mud. Peace, happiness and funny sympathy. From the Veda to Aldous Huxley, passing though Jesus of Nazareth, Karl Marx, Joseph Campbell, Zeno and Epicurus and Schopenhauer. And precisely Schopenhauer said that the ancient Indians were the wisest people of all times and places. They named what has carried a true change of paradigm ever since then, whose extents last until today and most likely will continue lasting in a way or the other; and what has inspired fortunate people of science and art to carry on with it. To the point of having amazing products like the one I am talking about.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is truly Everything, Everywhere, and All at Once; in much many more levels and layers that what may look like. Never a mainstream movie has been as grand, as chaotic, as immanent and as fun as this one, at the same time.
And as a small pop addition I’ll say: it has the same spirit as Night is Short, Walk on Girl, which is nothing but a good thing.