What’s remarkable about good films is their ability to transform a personal anecdote into a universally accepted truth. What’s remarkable about great films, which are definitely much rarer, is their ability to take the insignificant, the seemingly below-than-average, and treat it with such serious zest that its eventual fluorescence into an earnest question wins the audience over.
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is the newest A24 film directed by “Swiss Army Man” auteurs Daniels, the preferred title of directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, in which an elderly woman attempts to do her taxes as she finds herself vying for control over the universe with an interdimensional bagel cult as the world caves in on itself. And yes, it’s a great film. And yes, it’s also as crazy as it sounds.
The film, both experimental and crowd-pleasing, consists of three parts marinated with various genres ranging from butt-kicking kung-fu action to tear-jerking drama of the importance of family. All this is perfectly packed away inside an outer layer of extreme low brow comedy.
Often dismissed by many critics, low brow humor isn’t exactly the most respected of genres when it comes to films, nor is the combination of a soulful, yet clandestine exploration of the human psyche a conventionally accepted pairing. Daniels find the perfect balance, turning an imprudently executed concept (verse jumping by eating chapsticks into universes where you spurt out mustard from sausage fingers) into something grander than it might appear at first glance.
So what is the “something grander”? What did Daniels want to say at the end of all the butt jokes and “Ratatouille” references? The central theme of the film, revealed in both passionate naivety and hedonistic honesty, is that nothing matters.
Perhaps the embrace of surface level nihilism is excusable in our current day and age of tyrannical world leaders and a deadly global pandemic. Or the retreat into Nietzsche’s open, long-dead arms is embracing immature levels of angst we thought only were possible during our most rebellious punk phases.
Still, there’s something different to Daniels’ take on the subject matter on whether God is dead or not – maybe the question itself was flawed in the first place. The title, quite appropriately framed considering the film’s wild visuals (the budget for the film was $2.5 million – compared to “Doctor Strange”’s $160 million, it still looks better…creativity triumphs over multimillion dollar companies once again) that bends time and space, lacks a key component of the “five w”s.
This omission is rather important as it is purposeful, which ties in beautifully with their theme – nothing matters. Everything does not matter. Everywhere does not matter. Every time, every why, and every how does not matter. But everyone does.
Suspended helplessly in the infinite multiplicity of our lives, maybe it was true when Nietzche proudly complained that in the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters. Everything, everywhere, will at one point in time fade into obscurity.
I think Daniels’ audacity of rejecting such notions and reducing it to silly importance is an important reminder to the audience that nothing matters, yet we still do. And if that message takes Michelle Yeoh rubbing sausage hands romantically with Jamie Lee Curtis to get across, then so be it. We were all in a dire need to have a laugh anyway.