‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’: Michelle Yeoh Carries A Bold & Boundless Multiverse Spectacle [SXSW]

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” carries a surprising sci-fi staidness for the loony directors behind “Swiss Army Man,” until a character, after ingesting a chock full of pink chapstick, magically becomes a martial arts master, decimating the security guards patrolling a drab IRS office in the process. In Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s bold and boundless, nihilist multiverse spectacle, the co-directors known as the Daniels gleefully reference “The Matrix,” “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the works of Wong Kar-wai to give the legendary Michelle Yeoh her most demanding, and possibly most fulfilling role, yet. It may come as a shock, then, how ordinary her character initially seems. 

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Dashed dreams, crushing alienation, generational gaps, and language barriers typically color immigrant-centered narratives. Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), a weary Chinese immigrant, is no different. Risking her father (James Hong) disowning her, she arrived with her naïve husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) to America with the hope of running a successful laundromat. Decades later, now deep in debt, she despises the limited life fashioned by her dweeby husband and is stuck taking care of her sullen father. The manic script certainly concerns these troubles, but discovers its richest proportions in a mother-daughter relationship that appears so beyond repair it might rupture the universe — and the fractured multidimensional war that could, against all odds, spell familial peace.    

Leaning on the expected eccentricities of “Swiss Army Man,” could’ve easily relegated “Everything Everywhere All At Once” as a hollow spectacle for spectacle’s sake. Instead, the filmmakers work against their instincts by nurturing expansive emotions before embracing crazed absurdity. The first act smartly suggests the myriad ways Evelyn is cracking, sharply enumerating her blindspots. For instance: when her lesbian daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu in a breakout role) arrives with her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel), the homophobic Evelyn introduces the latter to her old fashioned father as Joy’s “friend.” It’s a move that decimates Joy. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is overstuffed and grandiose, sometimes too proud of its ridiculousness, but its epic scale and bombastic storytelling signals how fearless filmmaking can translate to breathtaking results. Because every second, and every frame of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” brims with the audacity and pathos of The Wachowskis, told by the Daniels.   

Early on, in the cheerless maze of cubicles furnishing the IRS, Waymond, Evelyn, and her father board an elevator wherein Waymond’s meek personality suddenly becomes assertive. He puts two bluetooth earbuds in Evelyn’s ears, and tells her about the great evil lurking in the multiverse. Before Evelyn can do anything with the information, she first meets with the exacting, no-nonsense Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis) for an audit of the laundromat. As Evelyn sits, listening to Deirdre drone on and on about the business’ financial discrepancies, her mind jostles to the elevator warning. Is there another world out there, a better adventure? The nimbleness of the edit, switching her consciousness from Deirdre’s cubicle to a random janitor’s closet invites laughs and further interrogates the personal shortcomings Evelyn associates with herself: she’s not special. Rather, she’s a bundle of unfulfilled potential. But what if she could be more? This version of Waymond, who purports himself to be from the Alphaverse, certainly thinks the remarkable exists within her. He believes she is “The One.”

The Daniels base much of the first act, entitled “Everything” (there are three parts in total), around Evelyn fulfilling her wildest imaginations. See, there are innumerable Evelyns across dimensions, each with different occupations and skills, created by slightly different decisions made during their respective lifetimes. And she can harness their abilities if she performs a wacky act: snorting a fly, chugging a two-liter bottle of orange soda, and so forth. She can also see the respective lives they lead: in one, Evelyn is a famous kung-fu movie actress. In another, she’s a chef. The conceit doesn’t always work. In one where she has long, floppy, hot dog fingers — the silliness overpowers the attempt for poignancy. When they do work, however, these scenes initially confirm to Evelyn how she could’ve been more. Was her father right in saying her marriage to Waymond would be a waste?

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” gladly wears its influences on its sleeves, retooling iconic scenes in new, frequently incredible ways. The fight choreography, painted with open compositions of balletic bodies thrashing in the air and paced by fluid editing by Paul Rogers, reaches back to the halcyon days of Hong Kong action cinema. Yeoh gracefully punches and kicks through the IRS office with muscular precision. The foley artists, offering the bone crunch of a neck snapping, the icky gnash of paper cuts slashing in the spaces between the fingers, audibly colors the movie with deliciously gnarly shades. Clear references to “The Matrix” litter the debris of action too. And a carnival of overwhelming lights, rapid montages and slick sublimations of full-throated arias into poetic fights bludgeon the senses.   

The exuberance felt by the cast should remind viewers of another Wachowski epic, “Cloud Atlas.” Every actor plays multiple facets of themselves, and they’re having the time of their life. Hong’s duality as an unforgiving father and interdimensional general plays to his menacing strengths. Quan is bruising and heartbreaking as the varying versions of Evelyn’s husband, a tear-jerking scene guided by “In the Mood for Love” and “Chungking Express” sees him delivering the tenderest line of the film. Curtis, carrying a blissfulness to her chaos, portrays three roles: the serious-minded auditor, a brawny killing machine, and a love interest to Yeoh — intertwining the trio into a surprisingly singular, lived-in character. Harry Shum Jr. briefly appears in possibly the movie’s best punchline as a spin-off of “Ratatouille.” But it’s Yeoh, finally given a juicy role befitting her immense talent, who holds everything and everywhere together. Who else could play a high-wattage starlet, a silly piñata, and a classical opera singer with such a gusto? Who else could remain so harrowing in a part so broad? Yeoh adds an emotional dexterity that other movies struggle to replicate.         

After the MCU’s big play for cinematic multiverse heights, it’s telling the ways the Daniels first play into the same mammoth swings, only to dismiss the essence of the theatrical superhero paradigm (ironically the Russo Brothers are producers here). The heart of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” lies in the combustible relationship between mother and daughter. Hsu is a real force, a cannon blast of potent hues. Her vibrant costumes trade in silliness, extravagant threads to paper over a broken heart over an immigrant mother who can only see her as one of the many sacrifices endured for another country. In the MCU, problems are solved through sheer physical strength. Evelyn initially thinks this is the key to defeating her own emptiness and the generational gaps wedged between herself and Joy. But she ultimately learns that strength isn’t always measured in muscles. It’s measured in kindness. 

It’s why, for all their over the top splendor, the Daniels are never disconnected from the actual pulse of their film. Nestled between these big white dildos wielded as weapons — and butt plugs used to supercharge fights — lurks a yowl to the apathetic stars; to an unflinching plunge; to a belief that there’s still space in the cinematic landscape for sharp, daring, far-flung concepts supported by clean action. And in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” a dizzying and aching bit of popcorn entertainment, in fact, Yeoh has never been better. [A-]   

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