The Film ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Gave Us a Real Hero

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) turned an ordinary family conflict into an imaginative epic. The Daniels gave us an action movie, a comedic absurdity, and a provocative drama, wrapped up in a three-part film.

Our protagonist is Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese immigrant who owns a laundromat, attempting to get her taxes done on time.

Disciplined and seemingly cold-hearted, Evelyn apathetically moves through her routine making food, maintaining the store, and living up to the dated expectations of her father. No time for enjoying the fruits of marriage to her jokester husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). No space for reimagining the identity of her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu) — even if she’s gay and desperately seeking her mother’s validation.

At the IRS office, the tax agent (Jamie Lee Curtis) threatens to shut the laundromat down.

Evelyn – her attention torn between the mountain of receipts on the desk and her own maelstrom of thoughts – is visited by an interdimensional agent, who informs her of Jobu Tupaki, a villainous figure bringing doom across all the universes, and Evelyn is their only hope.

At first, Evelyn can’t believe such nonsense.

The tax agent says: “There can’t be anything more important in the world than us talking about your tax liability.”

Meanwhile, the interdimensional agent says: “Everything has led you to this moment, Evelyn. You can finally make something of your life.”

Desperate to escape the confines of her current existence, Evelyn accepts the insanity of the situation and steps up to fight, abandoning tax season behind her.

The villain’s entrance is a colorful spectacle suggestive of drag performance. Done up in elaborate make-up and larger-than-life costumes, Jobu Tupaki comes dancing across the screen, revealing her true identity: Joy.

Unable to overcome their differences in the fragmented dullness of everyday life, Evelyn and Joy face each other in a string of multi-dimensional battles that take them from their modest home above the laundromat, to the IRS office, and across hundreds of universes born from infinite possibilities. Evelyn is a beautifully-dressed singer, a martial artist turned movie star, a teppanyaki chef, a lesbian with hot-dog fingers, and even a rock. Tapping into the skills of these many versions of herself, Evelyn battles Joy and the Black Bagel, inside which is a black hole.

Joy, isolated in sadness, created a way out of the world. Representative of suicide or running away, the Black Bagel ultimately symbolizes the end of Evelyn and Joy’s relationship. In the final battle, after defeating everyone in her path, Evelyn reaches Joy on the verge. Does she let her daughter go, or demand that she stays?

And then we’re back in the laundromat. Evelyn is still getting audited. Joy is still unhappy. But a new, changed Evelyn — a warrior who’s taken her power back — pulls Joy into her arms.

We put up walls to survive the battles of everyday life. When those walls get too high, we forsake the ability to climb over them, to be present, to love. So maybe we’re all a little like Evelyn. Sometimes we just need to be reminded how powerful we truly are.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is nominated for eleven 2023 Academy Awards.