Dear readers,
This is my last newsletter in the “Theology, Philosophy, and Film” series. This does NOT mean that this is the last time I will post about film! THANK YOU to those who have read, come to discussions, and supported my work. This has been both a blessing and a blast! I will still be writing here on a weekly basis on various topics. And in the fall, I will start a new series on “The Christian Imagination.” Stay tuned!
As you know, the last film of the series is Everything Everywhere all at Once (EEAAO) directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (they often refer to themselves as “The Daniels” or “Daniels,” and so will I). This hybrid genre film that A.O. Scott calls “messy” and glorious” and Alissa Wilkinson calls “kooky, frenetic, big-hearted” won seven Academy Awards in 2023, including best picture.
EEAAO is a messy mishmash of different film genres (family drama, sci-fi, martial arts, thriller) and philosophies (Daoism, nihilism, existentialism) that, at times, reminds me of David O. Russell’s wacky I Heart Huckabees. On my first viewing, I remember being delighted and wowed during the film’s first hour while taking in the special effects, jerky “verse jumping” editing, zany costumes, and mischievous surrealism–I was not as wowed this go round. But even on that first viewing, I grew tired of all of the quirkiness quite quickly–this rings hollow and even sad if there is no warm human core. Although original in many ways, the film’s colorful absurdism reminded me of films by Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation; Synecdoche, New York) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep).
EEAAO’s greatest success was its surprising shift in the third act–a move toward humanity and empathy. The special effects, clever film-insider nods, and quirky sets were not nearly as shocking–and attention holding–as this powerful shift.
In a brief interview put out by the film company A24 (linked below), Daniel Kwan explains that:“It’s a family drama about a mother trying to reconnect with her family in the middle of all this noise.” He continues, saying that the film’s core question is: “How do we pay attention to the ones we love when the universe wants to take that away from us?”.
The film starts as a seemingly simple family drama. Chinese immigrants and laundromat owners Evelyn and Waymond Wang are clashing as Evelyn wants to smooth out their domestic chaos in order to impress her visiting father. They are sitting among piles of dusty receipts, preparing for an ever-stressful auditing appointment. Waymond tells Evelyn that “you’ve nurtured a happy family and successful business,” but Evelyn scoffs, saying that her father will not see this. Waymond looks at her sincerely and asks, “But it’s what you and I see, right?”. The “happy family” illusion is shattered when we see a divorce document in Waymond’s hand.
The scene shifts to an closeup of the inside of a washing machine drum with clothes tossing around and around –a metaphor of the cycle of everyday monotony of life for this middle-aged couple.
The filmmakers then introduce us to Joy, Evelyn and Waymond’s emotionally estranged daughter. As noted before, the relationship between Joy and her mother is the emotional and philosophical heart of the film. There is little evidence that Joy and Evelyn have ever gotten along very well, but the recent introduction of Joy’s girlfriend has only made matters worse.
Much has been written on the representation of the immigrant experience in EEAAO. Isabel Ong, writing for Christianity Today, makes an especially poignant set of personal observations about the relationship between Evelyn and Joy:
“That is why, when watching Everything Everywhere All at Once at home one Friday evening, I cringe-laughed when the protagonist Evelyn Wang blurts this line out to her daughter Joy early in the film: “You have to try and eat healthier. You are getting fat.”
Such judgmental comments have become a tried-and-true method of communicating care and concern, bypassing anything gushy or sentimental. To be clear, this is not a condoning of verbal abuse, which exerts manipulative control over another. I speak of the pessimistic, unsympathetic sentiments that often color speech in a Chinese family.”
Both Joy and her mother could perhaps have taken alternate paths to avoid conflict and live colorful lives filled with more adventure, excitement, success. The film’s seemingly abrupt shift into a sci-fi thriller makes sense when considering the multiverse as representative of the many possibilities that Evelyn, in particular, could have chosen–alternate choices that create different “types” of the self, traveling down more fulfilling paths.
In the multiverse, Evelyn is taken back to scenes of core life decisions, even the painful memory, Ong notes, of her father telling her “You are not my daughter anymore.” In the midst of muddled chaos, she sees a shameful depiction of the barriers she has set between herself and her daughter. And these barriers have contributed to the creation of a monstrous, all-consuming, yet barricaded being: Joy’s alter ego, Jobu Tupaki. Evelyn, the partial creator of this being, is the only one who can be her savior. The messianic language–the language of presence rather than absence– in the film is striking.
Although Evelyn wants to rescue Jobu/Joy from her gorged misery, Joy is lured by an almost Nietzschean nihilism that promises her an escape from painful presence. Her abandoned search for meaning and connection was full of wounded turmoil, and the present lure of a pregnant nihilism includes everything yet means nothing is less frightening.
The cycle of nothingness is symbolized by a bagel with everything on it. It turns round and round (like the laundromat’s dryer) and has a hole in the center of it. Rather than a nimbus, Joy’s head is adorned by a black replica of the bagel:
“I got bored one day and put everything on a bagel. When you put everything on a bagel it is the truth: nothing matters…If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel from making nothing of your life goes away.”
When everything matters equally, then nothing matters. When everything is set apart, or holy, then nothing is. And for Jobu/Joy, the only peace that she can imagine is the “peace” of accepting chaos as it is and laughing into the void.
The University of London’s Dr. Kiki Tianqi Yu sees the film’s relationship between chaos and a desired balance/ harmony as a reflection of Daoist philosophy:
“An ancient Chinese school of thought that pursues balance and harmony, Daoism is significantly valuable for negation and chaos. Dao – regarded in Chinese cosmology as the source of everything – is empty and still, but generates vital energy, known as qi, literally meaning “breath”, or “air”. As qi swirls in a seeming state of chaos, it is directed by the correlative forces of yin yang, which passes through everything. Hence nothing is still or stable and everything is in constant transformation.”
I find this a fascinating way of reading the film. I am no expert on Eastern philosophy, so I encourage you to read Dr. Yu’s full article (linked above). But it seems to me that the film is proposing more of a binary choice between nothingness/chaos and presence/ balance than a Daost reading might take.
Joy needs (maternal)presence rather than (abstract) absence. She needs clarity and intimacy rather than chaos and swirling energy. And the only “savior” that can set her universes straight is Evelyn, her mother. Rather than ignoring or numbing all of the “pain and guilt,” both Evelyn and Joy must face it and love each other in spite of it.
At one point, Evelyn is told that: “You pushed your daughter so hard that you broke her. You created Jobu Tupaki.” Yet in the midst of Joy’s hopelessness, her mother tells her, “You’re not unloveable. There is always something to love.”
Although the film is primarily about family, it is also about belief. And these things, of course, are deeply connected. In an interview with Daniels in Polygon, Daniel Kwan talks about how much of the film’s chaos and longing parallels that from his own spiritual journey:
“Because I was very religious growing up. I was almost basically evangelical Christian until I was in my 20s. And then slowly, slowly, and then all of a sudden, it was gone. And that’s kind of what this movie was trying to re-create. That moment when Evelyn is screaming, and she’s feeling everything, and she’s completely unmoored and lost, that is the experience of losing God. That’s the experience of not having a moral center, and not having a focus of meaning, of purpose. The second half of the movie is basically her trying to do what I did, which is crawl around in the dark and the chaos, finding something worth living for, finding something worth fighting for. Obviously in the movie, she finds that through her husband, but yeah, it’s all in there because of me.”
Kwan’s experience is fascinating when considering the ways in which the film is positioning two different “faiths” against one another: meaning/love/presence vs. nihilism/alienation/absence. Like Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, EEAAO explores what life would look like when either of two philosophies are embraced. Unlike Crimes and Misdeamors, EEAAO does this in ways that are both abstract and embodied rather than strictly cerebral. And unlike Allen, the Daniels do not consider theism as a possible source of meaning and love in their film (at least overtly).
But love is the film’s answer. And it looks much simpler than the idealized fairy tales that Hollywood likes to spin. In an alternate universe, Waymond tells his wife: “So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.” The simple, monotonous tasks of everyday life provide a structure, even a tender relational connection.
But what is the ultimate source of this love?
The way that the film deals with this question is decidedly METAMODERN as The Daniels use postmodern irony, yet transcend it–settling on an optimism for the future of this family’s relationship. In an interview with Mashable, Daniel Kwan even says: “I think that's the version of post-postmodernism that we're hunting for — that metamodernism, if I'm going to be obnoxious."
Here is a video that I shared weeks ago on Metamodernism. If you want a refresher (or introduction), then watch on! If not, just skip it.
All of the film’s silly parodies, endless empty references, and ironic quips add up to a very personal story that embraces the joy of “meaning” and “love” and resists the lure of the nihilistic bagel.
But what provides this strength? Where is the source of love and meaning? Is this just another multiverse that feels better but carries the same weight as all the others? Is one narrative–one multiverse–more REAL than the others? If so, then why?
I have MANY more comments and questions about this fun, sad, perplexing, wacky film. But I must leave it at that.
As always, thanks for reading! And stay tuned for more. Just because the film series has ended, does not mean the newsletter has. There is lots more to come…