Everything Everywhere All at Once Pt. 1: A Quick Review
Hello everybody, sorry for the long hiatus. Life has been so hectic, but I’m so happy to be back to posting as regularly as possible :)
Anyways, this post (and shh… the next post too) will be centered around a movie I’ve wanted to talk about for a while: Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO). If you haven’t seen this movie yet, stop reading this post and go watch it now.
EEAAO, as IMDb put it, is about “a middle-aged Chinese immigrant swept up in an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.” Played by Michelle Yeoh, Eveyln Wang is discontent with her lifestyle owning a laundromat with her husband Waymond, Ke Huy Quan, and unsure how to confront the girlfriend of her daughter, Joy. Ultimately, Evelyn must travel through the multiverse to save her loved ones and everything she has ever known.
For those who have seen my Crying in H-Mart posts, this movie will also be split up into two portions so that we can digest this masterpiece to the best of our abilities. This specific post will not focus on the movie’s plot, motifs, or a lot of its other amazing elements. Instead, I want to look closer at how this movie, as a piece of media or something that a wide range of audiences have consumed, acts as representation for Asian American success in real life. (PSA: this means a lot of this post will mention statistics and facts, unlike many previous posts that discuss literary elements and themes, so if you prefer not to look into that, do not fret! Because my next post about this film will be! )
To start, I’d like to look at some statistics to set the tone for this post:
According to ScreenRant, EEAAO broke the global box office record for A24, a major entertainment company responsible for iconic movies like Ex-Machina, Moonlight, Hereditary, and Midsommar. This feat is no simple one, as EEAAO had to surpass Hereditary’s record of $79 million.
Recently, on January 10, the Golden Globes Award also happened, where (among many many many other nominations) Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress, Musical or Comedy, and Ke Huy Quan won Best Supporting Actor.
While I would love to go on about the trophies, awards, and attention EEAAO has recieved, I want to focus on what those very successes mean to me, as a Chinese American. After hearing the news of the incredible success the movie garnered, I felt immense pride that could even compare to how I felt when Eileen Gu won gold at the 2022 Olympics. But why is that? Why do I feel pride for an achievement I did not have any part in?
First, I’d like you to meditate on that question. Obviously, there is not right or wrong answer, but how do you feel when you see people who look like you, act like you, belong to the same communities as you succeed? And why do you think you react in such a way?
For me, I think my answer is rooted in hope. In an interview I, unfortunately, cannot find right now, Yeoh once talked about the disadvantages she faced as an Asian American woman actress. She understood that her intersectionality between being both a foreign actress from Malaysia as well as her identity as a woman prevented her from attaining the best-of-the-best resources. Her understanding of the world is not limited to the film industry, as the way we perceive and experience so many other things in our world are impacted by our identities. I can translate her experiences to my own, for sometimes I feel discredited or like my points are invalid because of male-dominated conversations in class.
As a result, it was refreshing to me to see an Asian American movie centered around a woman (without her femininity being the center of the movie! But that’s another tangent I’ll spare everyone today) do so well without having it be built upon prior achievements. For example, while I love Shang-Chi’s character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I know how much the Shang-Chi movie’s success relied on the powerfully established Disney and Marvel franchise. I’m not to say EEAAO came out of nowhere, as A24 is still a well-known company, to see an authentic, original Asian American movie do so well makes me so proud.
My final question that I will leave you all with is a rather vague yet simple one that will prep us for another conversation about this movie: what are your thoughts on the film?