con 7 Oscars Everything Everywhere All at OnceThe movie by the Daniels brothers incontestably dominated Sunday night’s ceremony. The downside is that it is not an easy film to tell. Not even the title promises well (at least for us Italians), that “everything, everywhere, at once”which refers to the very different dimensions in which the protagonists move, between parallel universes, multiform versions of the protagonist, who passes from one existence to another in the blink of an eye. So let’s try to clarify the plot.
Everything Everywhere All at Once: the plot of the film Oscar 2023
Part 1: Everything, each thing
The first part of the film introduces us to the story and tells its first evolutions. Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is a Chinese immigrant to the States, runs a laundromat, on the verge of bankruptcy with her inept husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), in a relationship that has practically come to an end. Their daughter Joy lives with them, that he has a homosexual relationship with Becky that is badly digested by his mother.
He breaks into the shaky ménage tax inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis)Evelyn is catapulted into another dimension. In the elevator, her husband’s alter ego Waymond, who came from the Alphaversereveals to her that she will be able to travel through a series of parallel worlds to counter Jobu Tupaki, a dark force that threatens the whole world. Alpha Waymond, decidedly more resolute, athletic and enterprising version of the actual consorthe also explains to his wife that the multiverse is generated precisely by his choices, which will allow her to change her identity, role, profession.
Part Two: Everywhere, everywhere
Jobu Tupaki, the evil force to fight is none other than the Alphaverse version of Joy, Evelyn’s daughter, which creates a “black hole” capable of destroying the multiverse. Alpha Waymond asks Evelyn to kill Joy, which she can’t do. However, he can obtain the same powers as to defeat her.
On her journey, the protagonist gets the chance to live the lives she has only imagined: so, in parallel universes, just by discovering all the choices she didn’t make, she becomes a kung-fu master, movie star, assistant chef and many other Evelyns, all decidedly brighter versions of her faded existence in the laundromat.
The universes in which he moves are as varied as they are bizarre: in one the fingers of the characters are hot dogs, in the other husband and wife are pebbles talking with subtitles, in another the protagonist has a romantic relationship with the tax inspector, in another yet another works alongside a chef, guided by a raccoon (quote by Ratatouille).
The story continues, Evelyn discovers that Jobu/Joy actually wants to destroy herself: in the endless chaos, she argues, nothing really matters and so she simply wishes she were no more. Evelyn would like to indulge her and stabs the Waymond of her universe.
From left, Jamie Lee Curtis (Deirdre Beaubeirdra) and Michelle Yeoh (Evelyn Wang) in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. (A24)
But just before destroying everything, she hears her husband’s pleas for an end to all fightingasks for kindness and hope instead of war, in a universe where nothing seems to make sense.
Part three: All at Once, all at once
The final part, which we won’t reveal, partly has the flavor of a happy ending. The theme of this frenetic and crazy film, which mixes science fiction, family drama, comedy, comics, kung-fu movie, is a bit that of sliding doors that direct us towards one life rather than another, on the weight of our choicescapable of plunging us into the sands of failure or opening up new opportunities for us.
Without forgetting the moral, embodied by the character of Waymond: even listening and love can help us not get lost in the confusion in which we are all immersed.
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