Everything Everywhere All at Once

Background

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 film about a family who runs a laundromat while trying to save their lives and the universe from falling apart. The film tackles a wide range of topics like generational trauma, the burden of existing, familial issues, missed opportunities, everything (everywhere all at once).

Evelyn and Waymond Wang struggle to find a way to stay happily married. Evelyn is so caught up in the daily work of keeping their business up and running that she doesn’t notice all the times Waymond tries to talk to her about their marriage and either mending it or ending it.

She also fails to notice Joy, their daughter, who is trying to get Evelyn to see her and validate her, say that she loves her, and not let her go. Evelyn ends up being so stressed about everything, that she pushes the people closest to her away.

Then when Waymond from another universe invades hers, she learns of all the lives she could have lived, lives better than her own, lives where she’s happy.

We learn that Joy from another universe had skill when it came to connecting with other universes, but was pushed too far, and now experiences every universe at the same time. She sees everything (everywhere all at once). This chaos has turned her into someone with no morals. She believes nothing matters. She knows everything about what life can be and as a result, sees only pain and suffering. She only wants to escape that noise.

One day in an attempt to escape that chaos, she puts everything on a bagel and it collapses in on itself, creating nothing out of everything, silence out of noise. She needs that silence, that nothing. She tries to convince Evelyn of this, saying, “If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel from making nothing of your life, goes away.” Evelyn starts to fold. It’s not a bad idea; never having to think about everything the world is, all the awful things, all the things that mean nothing.

Joy's Perception

Joy is a classic nihilist. The universe in its vastness could not possibly have any kind of meaning, and so looking for one is futile. That’s why the bagel represents her. There’s a little bit of good in all the bad; escape.

"Nothing matters."

One of her favorite universes is one where no life was able to start. She exists as a rock. When she and Evelyn find themselves in this universe their conversations show up as text on the screen. They just talk. “You can just sit here and everything feels really… far away.” Dissociation.

We learn a little more about her here. We learn that she just wants company in her pain. She can’t go back, she can’t ever experience silence again. “I was just looking for someone who could see what I see. Feel what I feel.” That’s why she kept trying to get Evelyn to talk to her at the beginning of the movie; she wanted to feel like someone her mother could love, and feel connected to.

Waymond's Perception

Then there’s Waymond. He loves Evelyn and wants to be with her but knows she doesn’t want to be with him. He files for divorce thinking that will get them talking about their relationship. It doesn’t at first. Evelyn signs them with no emotion. But then Waymond shows her how he fights all this chaos. He says that even though no one knows what’s going on, we have to be kind. “When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naïve. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything.” He fights the noise and the uncertainty and the pain with kindness.

One of his many quirks, and one of Evelyn's pet peeves, is putting googly eyes on anything and everything. The googly eye perfectly represents him because he surrounds the darkness with light, he fights the chaos with good. It complements Joy's bagel the same way Yin and Yang complement each other.

Evelyn's Newfound Perception

Evelyn realizes she wants to fight like him. She fights her way to Joy, about to succumb to the peace of nothingness where maybe she’d finally die. At first, Evelyn gives in to Joy when she says, “I’m tired. I don’t want to hurt anymore and for some reason when I’m with you it just hurts the both of us.”

She lets go.

But then she pulls Joy back. She says that despite everything wrong with them and their relationship and despite everything not making sense, she says “no matter what, I will always want to be here with you.”

So... Nihilism becomes Absurdism

Nothing matters, so everything matters.

“Another year, pretending we know what we’re doing, but really we’re just going around in circles.” - Evelyn

“It’s all just a pointless swirling bucket of bullshit.” - Joy

Evelyn turns that nothingness into meaning. Maybe nothing matters. Maybe it’s too late and we know too much pain and suffering. But like Joy says herself, “Here all we get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes any sense.” So we cherish those times. We love the time we do have, and the chaos we live in. If nothing matters, everything matters. If life has no meaning, there is endless space to fill that with meaning.

Bonus because this movie is so good

One thing that makes this movie so entertaining are the fight scenes, so here is one of the most iconic fight scenes in the whole movie.