‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ – A crash course on existentialism
In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you- Waymond
Just when I thought that my existential crisis was finally over, I was led to watch “Everything Everywhere All at Once’’ and within the first half hour I thought to myself here we go again. Before deep diving into the plot and analysis of the movie, I would like to take a moment to appreciate the mind melting visual effects and cinematography put together by a team of just SIX talented artists, that's right…just six artists and a vision.
Without giving away too much, the storyline starts with an ordinary immigrant family that operate out of a laundromat for a living and are being audited by the IRS. Things start to unravel quickly afterwards for Evelyn (the laundromat owner), her husband Waymond and her daughter Joy when Evelyn is greeted by her husband from another universe — Alpha Waymond who tries to explain to her that she needs to verse jump in order to protect the chaos in an alternate universe where their existence is threatened by a ‘villain’ that goes by the name of Jobu Tupaki. Thus begins the never ending questioning of ones identity, future and the meaning behind ones life and everything we know about family and love.
The main theme of the movie centers around nihilism (the belief that life is meaningless) with a mix of existentialism (you decide the meaning) and how difficult and confusing it is to be human. Joy or Jobu Tupaki struggles with feelings of hopelessness, rejection and a severe lack of meaningful experiences that lead to her ‘villain origin’ story. Even with her immense powers, she dreads her existence and truly believes that at the end of it all, life is pretty pointless and nothing really matters. As the movie progresses you can see Joy/Jobu struggling to feel seen for her pain by her mother, so she lashes out and purposely tries to inflict pain just so hers can be seen. She creates a Bagel that seems like a black hole where she can finally be wiped out of every universe and find peace in her death.
Throughout the movie, various characters are portrayed that seem to be suffering and the only thing that eventually fixes them is love and unconditional acceptance. In the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters yet the only thing that truly gives meaning to our otherwise gloomy lives is love. When Joy shows Evelyn the suffering that leads to the same outcome in every universe, Evelyn begins to understand what she means and she begins to get sucked into the black hole herself, until her husband shows up with his hope, sense of humor and kindness in the darkest of times. Even though he has been betrayed and heartbroken by her in other multi verses, he loves her and always has her back. Just one split second of kindness and forgiveness that he shows her, gives her meaning and reason to fight for their daughter and show her the light.
The movie also sneakily showcases pattern interruption, where in order to verse jump every character must do something weird and uncomfortable in order to make that jump. This is a clever way of showing how to get out of our own heads and our learned habits in order to be more present. To sum it up, the human existence comprises of misery, suffering, hopelessness, chaos, disorder and immense despair but on the flipside there also exists connection, pockets of joy, kindness and love which is enough to save us all and create a rather balanced experience.
We are all wired for connection and the only thing that makes us feel disconnected is the fact that we believe that we are the only ones experiencing the unfairness of life, when the opposite of it is actually true. All of us as humans, in some form or another go through very human emotions and phases of hopelessness, despair, unfairness and struggle. Its all connected and in the end all we ever need is love. Nothing matters, that’s why everything does. Think about it, it's the limited time that we have that actually gives us any sense of meaning, our vulnerabilities and acceptance of our human nature is what connects us to others even though we’ve been taught that vulnerability is a weakness. Everything that you could be, you already are ( alternate lifepaths/multiverses) and everything is happening as it should, despite what we believe. At the end of it all, life is just one hell of a trip and we’re here to enjoy the ride and feel everything that can be felt. Nothing really matters, so instead of sitting this one out, why not immerse yourself into this tragically beautiful existence.
