Everything Everywhere All At Once Review - A Visual & Creative Feast from Daniels
Let me take you back to January 2017. It's not a fond time to look back on, as my Christmas gift of 2016 was getting evicted (my fault, but it still hurt) from my downtown apartment, but with the bad came some good. Shortly after moving back in with my parents, I matched with a woman online, and we quickly began dating.
One week, money was burning a hole in my pocket (which is precisely when you should hold on to it, by the way), and I decided to purchase some Blu-rays from my favorite source of retail therapy, Best Buy. In that online order, I picked up the second season of Mr. Robot (yes, the Only @ Best Buy edition), Green Room, Carol (which I still haven't finished), Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Ride Along, The Lobster, and finally, Swiss Army Man.
Of these Blu-rays, I hold Swiss Army Man in the highest regard. Sure, the premise of the main character, Hank, played by Paul Dano, using a talking corpse, Manny, played by Daniel Radcliffe, and somehow forming a friendship sounds silly on the surface. However, directing duo Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (known collectively as Daniels) finds this balance between the absurdity of a talking corpse to lower the audience's guard for the real emotional core of the film: Hank needs a friend to prove to him that life is worth living and to find the strength to make it back home.
This balance of absurdity and emotional catharsis finds its way into their follow-up, Everything Everywhere All At Once. At face value, it's a story about a Chinese American woman, Evelyn, played by the legendary Michelle Yeoh, trying to finish her taxes. If you dig deeper, though, the story will reward the viewer with all-new perspectives on the story, like what we miss out on if we don't stop to look up at appreciate those around us.
All of that is plain to see, even on a first watch, and that's the story's emotional layers at the basement level. To even broach the film's emotional core, I'd easily be writing a dissertation-level review. Thankfully, I don't have that kind of energy, so you don't need to worry about that. Maybe someday, though.
So, to say that Daniels have meticulously crafted what I consider a masterpiece would be a massive understatement. If you take nothing else away from this review, know this: this is a film that has a brilliant story, has zero unnecessary plotlines, is full of new ideas, and may go end up being one of the very few 2022 films that might make its way into my favorite films of all time. This isn't recency bias, either. I first saw the film more than six months ago and decided against a rewatch to avoid the aforementioned recency bias.
What makes the film isn't just the superb direction and world-building by Daniels - it's also the cast that Sarah Hayley Finn (who you might recognize from her casting work on the Marvel Cinematic Universe) has assembled. Recognizable faces such as Michelle Yeoh (who I first saw in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor as Zi Yuan and loved her roles in Crazy Rich Asians and last year's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), Jamie Lee Curtis (whom the world may know for the Halloween franchise, but I know her best as Tess Coleman from Freaky Friday), James Hong (whom I best know as the voice of Chi Fu in the 1998 animated film Mulan, but have also seen his roles in Blade Runner, Wayne's World 2, Balls of Fury, the 2008 remake of the 1951 classic of the same name The Day the Earth Stood Still, Safe, and many others), Jenny Slate (who might get nominated for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), Harry Shum Jr. (who was the CEO of WU Industries, Charlie Wu, in Crazy Rich Asians), a face that hasn't been seen since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ke Huy Quan, and relative unknown Stephanie Hsu - well, unless you caught her supporting roles in 2018 Netflix Original Film, Set It Up, 2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, or this year's Asking for It.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is an ensemble piece that would not work without any one of these great actors.
Where this is most evident is in the Wang family. Evelyn (Yeoh) is just trying to hold a New Year's Eve party at the failing laundromat she inherited from her father, Gong Gong (Hong), when she gets notice of an IRS audit. Waymond (Quan), her meek and supportive husband, tries to comfort Evelyn through the process and desperately wants her to connect with her daughter, Joy (Hsu), before she moves away.
Beyond this, Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre, the IRS agent auditing Evelyn, Slate as Debbie the Dog Mom, and Shum Jr as a teppanyaki chef Chad give the audience breathing room in between the serious nature of the main plotline of the Wang family. That said, don't assume their roles are played for laughs. A couple of scenes toward the end got me misty-eyed with Curtis and Shum Jr. that loop back into the story's overarching theme of the power of being kind to one another.
The music by Son Lux is genuinely out of this world. He seems to use every instrument group I can think of. Throughout the almost 2 hour score, Lux and his friends Mitski, David Byrne, André 3000, Chris Pattishall, Claude Debussy, and about a dozen others help to craft an ethereal score that feels equal parts familiar with foil violins, flutes, and gongs, to name a few. There's also an indescribable place of wonder and mystery that spark up occasionally in the score that is fascinating to witness when listening to the score outside of the film. Son Lux's score may be one of the rarified scores that gets better each time you listen to it, and it may end up being a score I buy as well as streaming.
What's even more mesmerizing are the visuals in the effects work led by Zak Stoltz.
I am quite taken by how seamlessly he was able to merge practical effects like Raccacoonie (who I just learned is voiced by composer Randy Newman) with visual effects such as the verse jumps the characters perform that start as if the camera lens has been shattered and transitions into something I can only describe as if someone was being pulled away at high speed. These effects blend seamlessly with one another to the point where the viewer will question what is a practical effect and what is an effect rendered through software.
While we're talking about software, let's talk about the editing by Paul Rogers in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Not unlike the effects work, it feels nearly effortless, though I am sure that is not the case. Rogers tends to juggle the editing in a manner that he keeps track of Evelyn's, and by extension, the Wang family's story while occasionally hopping into some smaller stories that may only last a few seconds or minutes at a time but help support the narrative created by Daniels of way too many things to list here.
Another huge part of what makes this story work for me is not the effects or the editing - it's the production design. Designer Jason Kisvarday, whom you may recognize from his previous work on Palm Springs, creates everything out of nothing. Sets like the IRS building are bathed in this sickening yellow glow that instantly creates discomfort for the viewer. Furthermore, a series of scenes feel ripped out of the Wong Kar-Wai film In the Mood for Love (which is on my bucket list of movies to watch before I die). Kisvarday doesn't stop there, though. Each scene has its own visual identity that could exist as its own film, and I can't thank Kisvarday enough for the visual feast that is this movie.
On that note, I want to give a quick shoutout to Kelsi Ephraim, the set decorator of Everything Everywhere All At Once. None of these visuals would be possible without her work. What's more is that the sets have a lived-in feeling, like someone has been sitting in that cubicle for years, and that feeling only grows the deeper I looked into the sets while watching it for the first time almost six months ago.
Another in a long line of visual feats are the action scenes coordinated by Timothy Eulich and fight choreographers Andy and Brian Le (who also appear in several scenes). Like any other film with action sequences, wire rigging was involved for safety purposes, but here's the cool thing. For the most part, the actors did their own stunts in the same vein that Jackie Chan does in his films. As one can imagine, this helps sell the stakes of the outcome of each fight the characters are in.
In short - believe the hype. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a masterclass from the stellar cast, the endlessly creative directing duo, the banger of a score from Son Lux, Jason Kisvarday's jaw-dropping visuals, Paul Rogers' tight edit, a seamless fusion of special and visual effects work, Timothy Eulich's equally ridiculous and grounded stunt coordination, and too many other great artists to list. If you haven't seen this film, watch it immediately.
★★★★★
Everything Everywhere All At Once is available to stream on Showtime, digital or physical rentals, and for purchase on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD. Please note: the purchase link is an affiliate link.
Until next time!
Thanks to Thomas Stoneham-Judge from Movies For Reel, Shane Conto, Joseph Davis, David Walters, Ambula Bula, Matthew Simpson, Thom Blackburn, and Beatrice AKA Shakesqueer, for supporting Austin B Media on Patreon!
