For Everyone
Easily one of the greatest theater watches for an Oscar film. One of the good thing about the movie was, it was entertaining and didn’t feel like, it was made for Oscar. Of course with great films gaining on popularity, this film would have its fair share of non-likers but it’s a relief to see an entertaining movie get an Oscar. For now, the focus shifting on Asian lifestyle seems to be good, more so because, it was made well no matter what the story was. Wish this doesn’t become a trend, like ‘War’ movies or ‘Black’ movies in the Oscar race and become redundant.
The beauty of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is how it bundles a message movie into something fun for everyone to watch. If I had to say in a single line, Everything Everywhere is for everyone. There was an interesting thing I noticed in theatre. In the front row, there were a group of boys, guess one among them was a film buff or something and had brought a group of people to theatres. For all the jokes at the start, his friends were commenting whether they were supposed to laugh. But after a period of forty five minutes, they were so engrossed in the movie that they couldn’t chide their friend. The last I noticed such an incident was during ‘Avatar’ which is a legendary movie on its own. This shows how much command the director had in the movie.
Making a clumsy movie is not as easy as being clumsy. If there is one thing I would have given sure shot award for the movie is the Art Direction. Just look at the amount of props around Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh). You can’t just throw in random stuff around and make it clumsy. Everything must add value to the shot and it does. I’m sure so much effort would have gone through making those bills she presents to the IRS Inspector, Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). There were other more glossy aspects like Joy Wang (Stephanie Hsu) changing costumes walking in the aisle, but it’s easier to appreciate it as its straight on the face. It’s the universe changes and the stuffs in the universe, mainly the Laundromat universe, is the one that should be given the highest credit.
The first twenty minutes or so of the movie was so tense, not thinking of what’s going to happen next but just thinking of Eveyln’s life. It was depressing and almost makes us sympathize with her in that short time. That’s when the verse jump happens and that’s where the film grips. Easily, the ‘Everything’ part was the best of the lot, one, because we were getting to see something new and two, because there was no morality associate to it, just pure randomness.
Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan) reminds us of Jackie Chan a lot and even his fight sequences were choreographed like that. While we wonder how lovely if it’d have had Jackie Chan, there is an interesting story doing rounds. Initially, the makers supposedly approached Jackie Chan to be the protagonist but he didn’t like the idea of a female doing kung fu. Not sure, how authentic the story is or its just plain gossip. On the downside, if Jackie had acted in the movie, the surprise factor would’ve been lost because right from scene one we’d have been waiting for him to explode at some point. And eventually it’d have become a Jackie film. In that way, it’s good that it didn’t happen.
For a movie this clumsy, it was brilliant how they kept the emotional part intact. This film would have easily failed if the emotional part had not been handled well. But towards the climax, the scene where Eveyln and Deirdre talk it out in the open would challenge even a full length emotional film. This scene has to be appreciated much more here because, there was a shift in the tonality of the movie, which, if not done right would have irritated most of the people. On another plate was a number of jumps and lot of action happening, to make people come out of it, and sit through dialogues was no mean task. The well played emotion also helps people to sit back from rather mind numbing frenzy on the other side of the universe.
When talking about this film, you can’t skip the intelligence part. Not only does it explore human depths and humor, it explores in a very short time. When we see Eveyln’s story of struggle because of her choice to marry Waymond, we get emotional within minutes but it’s overcome by Waymond in another universe where he tells how Eveyln is such a loser. Such a superb dig that.
For a movie which had so much happening, my favorite scene would easily be the rock scene. It’s like being at the tip of roller coaster and waiting for the fall. With subtitles being played, as wind was only sound in the scene, the audience were holding themselves from guffawing, thinking that they too shouldn’t make any noise to disturb that silence. A clever dig of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ became an even better scene when the supposedly unmovable rock moves and hit each other. Did anyone get probably the biggest joke of the movie there – The Big Bang Theory?
constantscribbles 