Everything Everywhere All at Once

A film that begins in a laundrette. Evelyn is preparing for a tax audit. There are boxes of receipts, the laundrette is failing, her father has moved in, she cannot talk to her daughter, and her husband is carrying divorce papers. They go to the tax office. In the lift her husband suddenly behaves like someone else, gives her an earpiece and lists instructions. There are other universes. Every decision split off a branch and Evelyn has another life on each. From there the film becomes a story of jumping. To take another Evelyn's skill you have to do something odd and absurd, and the narrative uses that as a source of comedy. There is a being on the other side. She has lived everything at once and concluded that nothing matters. What the narrative is interested in is not universes but family: the whole display turns around a mother unable to reach her daughter, and the film does not hide it. There is a section in the middle. Two rocks sit side by side on a cliff, nobody speaks, and you read subtitles; it is the calmest and best part of the film. The answer to the nihilism is kindness. A speech by her husband says so outright and that line carries the idea of the film. The effects were made by a small team and the budget was very low for its genre. The film won seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actress, both supporting acting categories, screenplay and editing. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis and James Hong are in the cast. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes fast, crowded films with strong feeling. Who it is not for: anyone tired by pace and noise; the first hour is deliberately overwhelming.