Talking to Daniels over Zoom is a little like being caught inside their new film. Ideas pop and whizz, the jokes fly, the sacred and the profane mingle happily. Yet somehow it all makes sense.
Their martial arts-sci-fi-action-comedy-family drama stars Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Crazy Rich Asians) as Evelyn Wang, an immigrant from Hong Kong living in America in a cramped apartment above the laundromat she runs with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), who is exhausted by the relationship and contemplating divorce. She’s harried, and panicking about an imminent audit by the IRS (Jamie Lee Curtis plays the tax agent who suspects them of fraud). Their ironically named daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who is gay though her mother is in denial about the fact, is miserable.
The writer-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels.Credit:Roadshow
At first, it looks like this is an immigrant family comedy along the lines of Fresh Off the Boat, but when the Wangs visit the nondescript IRS offices all hell breaks loose. Suddenly alternative versions of Evelyn, Waymond, Joy and others – versions born of the paths taken in other existences, but not in this one – are swept up in a bid to save the universe from the destructive power of an all-consuming black bagel with the lot (think of it as despair made flesh … or dough).
Seriously, there are more ideas in this movie than in the rest of Hollywood combined.
But for all its dizzying command of sci-fi action and physical comedy, Everything Everywhere All at Once springs from a place of deep seriousness.
“I was raised very religious, almost fundamentalist Christian,” says Kwan, “and the moment I realised I no longer believed kind of felt like the moment in the film where Evelyn is screaming, she’s experiencing every possible universe at the same time, she’s completely unmoored and has no moral centre. In some ways, this film was a reaction to my loss of faith.”
Equally, though, it’s a reaction to the internet age, the fact we all now exist in a world where every bit of information is available, instantly, in an undifferentiated mass in which everything – truth, lie, meme, funny cat video – has the same value, or lack thereof.
“That’s not what our brains were meant to experience, and I think that’s why multiverse stories resonate,” says Scheinert. “It feels a bit like what life’s like.”
For a budget that’s been reported as $US25 million ($33.5 million) – “we wish we had $25 million,” says Kwan – Everything Everywhere All at Once is a remarkable feat. Little wonder Marvel came a-knocking with an offer to work on the Disney+ series Loki (“We were already knee-deep in this project,” says Scheinert. “So we were like, ‘Oh, sorry, we’re busy. Good luck’.“)
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They’re not averse to selling out, exactly. They just want to do it on their terms.
“I would find a way to muscle through making a big studio movie for Marvel if it meant we could save the world in some small way,” says Kwan.
“We’re not arthouse directors, we like to play somewhere in the middle,” adds Scheinert. “We care about how many people want to see what we make, and are constantly trying to have the freedom to say provocative things we think are worth saying, while not going so out-there that no one would watch this, or only preaching to the choir.”
The aim, he adds, is “to make movies that our parents might be challenged by, but would still enjoy.”
If they wanted to make something that would appeal to almost everyone, almost everywhere, at this point in time, I reckon they may just have pulled it off.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is in cinemas now.
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Email the author at kquinn@theage.com.au, or follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin
The must-see movie that’s about almost everything, all at once
Source: Philippines Alive
