Over the weekend I watched two movies which at first glance might seem very dissimilar.
First I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, this year’s critical darling. It’s the story of a Chinese-American woman named Evelyn who just wants to take care of her business and run her family. Things get weird when, while in a stressful meeting with the IRS, she’s suddenly thrust into the world of the multiverse. In order to save all the realities, she must tap into the skills and abilities (gnosis) of all her alternate selves.
It’s wild, chaotic, absurd, with lots of occult and mystical overtones.
To be honest, I didn’t like it very much. It’s too long, too silly, and something about it didn’t ring true. So the next day I decided to watch something I’ve been wanting to see, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The title alone gives you a pretty accurate sense of the story. Elizabeth and her sisters need husbands while defending the motherland from the zombie apocalypse. As if finding a lasting love wasn’t hard enough. A disappointment to both critics and audiences, this movie is not a darling of the masses.
Between the two, I know which one I’ll watch again.
For one thing, the premise of Everything Everywhere is so convoluted that a good part of its running time is spent delivering information. Yet the point is that all reality is madness (a multiverse of madness, if you will). Meanwhile, Zombies has the advantage of a period piece, where exposition can be covered in letters and voiceover narration and still feel appropriate. Both movies have excellent martial arts action, but Zombies is much easier to watch (and not just because all the young actresses are stunning).
Michelle Yeoh is a lovely lady, don’t get get me wrong.
More than structural issues, there are thematic problems. Everything Everywhere follows an explicit hero’s journey, but the easiest well to sell a lie is to intertwine it with truth. The hero’s journey is Truth, everything else in the movie is a lie. It’s all so muddled and crazy, we might have a difficult time sorting it out.
Movies don’t have to be difficult to be meaningful!
The biggest problem with the multiverse concept is that it makes life meaningless. What’s the point of living in this reality if this one sucks? Right? The filmmakers want to say that what gives life meaning in the chaos is love and acceptance. Yet the whole premise undermines the argument that we can make our own meaning. You want symbolism, I present a snake eating its own tale.
Zombies is also an absurd alternate reality.
And like Everything Everywhere it’s a movie about redemption and the power of love. All good movies are. However, by placing it in Victorian society there’s still order. Chaos is restrained and, rather than embracing and finding meaning in the madness, the characters work to overcome it. There’s a moment where we’re led to believe that we can live in harmony with the evil, and then the lie is revealed.
That’s a message I can get behind.
Of course, Elizabeth and her sisters do find love. And of course, in classic horror movie fashion, the evil comes back. So the fight goes on. In this life we never completely subdue the chaos, and every day brings new battles.
You don’t have to look too hard to find people saying that Everything Everywhere is the most important movie ever made. But it’s the same old Serpent's lie: with enough knowledge you’ll be like a god. Just live with the chaos and accept its maker. No. No, no, no.
