Everything Everywhere All at Once

The movie Everything Everywhere All at Once is a different kind of movie. It tells the story of a woman who lives a boring life. She runs a laundry business with her husband who is very weak in character and she is constantly belittled and scorned by her own father and her teenage daughter. She lives in fear of her tax auditor who constantly threatens to have her business closed.

One day, she is informed by a supernatural manifestation that there are multiple other universes with other versions of her that made different choices. In this way, she learns how things have turned out differently for her in each parallel universe where she pursues a life either as a chef, a singer, a martial artist or a movie star, based on different choices, including not marrying her husband.

She is reminded by characters coming from other universes that she is the only person who can save the multiverse from a threat by tapping into skills she developed in the other universes. All this information is too much for her simple mind and it takes her some effort to understand what is happening. As she comes to terms with her mission, she finds out that the threat to the multiverse is actually her own daughter who, like her, has the capacity to access multiple universes. The difference is that the daughter, being aware of everything all at once in the different universes, has concluded that life is meaningless and nothing matters.

She makes her mother travel across multiverses and lifetimes and shows her that they have both been going through this multiple times, in different ages, different countries, shapes and forms. In one lifetime, you even see them as two puppets made of cloth that a child is playing with. In another lifetime, they are two rocks on a planet far away, sitting side by side in a desert and they get into a conversation and one of the rocks, representing the mother, tries to move and get close to the other, representing the daughter.

The daughter has given up caring and wants to destroy the universe, feeling it's the only way to find peace. The mother, through confrontation with her, realizes that even though most things don't matter, there are certain things that do, and those things are worth saving.

This confrontation between the mother and her daughter touches on some deep-lying truths. Teenagers often adapt by destroying what poses a threat to them, but a mother, even from the depths of despair, knows that her job is to save, protect, and nurture. In one scene when her daughter keeps telling her that life has no meaning and that the only way out is to destroy everything, the mother asks her, "If you are really convinced that life has no meaning, why do you keep taking birth and come looking for me in every lifetime? There is something inside you that wants something from me."

The woman's husband is a pretty dull person. He tells her he knows that she thinks he is weak, but he is only fighting in a different way, with kindness. At one point, when things are getting out of control, he tries to intervene by saying: "A lot of things are happening that I do not understand. The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Be kind, especially when you don't know what's going on."

This gets the woman to understand that those who fight us in life do so from their own pain that we don't see. She decides to fight them with kindness. She starts by showing compassion for the cruel tax auditor who has been told across lifetimes that she is unlovable. She further learns to accept her child for who she is by being supportive from the heart instead of trying to mould her. She also learns to be content with the life she has, and not worry about the countless other lives she might have led had she made different decisions along the way.

The movie is not the usual kind of movie and will not be to everyone's liking. It often goes off the rails with the numerous multiverse hopping, the fast-paced action and the wild ride. It is however a very entertaining movie full of little details and references, touching on themes like the conflict in perspectives between parents and children, relationships, life purpose, the multiverse, consciousness and karma. It is actually a movie that must be felt with the soul.

In a particularly touching moment in the movie, the woman revisits her life as a celebrated movie star in an alternate universe. Her husband in that life is smart and successful but as they sit to share a moment together, we find that there is no love between them. They both realize that they have lost each other while pursuing success. As they set to part ways, the husband tells her: "In my next life, I don't want any of this. I will be happy living a simple life, just doing the laundry and filling up tax forms by your side."