Evelyn Wang, are you my mother?
There is a particular scene in Everything Everywhere All At Once that ripped me open and yanked at my heart. It’s the essence of the movie, and it’s not the one you're thinking of.
After its complete takeover of the Oscars, Everything Everywhere All At Once is saturating comment sections and threads once more a year after its premiere, and I can’t help but read what the people are saying. Many–if not most–are in agreement that the breakout indie film directed and edited by a micro team of weirdos and misfits was more than deserving of its Oscar recognition. Others seem perplexed, upset even. My lifetime on the internet has taught me that some people love to be contrarians just to be contrarians, but my lifetime of being a sensitive baby who takes things personally will keep forgetting this. This time though, I’ve been able to move past the positive and negative feedback loops, and sit back to witness with awe that this weird movie I fell in love with so intimately and privately garnered the attention of Hollywood and haters alike. After I first watched the film, I didn’t think to look up what critics were saying or check to see if others liked it or not–which is strange because I do this with most every other media I consume. All I cared about was that this strange film reached in and held me in a way that exposed all my vulnerabilities, but like a cage of rib bones, protected everything fragile. I knew then that it would be something massive, but I held it close to my chest, cradled it and nurtured it, willing it to not forget me in its inevitable fame. If others didn’t like it, I didn’t care. It was me and EEAAO against the world.
Now, the Hollywood machine and the Academy have given it its flowers, and I am still cradling this baby to my chest as if it hasn’t outgrown me. But it will always be my baby, and yes, it’s because it has an iconic cast of talented Asian actors and is a heartwarming story about a mother and her gay daughter and yes it’s funny and innovative and creative and has the most endearing director duo behind it. It’s all of that and yet somehow that only scratches the surface. There is a singular scene in the movie that ripped me open and yanked at my heart. It’s the essence of the movie, and it’s not the scene that you might think it is.
There are a number of iconic scenes: the silent googly-eyed rocks inching closer together in a lifeless universe, lesbians with hot dogs for fingers, Jobu Topaki’s debut in an Elvis costume and pink wig walking a pig on a leash, Waymond single handedly taking down a squad of armed guards with a fanny pack filled with aquarium rocks, Jobu Topaki with bagel-shaped hair revealing the floating everything bagel in a futuristic monastery, Evelyn getting sucked through the multiverse at lightning speed, a fight scene that involves a butt plug (after which the people seated next to me in the theater during my second watch promptly walked out), a Wong Kar Wai-esque Hong Kong alley scene complete with a belated poetic confession of love, mother and daughter tearfully embracing one another with acceptance and understanding in a laundromat parking lot… Each and every one is distinct and unforgettable. But what made me hold my breath, the visuals that glued my eyelids wide open, and the cinematic movement that rendered me dizzy happened in the first ten minutes.
Immediately, we are dropped into the Wang home. It’s dim and cluttered. Evelyn sits at the dining table that is used more as a bookkeeping desk than a place to eat, and any available nook and cranny functions as additional laundry storage, with bags of customers’ clothes stacked precariously on hard-to-reach shelves. We see just moments later that Evelyn seems to be the only one who can understand this system of organization, although she acts annoyed when nobody can assist her. It looks as though the furniture hasn’t been updated since the family first moved in, and everything is worn with age and covered in layers of dust. There are piles of nondescript boxes and miscellaneous items littering the shelves, floors and stairs. Evelyn’s husband Waymond makes earnest efforts to make conversation, but Evelyn is far too busy double-checking the family business’s stacks of receipts for the annual tax audit happening later that day, intermittently making flippant demands of her husband who can’t seem to understand that there is and never will be time to talk. Evelyn exits the cramped house into their attached family-owned laundromat, and we follow her down the aisles of washers and dryers, where we watch Evelyn manage a slew of difficult customers. She is preparing the space for a Lunar New Year party, and Waymond doesn’t seem stressed enough, her adult daughter Joy who never helps out when she visits is selfishly complaining again, and her elderly father who dropped back into her life only when he needed help can’t seem to stop getting in the way. Evelyn is under a lot of pressure, and the swift panning of the camera mirrors this, matching her pace–quick and anxious, and never pausing for a breath. Evelyn’s attention is demanded by everything, everywhere, all at once.
My own breath, as I sat in a theater crumpling a bag of Sour Patch Kids I proudly snuck in in my clammy fist, was shallow and stilted. A lump had formed in my throat and it would stay there until the last scene of the movie when it would bubble up into tears that would last longer than the movie itself. What I was watching in this opening scene was my childhood. It was my own memories of growing up: of tucking myself under a nail salon reception desk curled into a book; of wiping down the tables of our family restaurant with a mildewed rag and spending holidays packaging catering orders for other families to enjoy while mine would collapse with exhaustion at the end of the day, clothes reeking of cooking oil, and eating only what was left over. The dining table I ate at growing up was home to piles of receipts and bills that nobody was ever allowed to touch except for my mother. The noises I learned to grow accustomed to were the clanging of dishes, the whispered conversations about finances that gradually increased in volume as the stacks of receipts grew taller, and the din of Filipino variety shows from a TV whose channel never got changed. Our basement smelled of meat and garlic, where my grandmother would make homemade longganisa and lumpia for the restaurant (no, my family never gave a shit about OSHA and they tasted delicious anyway). The creak of our back door—the front entryway unusable because we used it for storage—was constant with people rushing in and out at all hours of the day.
Movement and activity never stopped, not even when my grandmother and uncle were both put into hospice care at around the same time. Not when my nephew was born, whose first couple years he would spend in our house. He too would grow accustomed to the chaos. It never stopped, not even when my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. All of this created more noise for me to tune out. All of this required us to hold our breath. All of this demanded our attention, but most of all my mother’s. I was 13 or 14 or 15 when this was all happening. Maybe I was all of those ages, although I can’t quite remember. The thing is, when life keeps moving, so does time. There is no time to calculate, there is only time to keep going. My mother made sure of it.
If my mother and Evelyn were the type of women to make friends, they would be besties.
When I saw the scenes of my childhood displayed before me on a large screen, I almost felt panicked. Was this allowed? How did they know? But what really sank deeply into my chest and gutted me the most was that I was seeing my own mother again, moving quickly from room to room, spending hours sifting through the piles of receipts and lists that only she knew the meaning of and squinting at a calculator as she ran the numbers two or three times for good measure. I was again seeing my mother putting out little fires every place she found them. And she always found them. I was seeing my mother again through my adolescent eyes. My mother who loved me but couldn’t bother to listen to or understand my adolescent complaints or excitements, for there were more important matters like surviving to do. My mother whose limbs were tugged in every direction and whose life was spiraling out of control while all I saw was a solid rock, sans googly eyes. My mother who has always been unwaveringly practical and pragmatic, never having the time or desire for frivolity. Waymond’s knack for lighthearted pranks would not only be dismissed by her, but completely ignored. If my mother and Evelyn were the type of women to make friends, they would be besties.
Sitting in that theater, uncertain of what the next two hours would be like, I felt like I was watching the CCTV footage of my own life. In a way, I almost felt violated. I made sure to tuck these parts of my life safely away in my own memories. Who would listen to these stories, anyway? These moments were private, to me, to my family. Yet here they were, on display for a theater full of people. Did they feel exposed too?
As we and the rest of the world now knows, the movie is beautiful and complicated and weird and funny and heartwarming. It speaks to a lot of us, and it represents a lot of us. It confuses and frustrates others. It has taken cinema by storm, and it’s all so deserved. To me though, this movie is personal. The story is mine, so intimately mine. I grew up in a home that always felt hectic and noisy, with a stern mother who raised a queer daughter, a mother who embraces me but will never fully understand me. My mother is a complicated woman who has lived a serious life and took the chance on marrying an optimistic dreamer. Together, my mom and dad have lived a life of doing taxes and laundry. In every multiverse, they find one another against every odd. EEAAO is a love letter to me, my family, and all the kids who grew up in the chaos of their parents’ determination to survive.
My mom laughs a lot more now than she did while I was growing up. She works just as much, but she moves much slower. When I ask her questions, she hears them and answers. And now sometimes, she’ll crack a joke. I like to think that she’s journeyed through her own multiverse to arrive here.