27: Reel Hawaii & Everything Everywhere
Gareth Higgins on EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
Everything Everywhere All At Once feels like the film - or at least one of the films - I’ve been waiting for all my life. It’s the Blazing Saddles of The Matrix, the Andrei Rublev of sitcoms, a rare movie that fits both multiplex and arthouse, an action film about love, a love story about depression, a tale of lost ambition that’s really about the magnificent possibilities of humility. It’s beautifully inclusive of marginalized identities but also features an arguably homophobic joke; it may be smart but not wise, or wise but unnecessarily repetitive; it’s hilarious and made me cry; and I don’t know if it’s going to hold up on second viewing, or fall apart, or spur me to a third, fourth and fifth. That doesn't matter, because viewing number one left me the most joyously awestruck I’ve been by a popcorn movie in years. (And be assured - this is a movie, not television in public; a self-contained story, earning its 140 minute runtime, coming out of nowhere and demanding no sequel. It reminded of what going to the cinema is for; and the contrast with what it has often been - before the pandemic at least - is striking.)
It’s the reason no Marvel Cinematic Universe film need ever be made again, and might make Ursula K. Le Guin dance for joy. Le Guin made plain a massive cultural problem: that in a world where kindness is considered naive, the unhealthy warrior archetype will usually win out, even if it causes more harm; unbridled and unnecessary aggression will be equated with courage; and the warm among us thought of as weak. Everything Everywhere All At Once pats that constituent part of the myth of redemptive violence on the head, but doesn’t leave it gasping in the dust. Instead, having the courage of its convictions it welcomes even broken warriors to the table, as long as they play by rules that reduce violence rather than lionize it. The real heroes here are those who continue to manifest compassion, even when it hurts; and who recognize that being kind is not the opposite of being brave.
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