Everything Everywhere All At Once

Reading Time: 2 mins

During the first year of the Covid pandemic, parents were asked to be everything in order to survive a tumultuous and scary time. I had to fulfill many roles that year. I was a caretaker to my two young children, a manager of a young team, an educator, a music teacher, an exercise guru, a head chef, a comedian, a family cheerleader, a strategy setter, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother. Oh yeah, and I had to make sure I didn’t fall apart daily. It was hard, and to be honest, I’m still trying to shed some of the expectations that I put on myself that year. Nowadays I have to remind myself that I don’t have to create daily learning plans. Sometimes it’s okay to have nothing on the docket even if the idea of resting gives me a dose of anxiety. I’m unsure if that anxiety is some type of PTSD from quarantine or if that’s my new reality of raising two young children. 

When I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once, as crazy as it sounds, I connected with it on such a cellular level that I could not believe it was written by two men. It felt like an ode to working women everywhere. The ACTING. The ACTION. The STORY. The SETS. JAMIE. LEE. CURTIS! I went into this movie knowing nothing about it, other than a friend of a friend loved it and wanted her mom to watch it so they could talk about it (she also said her mom did not understand it). And boy, did I feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole once the movie got going. I remember feeling grateful that I was watching it at home under my cozy blanket so I had something to hold onto. 

I felt like the people who created this movie were sick of what they had been watching. It’s all the same, and we’ve become zombies just scrolling through our phones, email, televisions, always on the hunt for a different flavor of bullshit. The Daniels created a work of pop art with Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s a love story. It’s a family story. It somehow feels real even though it’s crazy. The Daniels grounded their movie in love and respect and that is why it works for me. 

I’m so happy that this movie exists in a time where I feel so bored by what I see in mainstream media and life feels increasingly crazy. It’s a glimmer of hope and quirk in a sea of content solely made to get a viewer’s attention. This movie not only captures eyeballs (lol), but also hearts. Give it a try. Believe me, if you stick through to the end, you’ll be happy you did. And I may just stick around until the end of the usually very long and boring Academy Awards ceremony just to see if this odd-ball movie gets the award for Best Picture. It would make my Haunted Basement heart so full and optimistic and excited to get to work to create something as original, fun, and heartfelt as Everything Everywhere All At Once.