Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: A Bizarre, Absurdist Triumph
When I first walked out of the theater after watching Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, the first sentence I said to my mother was: “What the f&%$?” Caught up in the sheer chaos of the movie’s plot, my mother and I both failed to appreciate the movie’s deeper hidden messages and themes until about twenty minutes after leaving the theater, when she asked me what the movie even meant. At that point, I started to look back on the film’s significant moments and recurring themes: those of family, kindness, and an underlying subversion of the immigrant story - all amounting to an ultimate theme of appreciating our loved ones, even when they drive us up the wall. Despite my initial confusion (or the fact I still can’t get the movie’s long-winded name right), I definitely grew to appreciate the film’s absurdist, but well-constructed, plot and characters. I now understand its 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
