In defense of this thing called ‘Everything at once everywhere’

No movie survives criticism after being nominated for eleven Oscars, let alone if it ends up winning seven. The crazy production of the Daniels, for many one of the best A24 films, is going through that moment in which its detractors have found in the awards an enemy to defeat while its defenders, somehow, have become the maximum representatives of the statuette deliveries. For all that (and for everything else), we went out in defense of this thing called ‘Everything at once everywhere’, regardless of whoever may.

All at once on all frames

“Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s excessive, gratuitous, puzzle film owes a lot to the Pythons, at least one of them: Terry Gilliam”, pointed out Fausto Fernández in his criticism of ‘Everything at once everywhere’. “The rich, fertile and feverish imaginary of the author of ‘Brazil’ is the common link of the alternative vignettes to which the protagonist jumps. Martial arts comics, science fiction worthy of the Moebius of Metal Hurlant magazine, dystopias romantic, with watercolor evocations of frames by Wong Kar-wai… they take turns in this concentric and hallucinatory journey, ambitious in its staging and generous in its gargantuan binge of genres”.

While some catch up desperately looking for where to see ‘Everything at once everywhere’, others We continue to make the effort to remember what we thought of this film full of successes, knots that are difficult to swallow and not a few slip-ups..

In the middle of 2022, with the Marvel multiverse trying to make its way after the end of the Infinity Saga, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert created their own film event with infinite plot layers. Its plot does not take long to introduce us to Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, winner of the 2023 Oscar for Best Actress), a Chinese immigrant in the United States who, after an interdimensional rupture that alters reality, finds herself involved in an adventure in which she must save the world. world.

Desperate to keep her job afloat and surrounded by a family that can’t stand the way she is, will travel through infinite multiverses while reviewing the big decisions of his lifediscovering along the way that she is demanding too much of herself and others, leading her marriage to the brink of imminent divorce and her daughter to a depression of no return.

It is then that Evelyn discovers that she must change, but since this whole story is told through a mechanism that allows one to move to the mind of infinite versions of oneself in different planes of parallel realities, It seems more difficult than it really is. Like any Nolan movie.

If you’re still a little dizzy from all the traveling, don’t miss our explained finale of ‘Everything at once everywhere’. We did what we could, which is exactly what we could do.

All awards everywhere

Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the Javis over there, became known at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival when half the attendees fled a screening of their ‘Swiss Army Man’the one in which Daniel Radcliffe played a farting corpse.

After winning the award for best director of the contest, a feat that they repeated in Sitges months later with the award for best film, the Daniels’ career was consolidated, becoming one of the great assets of A24 in 2022. Its condition as a festival film failed to cross the North American border at the box office, adding pyrrhic collection results in the countries that tried their luck, as was the case of Spain thanks to the always brave YouPlanetbut the snowball caused by the applause on social networks of those who were lucky enough (or impatient) to see it at first never seemed to thaw.

Present in the extensive awards season from the beginning, ‘Everything at once everywhere’ has crowned its multiverse marathon with the Oscar for Best Picture, Directing (Daniels), Original Screenplay (Daniels), Leading Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis), Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan) and Editing (Paul Rogers)something that his detractors will never forget.

This thing called ‘All at once everywhere’

When they match one’s taste, the awards symbolize all the great properties of what, objectively, they have succeeded in emphasizing. When they don’t, they not only become a collection of subjective incorrect choices, but also respond to the plans of all those who we have decided to position on an enemy side in which, curiously, they always have the upper hand.

The prizes, as even the most indignant knows deep down, are neither one thing nor the other. They are politics and strategy, they are long campaigns, past or future favors and, above all, the average taste of those who vote.

And what do they vote? What they want to win for any of the above reasons, not the film that best represents the cinema of the moment, the one that marks the path of future cinematography or the one that breaks with the past because it is not starring a heterosexual Caucasian man, coincides or not with all of the above.

The prizes don’t matter and no, we all agree on that, that’s why it doesn’t make sense to look for some hidden although fully publicized intentions. If there is a universe in which ‘Everything at once everywhere’ is a revolutionary film that is going to change the status quo​, or that really reflects what cinema and culture is today, this is not it..

Or at least that’s what we hope for. a story that ends with its protagonist embracing her husband’s poisoned advice, willing to pretend to be nicer and work in a laundry for the rest of her life because, even though she doesn’t want to, it’s what she’s been given..

Wait, but wasn’t this a defense of this hilarious sci-fi movie overloaded with crazy ideas? What universe is this? Quick, do something weird, try sticking an Oscar up your ass…