Can There Be a Tax-Free Universe?
Everything everywhere all at once (spoiler alert)
In recent years, the number of movies about the multiverse has increased exponentially, and most studios have found the secret to making more movies, creating universe after universe, production after production,
Companies like Marvel and Disney, which are well-suited to this, have also made a lot of use of it. Not only is this a storytelling technique, but it is also a marketing technique.
In universes like Marvel’s, the multiverse promises that the movie will continue in the future and uses the audience’s attachment and familiarity with the universe to continue its cycle.
Of course, it would be unfair to judge the entertainment industry solely on this market: there are other aspects of such films that shape popular culture that is worth discussing.
Nevertheless, it is no wonder that Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), a kind of parody-comedy about the proliferation of multiverse theory, which stands outside of these larger universes, was so popular.
The film, which has received very positive reviews since its release, was directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheniert, the directors of the 2013 music video Turn Down For What and 2016’s Swiss Army Man.
The film is extremely self-aware and uses multiverse clichés to the fullest in a self-referential way. What would it be like if there really were countless universes? The movie explores this question to the fullest and also explores the most absurd possible universes that come to mind.
In one universe, people have sausage fingers and do everything with their feet; in another, our protagonist is a rock; all universes have collapsed into a black sesame bagel.
Our hero is the only one who can save the universe, but he is not a superhero. She is an aging Chinese immigrant woman with a monotonous routine, trying to pay her taxes, and running a laundromat.
Her escape from the mediocrity of her life will cost her dearly. When we start the movie, Evelyn is trying to understand the taxes she has to pay. Aren’t the processes we go through in our daily lives with bureaucracy, endless and circular, absurd to the point of being thrown into the multiverse?
These processes, which prevent people from living a linear, natural life and make life difficult, which are far beyond being logical, which completely change the concept of time and make it vital, also allow them to be examined beyond their ordinariness.
Being thrown into a multiverse with characters that exist in the ordinary of life, such as an immigrant running a laundromat in California and a bored woman working in the tax office, is a very entertaining experience, reminding us that we don’t have to get lost in this mediocrity.
The film’s dynamic editing keeps up with the pace and variability of the narrative, keeping the audience glued to the screen. To be able to watch such a moving, funny and absurd movie in a theater after two years of missing movies so much, perhaps for this reason alone, elevates this production much higher than it already is.
The acting of Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis carries the movie in the same way; these actors are very experienced and accomplished and undoubtedly carry the movie.
The small details in the writing of the characters also prove that the film spends time on its characters without relying too much on the originality of its plot and that the narrative is not just about shock value.
The film’s references to Wong Kar-wai’s cinema underline its awareness of its own production process and its place in a certain history.
Like Evelyn, everyone wants to believe that their life has not been wasted and that better things await them. It is very difficult to be content with what you have.
Even though the film emphasizes appreciating what you have, your family, it is the very essence of cinema and the experience of watching a movie to imagine that life can be much more exciting and fun by getting lost in other universes.
Sometimes watching a movie begins and ends with this feeling, even if the movie itself is difficult to understand or decipher.
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