So recently, I got forced to watch Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinart’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. After maybe thirty seconds of complaining, I finally shut up and sat down, half-asleep and ready to watch another freaky horror movie--something in the same vein as any other A24 production--yet another Midsommar, Tusk, or Pearl, I assumed.
Jesus, was I wrong. Fifteen minutes in, I was laughing and excited to see where the movie would go, having learned it wasn’t another thriller or psych horror. Two hours after that, I was crying and had a new favorite movie.
This is intended for people who have actually seen EEAAO--there are definitely spoilers, but reading it without the background won’t make much sense.
The most apparent motifs in the movie are Jobu Tupaki’s Everything Bagel and Waymond/Evelyn’s all-powerful googly eyes. I was originally confused about the latter, and the fast-moving second/third act of the movie didn’t give me a lot of time to think about it. I was able to break down and condense my thoughts on this imagery into a somewhat comprehensible three-part list; so here goes nothing…
1. Yin and Yang… or not?
I see a LOT of people talking about how “obvious” it is that the two represent the Taoist Yin/Yang philosophy. I mean, I see how easy it is to interperet that--but I just genuinely feel like it’s a surface-level reading and king of bullshit.
Yin and Yang represents balance. Balance between black (masculinity, fire, darkness, warmth, strength) and white (femininity, water, light, softness, passivity). Neither is bad. Neither is good. Most importantly-- there can’t be one without the other. In EEAAO, literally the whole point of the movie is that the googly eye beats out the bagel. The bagel disappears, the googly eyes heal everyone. The bagel is clearly bad, the eye is obviously a source of good.
I’ll explain my opinion in a second. I just needed to share why I disagree with the Yin/Yang stuff. The only thing I can kind of see is the feminine/masculine balance representing Waymond and Evelyn’s love--but their love is only really healed once the “evil” is destroyed and the “good” conquers all. “Good” and “evil” literally don’t exist in Taoism--so I stand by the idea that the bagel and googly eye aren’t a yin/yang motif.
2. Good and/or Evil
I think the googly-bagel is a pretty clear good/evil metaphor. Old-fashioned and simple. EEAAO kind of spells out this philosophy for us.
With the bagel, everything is on it. Everything is black--representative of evil and general “bad.” The only white, the only good is in the center, where technically, there’s nothing.
What is the bagel trying to tell us?
Everything is bad. Literally everything in every universe. It’s on the bagel. It’s all terrible. The only good thing is literal negative space in the bright white palace where the bagel resides. Jobu wants to enter this void in order to experience the only good thing, which is nothing.
Have I said “nothing” and “everything” enough times yet? Cool.
But the googly eye. Every part of it is substance. The black, the “bad” is part of the whole structure. The white is just as much of a part. The negative space is kind of hard to interpret--but I like to consider how it’s created by a piece of clear plastic. The negative space is just that--negative space, holding everything together. See-through, baring everything to the observer. Maybe it represents the network of universes or whatever laws of physics hold them all together. I’m not sure. If anyone has thoughts, let me know.
My whole comparison here, my whole counterargument to Yin and Yang: The bagel represents some kind of pessimistic nihilism--everything sucks, nothing is good or pure. The googly eye represents… well, I don’t know what to call it. I guess it’s a sort of Yin/Yang type thing. A balance of good and evil.
But both objects portray good and evil differently, though. On one hand, the bagel... actually, let's get into that. Idea 3 coming up.
3. Nihilism! vs. Nihilism...
I think the googly-bagel is trying to represent optimistic vs. pessimistic nihilism. “Nothing matters…” vs. “Nothing matters!” This exact phrase is said a couple times in the movie in different contexts.
The bagel is clearly serious. I mean, duh. Entering the bagel is a point of no return. It’s big. It sucks everything in. Jobu herself expresses the pessimistic “nothing matters” standpoint.
But googly eyes… they’re stupid. Useless. Silly. They don’t matter.
So our two options here:
The bagel. Everything is terrible--let’s all make like Jobu Tupaki and obliterate our entire existence. It doesn’t have any effect on anything. Northing matters.
The googly eye. We can do whatever we want! We can stick googly eyes on shit and not care if the laundromat customers see it! Both good and evil are trivial matters and the only thing we can do is just… do our thing. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters!
Do you kind of see what I’m saying? Probably not.
In short, I thing that EEAAO presented (and I’m saying this as someone who has a LOT of thoughts about whether or not good and evil exist) a beautiful depiction of the concepts of good and evil intertwined with a lesson on how we can live and view the world when everything is ultimately meaningless.
Spoilers end here. You’re welcome :)
That’s all my points, though. That’s my explanation. I really needed an outlet to talk about this movie.
Everything Everywhere is genuinely the best movie I’ve ever seen. It was touching, it was confusing, it was thought-provoking, it was so funny (re: that fight scene)... So good. One of the only good A24 movies, probably. I’m even more in love with Michelle Yeoh. I have so many more thoughts on this movie and I would gladly talk to anyone about it for hours on end, honestly.
Please watch it. I don’t know what else to say. If you’ve already seen it… I don’t know. Watch it again.
Have a good evening!
Oona
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