Personal Insights from Movie: Everything, everywhere all at once

15 Aug 2022 Categorised under: Personal

Preamble

I watched the movie “Everything, everwhere all at once” on my plane ride back from San Franciso, US to Singapore. I thought it was a good movie with lots of meaning. Here are my thoughts in point form.

Always busy

Evelyn was shown to be always busy all the time managing the laundromat business.
She was unable to focus on relationships around her.

Information overload

The multiverse was a metaphor to how we are always overwhelmed by information in the new information age.
Concurrently, not all of this information is actual information. They are mixed with misinformation.
Furthermore, experts are not always able to help us decipher information anymore. We do not have ready access to them. Even when we have access, they might not be correct.
Individuals are forced to evaluate information on their own.

Fear of not living the life that you were supposed to live

Evelyn was shown the possibility of living an alternate life.
These alternate lives made Evelyn want to escape from her own reality.

Fear of having difficult conversations around queerness

Daughter of Evelyn is a lesbian
Evelyn has difficulty telling father that daughter is a lesbian

Women and their struggles

As an independent woman, Evelyn has to run the laundromat.
As a mother, Evelyn has to take care of her daughter, Joy.
As a daughter, Evelyn has to take care of her father, Gong Gong.
As a wife, Evelyn has to take care of her husband, Waymond.

Thinking about the impossible to make connections with alternate universes

Absurd requirements to make a verse jump isn’t too far fetch with respect to innovation and creativity.
Often, lateral thinking allows one to think orthogonally and explore uncharted grounds.

Concluding thoughts

This movie captured the contemporaneous state of the world, which is deep in confusion under the bombardment of tremendous amount of information.
It was also a time when liberalism was on the rise. Feminism, LGBTQIA+ and cultures wars were hot words of strong contention.
The movie did not give definite solutions to the confusion but offers a potential way to ground ourselves in its ending.