Weekly Reel, April 25
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Steve Jobs book review, Luca, Secrets of Dumbledore, Netflix decline, CNN+, and RIP Peng Wang
In 1986 Philosopher David Kellogg Lewis published his classic text, On the Plurality of Worlds, which lays out the tenets of modal realism: all possible worlds exist that are just as real as our world but only differ in content. Developed initially from the theories of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, modal realism is explained to filmmaker Ross McElwee during a documentary he’s making by a linguist that could be a romantic fit. Daniel Scheinert had just made two short films by 2010 when he watched McElwee’s documentary, Sherman’s March, and decided to research the multiverse for a story after that passing reference from the linguist. The next year Scheinert joined forces with Daniel “Dan” Kwan, a classmate from Emerson College, to make music videos and short films as “Daniels.” In that time, Rick and Morty and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse successfully introduced the multiverse to popular visual culture, which was upsetting and painful for Daniels to see their idea usurped. Nonetheless, the maximalist duo finally created their multidimensional epic with the budget of a rom-com provided by the Russos.
When they approached the script, Daniels were acutely conscious of asking for one’s attention:
At the end of 2016, when we started to write Everything Everywhere All at Once, we were already feeling the too-much-ness of it all. We asked ourselves, why add to the noise? In a world where everything and everyone is clawing for our attention, where billion dollar corporations see every single minute of our lives as potential real estate to be bought up and sold off for profit, asking anyone for two hours of their time to watch one of our films felt like asking for, well... too much. We realized if we were going to make a film and ask an audience to give us that precious time, the only responsible thing to do in return was to blow their minds and change their lives forever. Or, at the very least, we were going to attempt that.
No small challenge. What they gave us was a story distilling the logic of their own misgivings. In other words: they went for it. Everything Everywhere All at Once is about a Chinese family going through an audit on their Simi Valley laundromat. At the heart of the story are the relationships between the mother Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) and her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Joy is struggling with Evelyn’s minimization of her lesbian relationship while Waymond is looking for a divorce during a particularly busy day. If these struggles weren’t enough, Evelyn is also confronted by a multi-universal force looking to recruit her for their cause against an all-powerful being.
One wouldn’t exaggerate to say that this film features everything (butt plugs, conversational rocks, Raccacoonie, hot dog fingers, the everything bagel, piñatas, double-ear blue tooth, etc.) everywhere (film premiere, kung-fu retreat, Wong Kar-wai drama, Benihana, 2001’s African plains intro, IRS building, etc.) all at once.
The film opens at the Wang residence, the floor above their laundromat. Evelyn is stressed between organizing receipts for the audit and cooking breakfast while Waymond is trying to deliver her divorce papers and Joy is trying to have her earnestly accept her girlfriend. Both issues are put aside until after the family goes to their audit conducted by IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jaime Lee Curtis). While zoning out during the conversation, Evelyn transports herself to another universe with help from Alpha Waymond. The Alphaverse, where the same characters but in different worlds have the name Alpha, is where Alpha Evelyn first invented verse-jumping. Alpha Waymond is part of a rebel group on the run and trying to recruit an Evelyn qualified to fight the indestructible Jobu Tupaki, the failed experiment of Alpha Evelyn, who can experience all parallel worlds simultaneously. Jobu Tupaki, née Alpha Joy, created a black hole in the form of an everything bagel to supposedly destroy everything.
Evelyn learns the intricacy of verse-jumping while fighting against Jobu Tupaki’s followers, one in the form of IRS inspector Beaubeirdra. To “slingshot” into a parallel universe, one must perform a strange action that will have a butterfly effect through adjacent universes, for instance giving oneself papercuts between fingers or jumping sphincter-first onto a butt-plug auditor award. The worlds that Evelyn jumps into show the what-ifs of alternate life choices. In one she follows her parents’ advice and stays with them rather than going to California with Waymond, which results in her becoming a kung-fu movie star and him becoming a successful businessman. Evelyn weaves through this parallel universe and others, which only get more abstract/absurd, to gain skills and personal insight into the results of her present world. A violent form of therapy so to say.
Alpha Evelyn’s father Alpha Gong Gong (the immortal James Hong) is the leader of the anti-Jobu Tupaki group. After learning how to verse-jump, Evelyn resists Alpha Gong Gong’s order to kill her universe’s Joy to slow down Jobu Tupaki, which makes her the enemy of the rebel group as well. Alpha Waymond recognizes this iteration of Evelyn as the strongest to fight Jobu Tupaki because it’s the version of Evelyn that failed to achieve anything in life, thus giving her boundless potential. After learning about Jobu Tupaki’s ability, Evelyn goes for the same tactic. But through this tireless training, Evelyn learns that Jobu Tupaki is trying to destroy herself rather than everyone because of her suicidal “nothing matters” nihilism. Evelyn changes her strategy from violence, embodied in the rebel group’s resistance, to caring, expressed in Waymond’s innocence.
It's here where the absurd parallel universes collide uncontrollably. In one, hot dogs replaced human fingers and Evelyn is romantically involved with Beaubeirdra. In another, Evelyn is working at a Benihana and discovers her coworker (Harry Shum Jr.) is secretly being controlled by a talented raccoon chef (voiced by Randy Newman) tugging on his hair. They initially appear to be throwaway humor one would expect from a Rogen/Goldberg production. But once they cross-cut these with the main universe, it becomes clear that the film is earnestly attempting to address the consequences of nihilism through taming the infinite expansiveness of absurdity that leads to a universal belittling of oneself. That behind every joke lurks a multi-universal truth.
Why would Evelyn want to stay in a universe where she struggles with taxes when she could be a famous movie star? The answer is in the relationship between Evelyn and Joy, which manifests itself metaphysically in Evelyn’s battle with Jobu Tupaki. It’s the classic story of generations coming into conflict, of fighting to remain by yet also fight against one’s own parents. As Daniels explained:
We wanted to stretch ourselves in every direction to bridge the generational gap that often crumbles into generational trauma. It was an attempt to create the narrative equivalent of the Theory of Everything. A Big Data approach to myth-making. A post-genre deconstruction of traditional narrative. A maximalist's manifesto for surviving in the noise of modern life.
Without giving away the climax, it could be said that Daniels pulls off the nifty double-down-dog revelation, anti-revelation, synthesis of sincerity that doesn’t strain the incredulity of the story. The grandiose plot consists of a straightforward A, B, C story structure: with A being the overarching story (Evelyn’s self-actualization), C being the smallest (Evelyn and her husband), and B somewhere in the middle (Evelyn and her daughter). For A’s resolution, a waterfall of resolutions must be completed from C upwards. Evelyn’s resolution with her husband gives her the caring ability to get emotionally through to her daughter, and when her resolution with her daughter is achieved, only then is Evelyn able to get a grasp on her out of control life. By going through these realizations, Evelyn accepts her lowly life at the laundromat.
Because of the maximalist script by Daniels, the actors must literally give their all. Michelle Yeoh is a perfect casting choice (one can say this for most characters) given her history; films as different as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Crazy Rich Asians were in mind in creating Evelyn’s character (publicity videos of Yeoh at the latter’s premier was used in Everything). Daniels originally wrote the script for Jackie Chan but switched the protagonist to the mother and wrote it for Yeoh. Stephanie Hsu is a socal native who is bound to be an acting mainstay, offering more than the Broadway portrayal of Karen in The SpongeBob Musical. It’s good to see Ke Huy Quan in front of the camera again after peaking in the eighties as Short Stop in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies. And rather than let James Hong retire, the 93 year-old now has a career stretching 68 years. That’s more than half of cinema’s existence! That’s more time than Jamie Lee Curtis has been alive, who’s able to offer a fresh take on the multidimensional, kung-fu IRS inspector that couldv’e easily fallen apart with an actor less talented.
So where does the multiverse go from here? Disney’s-Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will offer what Disney-Marvel always offers (oohs and awes from the rabid white Millennial fanbase) and next year’s Sony’s-Marvel’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be its higher critically-acclaimed multiverse counterpart. Anything else?
This week in review:
“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson ★★★
This book is the equivalent of the half-drawn horse meme, where the back of the horse is beautifully drawn and the head resembles a stenciled potato. The first half of this book flows nicely because it's interesting and written as a thriller in the sense that a timely struggle is at play between Jobs and his ambitions. But around the middle, or right after the NeXT stuff and his return to Apple, the story completely fizzles. Once Jobs made his triumphant return, Isaacson went into autopilot. One can even read this in the final chapters: each paragraph is just a half-hearted summary of events.
There's also a serious problem regarding Jobs's infamous reality distortion field, which compromised the entire narrative. Jobs clearly took in Isaacson and turned him into another sycophant that failed to seriously criticize Jobs. Yes he showed how Jobs was an asshole and that he abandoned his first-born, but oftentimes runs cover for this attitude and defends Jobs much more often, as any hagiography would do.
With a straight face Isaacson genuinely believes Jobs was more interested in making perfect products than making money. Is his behavior regarding stock options, as well as having a personal jet and planning to build a massive yacht, really that of a person disinterested in money? Also the omission regarding the horrific Apple factories in China is striking. If Jobs wasn't interested in the money and really cared about where his products are manufactured, then why not try to mend a situation in which suicide nets are necessary. Or better yet, why not just pay more for more expensive American workers? They had the money because they controlled the industry.
Steve Jobs (2015) ★★★
I’ve just read up until the events at the beginning of this film in the Isaacson hagiography, so I’ll be updating this with edits when I find glaring differences (I’ve heard there’s plenty). But this doesn’t and shouldn’t be a form of reviewing the integrity of the film as a film.
But as a film, it seemed really bizarre by act three realizing that some of Jobs’s most personal and professional climaxes all colliding thirty minutes before a big product launch. Was Sorkin bored with the multi-geographic cross-cutting of The Social Network and needed a challenging confinement?Edit1: Basically non of the film's pre-1984 launch drama happened in the source material. I find all the events that led up to this (teaming with Woz, being a shaven-headed hippie in India, working alongside his father in the garage, etc.) much more interesting than when Apple was already on the map. Is that the era that the Kutscher movie covered and botched? Reading all the crazy things that happened and the different personalities, as well as the current skew towards miniseries would make Steve Jobs/Apple an amazing season-long HBO show in the right hands.
Edit2: Okay it's easier to describe all (actually just one) of the ways in which this film adheres to it's source material: Steve Jobs abandoned his first-born child at birth and didn't acknowledge her until way too late. The film is therefore a tertiary piece of media; in other words, an interpretation of a work that interprets reality. In this way, Sorkin and Boyle are able to veer much further from reality given the exponential reach given to a tertiary text, which they properly understood.
Luca (2021) ★★★½
In Mussolini's Italy, a young pair of homosexual communists navigate their way through a small seaside town hostile to their identity. They experience many trials and tribulations that test their humanity while having to hide from sadistic Blackshirts hot on their trail. From the studio that brought you Toy Story 4, Cars 3, and The Good Dinosaur comes a heart-wrenching story set on the eve of the most destructive war of all time. You will laugh, you will cry, and more importantly your belief in the good of mankind will be affirmed. Now streaming on Disney +.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) ★½
When I was seven or eight I was riding my bike at a neighbor's house that had this cool little novice moto gp quality to it with little hills and such. I was already proceeding fast after the initial launch, so when it took me over the small hill down an intimidating slope I lost all confidence, locked up, and sped directly into a giant wooden pole back first. I stumbled over, cried, and felt as hopeless as I'd ever been in those seven or eight years of existence. Sitting through this film reminded me of that feeling.
Otherwise, congrats to terf'd Rowling for further adding installments to her beloved bubblies in order for Universal Studios to justify the existence of a scale model Hogwarts for mudbloods and for adding such a diverse group of characters: gays (Jude Law and Mads Mikkelsen), trans man (Eddie Redmayne), Jew (Dan Fogler), bpd woman (Alison Sudol), black woman (Jessica Williams), ginger woman (Victoria Yeates), slender woman (Katherine Waterston), Brazilian model (Maria Fernanda Cândido), Ulrich Nielsen! (Oliver Masucci), black Frenchman (William Nadylam), welsh-born Chinese man (Dave Wong), and to be topical a Ukrainian-Russian (Aleksandr Kuznetsov).
Also they screwed the pooch on Ezra Miller playing a nobody; he couldv'e played a great young Snape if any of the executives had a brain and if Miller didn't just cancel himself irl lol.
News:
Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers last quarter, the first time it’s lost subscribers in any quarter in it’s history. They may lose an additional two million in the this quarter. Shares of Netflix stock dropped 35% the following day, which amounted to a $50 billion market cap. This will speed up their transition to lower-cost, ad-supported subs and crackdowns on password sharing.
Less than two weeks after Warner Bros. Discovery’s official merging, they shut down CNN+ because of their plan to put all streaming into a single app (Disney take note).
Peng Wang, a graduate student cinematographer from Chapman University, was killed when an off-road vehicle rolled over on a large sand dune. The production was for a USC student film that failed to receive approvals from the film school as well as permits for the land used.
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