Everything Everywhere All At Once

Awhile ago, I asked if Laura had watched Everything Everywhere All At Once and she told me she didn’t really understand the movie. I shrugged at the time, because I hadn’t watched the movie yet. Fast forward a year later, I suggested to Amber we watch it on Amazon Prime Video. I cried a little about 70% into the movie. The movie is good. It was chaotic but I understood what was going on from the moment Waymond Wang revealed himself in the janitorial closet.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a love story.

Now, I got this before I read anything about the movie including reviews. So it wasn’t a surprise when I read that people interpreted this movie as a movie about family, love, and finding happiness. However, it was more than that. When I said Everything Everywhere All At Once is a love story, I meant that it’s a love story of ‘what we’re all so used to’ married to ‘what we all wish to strive to be’. It wasn’t just the relationship dynamics that teared me up and how broken it became. Rather, it was also about how it represented the best of us, the best of me. When I watched how the relationship between Evelyn and Waymond was strained due to how it started and the butterfly effect of it, it made me look at my potential relationship with Amber. Despite some of our relationship nuisances, Amber is the lighthouse that constantly beams in the darkness of my world. I find comfort in the darkness of my world, but even in the dark, even if I can navigate in that comfort, I often find myself detached from purpose, from motivation. Even when Amber doesn’t realize it, I find inspiration from her.

In essence, I am Waymond Wang and Amber is Evelyn Wang.

In one of the scenes, in an alternate universe, Waymond was in a suit and Evelyn was dolled up in a dress, waiting outside, having a smoke. Waymond remarks to Evelyn, “So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”

Right now, in this life, in this universe, Amber and I *are* doing laundry and taxes together, but what really teared me up during that scene was that I was convinced that I would give up doing laundry and taxes with Amber, if she could live a life being her best, doing her best without the taint of her childhood. I thought, if I could trade the existence of my life to give Amber a great life, I would. I would only hesitate for a moment just to quickly reflect on my life up to that point, but my decision would be the same.

This is not courage. This is the gift of love, my love.