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After nearly a year of rave reviews, I waited until Saturday to watch “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the movie that swept the 2023 Academy Awards with seven wins Sunday, including best picture and three of the four acting awards. Not because I doubted the hype, but because I knew it would hit home for me.
And I wasn’t quite ready for that.
“Everything Everywhere” tells the story of a Chinese immigrant Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) struggling to connect with her lesbian daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) and her kind yet estranged husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). That is, until she is thrust into an alternate universe and forced to defeat an evil force inhabiting her daughter – a metaphor for Joy’s deep-rooted unhappiness stemming from years of unaddressed intergenerational trauma.
After finally mustering the mental energy to watch, I can say it’s no wonder “Everything Everywhere” is being heralded as the movie of the year. Very few movies have made me laugh, cry, smile and call my mom all in the span of 2 hours and 19 minutes. It’s a cosmically chaotic plot infused with fun martial arts action, bittersweet family drama and comic relief.
That’s why “Everything Everywhere,” against all odds, won big. But more importantly, it’s a hopeful reminder that Asian representation doesn’t have to include cliché stereotypes or tokenism disguised as diversity to be worthy of the Oscars.
A big night for Asian Americans
After decades of limited, biased and/or stereotypical representations of my community, Asian Americans witnessed a milestone in Hollywood history.
On the red carpet, Harry Shum Jr., one of the film’s stars, paid homage to his Asian heritage with an innovative, bespoke “East meets West” tuxedo. Hong Chau, nominated for her performance in “The Whale,” added a Mandarin collar to her custom Prada gown as “a shoutout to (her) roots.”
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The night continued to radiate inspiring Asian American pride and positivity, for South Asian Americans – who witnessed many “firsts” with “RRR” (best song) and “The Elephant Whisperers” (best documentary short) – and for East Asian Americans, who witnessed a long-awaited and well-deserved win from Quan, 51, only the second Asian actor to win best supporting actor since Haing S. Ngor for “The Killing Fields” in 1984.
Beloved industry veteran Yeoh, 60, also took home one of the night’s biggest prizes, making her the second woman of color in the 95-year history of the awards to win best actress (following Halle Berry for 2001’s “Monster’s Ball”).
What ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ means for me
Words cannot explain how proud I am to see “Everything Everywhere” – an unapologetically Asian American story with an Asian American cast – recognized by perhaps the most prestigious institution in the entertainment industry, now headed by an Asian president, Janet Yang.
The crux of the film is a familiar and nostalgic narrative: I see bits of myself in Joy, an angsty twenty-something grappling with the innate, intergenerational trauma that comes with being a second-generation American. It’s trauma, with a lowercase “t,” in the subtle form of sensing disappointment from your grandparents when you can’t fluently speak their native language; of wanting to assimilate as an Asian American without abandoning your roots; of feeling guilt over the sacrifices your parents made, only to fear you won’t live up to their expectations.
But I also relate to matriarch Evelyn. I too struggled to communicate and express my feelings. Instead, my default response to frustrating and unfamiliar conflicts was defensiveness and anger, rather than empathy and kindness.
The movie admittedly is a hard watch, but in the best ways possible. I enjoyed that it courageously explored taboo topics, such as positive masculinity (Waymond’s) and queer relationships in Asian cultures. At the same time, “Everything Everywhere” pushed boundaries and perfectly captured the complexities of vulnerable, intergenerational healing in many immigrant families.
Despite the dazzle of special effects and the fantastical impossibilities of a multiverse, “Everything Everywhere” represented my reality: an authentic story of a second-generation Asian American girl, who is still learning to accept being “stubborn, aimless, and a mess.”
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