Movie Review of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”
Updated: Nov 25, 2022
A movie that gets the spiritual awakening journey
Plot: A story of a woman played by Michelle Yeoh who undergoes a wild journey through different universes and dimensions learning how to unlock her full potential but at the core of it all, learning what true unconditional love really means. The story takes a difficult journey between Evelyn played by Michelle Yeoh, her daughter and husband, their failing business and broken marriage and relationship with one another. Through a transformative experience of traveling into different dimensions where she is able to access her parallel and alternate realities, she is able to see all of the parts of herself that ultimately make up, herself in her current authentic form. The story experiences difficult choices, traumatic experiences, regrets, shame and guilt that help Evelyn unlock her abilities to heal herself so that she may heal her family by undergoing deep evolution of having to fight different universes and ultimately save her daughter who is the antagonist in the movie who is seeking to destroy the alternate universes as she is consumed by her own pain and trauma. Ultimately this story ends with Michelle’s ability to see clearly what truly matters in life that the love she has for both her husband and her daughter outweighs any states of lack, regret, shame, blame that she has experienced in her life that she finally takes a huge leap of faith in following her daughter to better understand her pain and suffering and embodies love itself to help break the cycle of generational trauma that was passed down to her from her father and is able to heal herself first and foremost and then her family and the people she comes into contact with.
I will break down the movie in detail and give insight on the deeper meanings behind the characters, scenes and visuals.
The characters themselves represent multiple layers of not just them by themselves, but how they interact with each character and better how they together create one whole.
The main character Evelyn represents the mother and wife to the other two main characters but also ourselves. Our true authentic self, our self that evolves over time, our self who can get carried away by their ego, their failures, consumed by their pain that they fail to see what truly matters in life. They are no longer identifying with who they truly are but yearn to be anyone that they are not. They represent our fears, our doubts, our hopes and our dreams. This character represents our own psyche and the ability we each possess to better understand ourselves in terms of what we want, what our boundaries are, what our fears are, what our needs are, our passions and desires and who we are at the core.
The antagonist in this movie is the daughter Joy who represents our shadow side, our repressed emotions, our pain, our trauma, our suffering, also our ego, our anger and our own demons or the devil you could say. This is the relationship of a daughter who is carrying the weight of her mother’s trauma that was passed on to her from her own relationship with her family problems. A true generational trauma wound that has manifested into this character who is able to manipulate the alternate universes and has created a black void where all of it ends, all the pain is taken away but also all the joy. A true bottomless pit to eradicate life as a whole. This represents ourselves when we are in a low vibrational state consumed by our own pain and suffering that we start to affect the people around us and bring negativity upon them. We become our own wounds and start to react to life instead of living life or responding and being the objective observer and instead begin to destroy everything in our path.
The supporting role is the role of the father, Raymond who represents our higher self. This is more of our ideal self, the self who is tapped into the powers of the good side of the universe which is truly just love. His role is to help Evelyn see into herself and all possibilities that the universe has to offer and that it is up to her to create the reality that she desires so that she can in fact see her true self, learn how to love herself and give to herself what she needs and that through her unconditional love of self and most importantly her family is she truly in alignment with who she truly is, a wife and a mother which is more than enough. He is able to tap into all of the different universes and shows Evelyn how to loosen up, how to see what is possible and that life is meant to be lived and to never give up. He is truly the glue of the family between Evelyn and Joy and is Evelyn’s mirror into her own soul to find herself.
The movie is a true journey to returning home to one’s self and that as we heal ourselves we help heal others. The beginning of the story is the failing business where Evelyn is unhappy with herself, the very beginning of her spiritual awakening where we can become disassociated with everything that we are doing in life, we feel no passion for anything, we become resentful, complaining and consumed in our pain and suffering. We are deeply unhappy, unmotivated and can’t seem to make anything work. Her marriage is also on the verge of collapse, with Raymond secretly wanting a divorce, her difficult relationship with her daughter who rebels against her because of the suffering Evelyn has inflicted upon her daughter who feels like a disappointment because she is gay and drops out of school, isn’t skinny like her mom or takes more interest in being part of the family, to having to take care of her father with mental and health issues who banished Evelyn from the family due to her choice to run off and marry Raymond when she was young and much more. A whole slew of trauma based narratives starts this movie off.
The first chapter of the story is called, “Everything”. It breaks down everything that is going on in her life and gives insight into who Evelyn is, was and is becoming. Raymond and Evelyn then have a strange encounter in the elevator on the way to go and meet the IRS auditor of their failing business and begins the true spiritual awakening journey for Evelyn being introduced to the esoteric world of the invisible or the intangible possibilities that are truly out there in the universe to tap into. Raymond who tells Evelyn he isn’t her husband right now as he is a different version of himself and will not know what she is talking about if she tries to tell her real husband Raymond after this encounter, gives her instructions on how to tap into the unknown which is terrifying but the thought of staying where she is, is just as terrifying.
The next sequence of events shows Evelyn at the IRS agency trying to save the business from a bad audit working with the auditor played by Jamie Leigh Curtis who does a phenomenal job playing this really repulsive character who is mean spirited, belittling, wielding her power of position, but also someone who you feel sorry for, for she too has a story of her own that led her to the place she is, also reflecting back to Evelyn her own shortcomings and mirroring back her own anguish and suffering. During this meeting with the auditor you see that Evelyn had tried to write off many personal expenses as business expenses where you get a glimpse to her unhappiness with herself that she had many short lived hobbies that she tried to focus time and energy into to either break free from where she was, to reinvent herself, to make money or any other escapism tactic one takes when they are truly and deeply unhappy with themselves and out of alignment with their authentic self.
During the audit, Evelyn as instructed by Raymond’s alternate or higher self begins to follow the instructions given to her and is catapulted into the underworld of the infinite possibilities, this could be explained as what we talk about on my podcast as the different dimensions, alternate realities, the different universes through astral projection, jumping timelines, tapping into the akashic records, deep meditation, out of body experience, visualization, law of attraction, higher consciousness and many other terms to explain the phenomenon he is experiencing and able to show Evelyn how to tap into. Evelyn is transported into a closet in the IRS building where she is communicating with Raymond while she is simultaneously still in the audit meeting with the auditor and her husband. Being in two places at once, wait for more title references later hahaha. He tells her she is in danger and that the universe is being threatened and gives her a crash course as to what is really happening and that she has been chosen to help in saving the universe more or less. She keeps bouncing back from different states of reality depicted in the broken mirror on the table, as we are all fragmented and have to learn how to put the pieces back together again. When one undergoes a spiritual awakening it is very much the same as this as new possibilities are cracked wide open for you. You are able to tap into higher frequencies, telepathically communicate with spirits and other people, have infinite knowledge of the universe, astral project and so much more that if you tried to explain this to a sane human you would be locked up and thrown into a psych ward.
Evelyn is then catapulted into past selves and alternate versions of herself in seeing what life could be like, tapping into all of the talents and abilities that she already possesses but fails to see within herself. She sees herself as a glamorous martial arts actress and wishes that had in fact been her life, showcasing her deep traumas, desires, resentment and states of lack to tapping into those talents from each of the alternate Evelyns to fight against the impending doom created in the Alphaverse that she has been called upon to help protect and save. This scenario is true in the spiritual awakening journey of deep healing, reflection and purging. You begin to unearth all of your fears, your trauma and start to see what could have been or what happened, almost reliving these painful sufferings all over again and if you get consumed in them again you stay stuck but if you keep on the mission to better yourself and believe more and more, then more and more begin to unlock for you. You are able to see your full potential and tap into these skills and become the objective observer of your own self-imposed prison that you created. She learns that there is a dark entity out there that is plaguing the Alphaverse and they haven’t figured out who it is yet but she is the chosen one who might be able to stop it and save the universe.
As the movie develops Raymond, her higher self, you could say, keeps her grounded or gives her advice and as one does on the spiritual journey you either listen or you don't. When you don’t listen, alternate realities and outcomes begin to happen. This might be the heavy hand of the universe coming down on you and creating worse scenarios in your life, than if you had stayed the harder course. She is being forced to just go with the flow even when things seem ridiculous like getting hot dog fingers or watching people eat chewing gum from under desks or shoving butt plugs up their ass are just symbols of us letting go of our fears, our judgements and our limited human mind to truly expand our conscious and understand the true interconnectedness that the universe has to offer and that if we push ourselves to the edge we might be more willing to actually take the leap all together.
The next chapter of the movie is called, “Everywhere” this is self explanatory that Evelyn is now learning how to jump universe, timelines and being in multiple places at once and navigating each universe to unlock the mysteries that the universe holds to finding out that the antagonist and person who is taking down the universe is in fact an alternate version of her very own daughter who is plagued by the traumatic suffering that she has endured in her life. Joy has been engulfed in what one would call the dark night of the soul. The dark night of the soul is when we are overcome with feeling everything that we have ever endured in our life and being consumed by it, the true test from the universe of our perseverance of self, how badly we want to become the best version of ourselves so that we can save ourselves or become our own destruction which can destroy all who are around us. Joy’s character destroys the people in her way trying to save the universe and creates a literal black hole in the universe where nothing can be felt, her hope that all of her pain will finally go away. When we are consumed by our own pain we want to make it end, we are willing to do just about anything to just make it end instead of being our own light so that we can see the true light that is always offered to us. Joy’s black hole will eradicate all of her pain and also anything that comes into contact with it, so Evelyn and Raymond are called upon to stop her and prevent this from happening. This is the true symbiotic relationship we can see with all the characters of our inner battle and turmoil one goes through on a spiritual awakening where you can see all of your shadow self wreaking havoc on your life and being consumed in that pain while your higher self is trying to do everything possible to wake up your authentic self to transmute that energy and step fully into your power and learn how to love that part of yourself unconditionally. This is a true battle of your own demons, god and the devil, death and rebirth, good versus evil, ego versus self, whatever you want to call it, it is the basis of the spiritual warfare that one endures along the spiritual awakening journey.
As the movie progresses Evelyn learns how to control her mind to focus on what the tasks at hand is, to open her mind (consciousness), her heart and tap into her own power. She has interactions with unlikely people and learns from those interactions and seeing that all people are just people with their own flaws and that she can in fact connect with each one. She is able to work through her traumas and not run away from them, let go of resentment and blame and become her own savior, she is able to see that all along Raymond her higher self truly loves her unconditionally and will never give up, but that is also true in her physical reality that he has always loved her and is her constant in life, that we are never truly alone. Evelyn has more encounters with her daughter Joy as her alternate self and is taken on wild journeys that only Joy or your lower vibrational/shadow side can show you to see what truly matters in life. That the answers you have always been looking for are within you, not outside of yourself. The scene of Evelyn and Joy as rocks on another planet having a heart to heart conversation about life is symbolic in many ways, where we need to be still in order to listen and to tune into the frequency of the universe. You could even reference this back to a verse from the bible, the book of Peter chapter 2 verse 8, “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.”They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. That sometimes we become our own blockage in life, we create our realities and when we go against the message of the universe we fall. The universe is always wanting to work for us not against us, but from our own actions does the universe respond to us. The unconditional love that the universe has to offer yourself is yours for the taking.
A beautiful chapter of Evelyn stepping into power that she will never give up on her daughter because she loves her and that she will go to the end of the earth to save her. Evelyn then becomes like Joy to feel what it is like to be in her shoes to understand true empathy and to see a new perspective, her daughters so that she may find a way to connect, to heal and to love. Through self sacrifice Evelyn is able to take a huge leap of faith to take the mission to save herself and her daughter and is able to embody unconditional love where she is truly her authentic self, where she still doesn’t agree with things her daughter does or what her husband does and can learn how to ask for her needs to be met but that what they have to offer her is true unconditional love and that is the only thing that matters to her.
The end of the movie comes full circle, the last chapter entitled, “All At Once” shows the generational traumas being healed between her father and Joy and that Joy can finally feel her mothers love and approval, that Evelyn truly loves and appreciates Raymond and that her life isn’t as terrible as she thinks it is, but can see a new side to what it has to offer and can be fully present and grateful for what she already has and thus by that shift in her frequency is able to bring in more joy of unlikely friendships, healed relationships, joy and above all else love.
The ability to see beyond your trauma, your fears, your failures, letting go of judgment and criticism and blame of others are you better able to step into purpose and focus on what the universe has to offer you of being fully present, appreciating what you already have in life and spreading that love to all whom you encounter in your day to day is truly the answer to your own problems. That by staying the course are you truly able to be Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Keep shifting your perspectives and finding the delights in everyday moments.
Love and Light,
Kate
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