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I do remember when EEAAO came out a few months back and a lot of people posted about it, and I got a kind of general sense of its strangeness and the idea that it might elicit strong opinions, garner devoted fans, and also create a group of people who just didn't get it. I really wasn't paying attention to the details, though. IMPORTANT NOTE: I have not been paying attention to a lot of details anymore this year because Entertainment Weekly abruptly and devastatingly ceased to publish a print edition this year, cutting off my key lifeline, my favorite source of pop culture entertainment news.
Do I get E-W (pronounced, as you well truly know by now, ee-dub) newsletters via email? OF course, and I have for years. Do I open them and read them and read the EW.com site as devotedly as I read every issue cover to cover for three decades? Hell, no. I liked the magazine, E-W is dead, and I am out of the loop on some things on which I would have been in the loop had E-W not betrayed us readers in this manner. Specifically, in this case, Daniels.
Do I get E-W (pronounced, as you well truly know by now, ee-dub) newsletters via email? OF course, and I have for years. Do I open them and read them and read the EW.com site as devotedly as I read every issue cover to cover for three decades? Hell, no. I liked the magazine, E-W is dead, and I am out of the loop on some things on which I would have been in the loop had E-W not betrayed us readers in this manner. Specifically, in this case, Daniels.
A few years back, Daniels, these two boys (and I fear I really do mean that, boys) Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who are both named Daniel, decided to stylize themselves as filmmakers as the entity Daniels, but that's the least of our problems here. The far greater problems are the film they released a few years ago called Swiss Army Man, and the film they released this year, EEAAO. I remember that when Swiss Army Man came out, I read about Daniel Radcliffe (not a Daniel in Daniels, evidently, but just a Daniels-adjacent Daniel) and I had the good sense not to go see this film in which he plays a flatulent corpse, despite it playing at Chicago's Music Box Theatre or getting "acclaim" from "film buffs" or whatever other enticements anyone could come up with, because I read about it, and I had the self-respect and sense the godz gave a goose to prevent myself from going to see it. Easy decision.
This year, thanks to E-W's betrayal and abandonment, my focus on many other mostly older films to view, and the fact that I Am Very Busy, I didn't really realize that this Everything Everywhere All At Once that Everybody jabbered about briefly was another "cinematic" offering from Daniels. Had I known, I could have proceeded with more caution last night. Of course, I still would have had to see it, because I do have SOME awareness of what's happening Oscar-talk-wise as we head deeper into Awards Season (what do you take me for, someone who thinks the Oscars aren't important?!?! Get out) and I knew and, sadly, know that EEAAO is going to get nominations and, terrifyingly and frighteningly, likely some awards.
The movie is terrible. The Editing, I might add, is fantastic. That's the category it should win. Assembling that film from the footage of seventy billion separate universes in the way that they did, where within scenes it's flitting back and forth every few seconds, was a truly commendable, phenomenal feat. I applaud the Editing and cannot overstate how remarkably done that aspect is.
The movie sucks. (Have I mentioned that? I will a few more times.) It's a mess, it's boring, it's endless, it's a vulgar fever dream, it thinks highly of itself, it's not worth the 2-hour investment, etc. etc. But here's the question is opened up for me to think about:
Whence this obsession with multiverses / the multiverse / multiple universes, of late? I now have a theory.
Because I live under a rock, and that rock is called I Don't Care About The Thing You Are All Jabbering About Rock, I've seen only a few of the Marvel (MCU) movies. Definitely fewer than half of them. Maybe about 7. However, because I occasionally come out from under my Rock to get an iced coffee, I am aware of the current Cinematic trend/fad/obsession/storyline/prism through which to view the world that is the multiverse in those films, and I actually rather enjoyed the Spider-Man one last year where they all met up. (Spoiler alert? Probably not. Sigh, whatever.) Also, in the real world, so to speak, I have read A Brief History of Time and I have seen clips where Stephen Hawking said there are probably other universes and whatnot, so I know the multiverse is a whole thing, in philosophy, quantum physics, and thought, not just in theme parks movies.
But. It reeeeeeallllly is a big thing in Movie World right now. A Letterboxd review of EEAAO mentioned that multiple universes are "having a moment," and while I was watching EEAAO, that was in fact the question I asked out loud at one point (to the living room): WHAT IS WITH THIS WHOLE MULTIPLE UNIVERSES thing that is everywhere (all at once) now?
I think that it's because as secular as people think they are, they aren't. At all.
More and more people, we hear, don't go to church, aren't religious, don't describe themselves as religious, don't identify as Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Sikh/Jain etc. prefer "spiritual" to "religious," don't believe in God(s), answer "unsure" on the surveys, and so forth.
More every year! lament the old-guard religious types. More every year! enthuse the good-riddance secular/agnostic types.
I'm usually in the latter category, and, what's more, I happily threw the spiritual/personal god/agnostic/there-must-be-an-afterlife baby out with the religious bathwater and went full on atheist. I don't believe in god(s) anymore than I believe in ghosts, poltergeists, fairies, unicorns, vampires, or werewolves. I do believe they all make for wonderful stories, mythologies, literature, and art, and even community and communal storytelling, song, and service. None of it should be taken literally.
I have found, however, that many "secular" and even "atheist" people who have abandoned the Organized Religion ship can't quite let go of a comforting ideology. While they no longer cling to "God" they desperately want to fill that god-shaped hole with an idea of Something More, even when they have a hard time admitting this to themselves.
I am now starting to see how the popularity of multiple universes really works for them. Imagine! Instead of this life being it ("so depressing!" the religious folk often characterize it), imagine that you are actually living a whooooooole bunch of other lives! Except they're not really you, but also they are. And maybe, someday, like Evelyn in EEAAO, you will get to meet your husband and daughter and frenemy from some of the other universes and sort of catapult among them for a few hours and save the world.
Maybe, you don't have to accept the mistakes you have made and the limitations you have reached and the ticking clock of your time in this life running out because you can just be all, Wheeeee! I have a bunch of other lives - somewhere - out there.
As my man Keating would say in Dead Poets Society, "Excrement." That's what he thought of Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, and that's what I think of this once-again letting-yourselves-off-the-hook of living a meaningful life right here, right now, in this one - this ONLY one.
As my man Keating would go on to say, CARPE DIEM. Because "we are food for worms, lads."
In real life (i.e. not Dead Poets Society), I had an English professor in college who taught Biblical Backgrounds in Literature. We read basically the entire Bible as literature and studied its words and influence. It was a fascinating class. He steadfastly avoided answering ANY students' questions/queries/pleas about his own personal religious beliefs for the entire semester. On the very last day, he finally answered, telling us that he did not believe in the Bible God or any other God, and that he found life infinitely more rewarding and precious for knowing that it would come to a definitive, irrevocable end.
I agree.
I think there are a lot of people who agree, deep down, but are terrified -- I mean 100% flat-out terrified -- to admit that. That this life is it. And what are you doing with it?
"What would you do with it? What did I do with it?" as Tim McGraw sings.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" as Mary Oliver asks.
Multiverse, schmultiverse.
You're not living everywhere all at once. And you're not off the hook.
Live here. Now.
