Is It Woke?: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’

Is the Oscar-winning fantasy-comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once woke? Yes, even though I’m not confident I know what “woke” means. Do you? Because you should email me your definition, I’d love to know. For some, it’s simply an awareness of social injustices, but for others, it’s a lethal mind virus corrupting the young and spreading Satanic neo-Marxism.

There are as many definitions of the word “woke” as there are dimensions. 

But IS IT WOKE? is my column, so I will try to answer the question: Everything Everywhere All At Once is 100% woke because it’s the genre-bending story of a middle-aged, working-class Asian immigrant with a beta-male husband and a daughter who is a lesbian.

It’s also a masterpiece, a loud, brash, hyperactive meditation on healing, happiness, and the meaning of life. I cannot get over how Everything Everywhere All At Once balances many contrasts like vastness and quiet, ingenuous wire-fu fight scenes, and emotionally intimate moments.  It is a movie that asks its audience to sit back, relax, and truly, deeply imagine living life through the eyes of someone different, to embrace another’s unique challenges while celebrating what makes them different from you and vice versa.

Doesn’t that sound nice? Well, not to some. I’ll bet some folks who cringe at anything they’re told is “woke” probably aren’t interested in watching a movie about a Chinese family and would have preferred one of the movie’s villains, played by the great Jamie Lee Curtis, to have played the lead instead of Michelle Yeoh.

I would imagine the anti-woke crowd would also be uncomfortable with the indie blockbuster’s view that queerness is eternal and inevitable and exists in every dimension. There are endless variants of you and me and everyone living in endless timelines, and in one of those timelines, or more, everyone who has ever existed is enjoying a same-sex relationship. 

That means in some far-flung plane of existence, a Ron DeSantis variant is happily married to a pleasant man who moonlights as a drag queen.

Everything Everywhere All At Once–aka EEAAO– is The Godfather of the multiverse genre, which includes the 2009 Star Trek reboot, the popular adult cartoon Rick and Morty, and almost every Marvel movie from the past few years. It is a madcap martial arts adventure into the infinite written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, a pair of filmmakers who somehow managed to create a cheerful, cinematic Jenga tower of realities that never, ever fall over. EEAAO works as a high-concept tour through parallel universes, but this movie is a pleasure to watch because it’s also a tale about the small stuff. Yeoh’s character learns that existence is a great nothingness, and we can fill that void with kindness and compassion–if we so choose. 

This is a profound and beautiful sentiment inspired by Buddhist philosophy. So just a heads up.

The Daniels, as EEAAO’s collaborators are cheekily known, serve up an experience that is the exact opposite of Woody Allen’s joke about two diners complaining about the terrible food and the small portions. Everything Everywhere All At Once is outstanding, and the portions are gigantic. There’s so much to chew on: so much heart, so much action, and SO MUCH weirdness. 

The movie is a parade of vibes; sometimes, those vibes don’t always… vibe. But before one of those vibes can throw off the movie, we’re whisked away to a bizarre world or a dingy laundromat.

There’s another layer to the, too, and that’s the Daniels saluting the legendary career of Michelle Yeoh, an actor of unusual strength, humor, and dignity. She’s joined by Ke Huy Quan, a former child star best known for playing the pint-sized comic relief in various ’80s movies like The Goonies and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. In those movies, his charm was apparent even though he was encouraged to play up Asian stereotypes. Are those two movies “woke?” Huh. I don’t think so, but I have them memorized. They’re two of my favorite movies. I’m sorry.

Quan quit acting twenty years ago thankfully, he has returned and has become quite dashing. His performance in EEAAO is generous, and I hope he gets cast in another movie deserving of his soulful talents soon.

Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang is a fifty-something woman smothered by responsibilities and disappointments. Her life is lonely and hectic, and she cannot connect with her despotic elderly father and her only child, a distant young woman with a non-Chinese girlfriend. And then there’s her floundering marriage to Waymund (Quan), a cheerful sweetheart.

Unsurprisingly, EEAAOO nearly swept the acting categories at the Academy Awards, with Yeoh winning Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor and Actress going to Quan and Curtis. It is unsurprising because their performances were superb, and the Academy Awards is “woke,” like the Super Bowl.

Two other superstars back up Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis: veteran actor James Hong as Evelyn’s cantankerous father and Stephanie Hsu as Evelyn’s vulnerable, temperamental teen Joy/cosmic troublemaker Jobu Tupaki. These five are as plucky and inspired a cast as any on the big screen this year.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that is so messy yet so self-assured. Everything Everywhere All At Once is physically, emotionally, and spiritually graceful. There is calmness underneath the cinematic chaos, along with life-affirming silliness.

The image of Evelyn wearing a googly eye on her forehead is absurd at first sight but deeply powerful in context. The googly eye symbolizes her husband’s loyalty and kindness, which she grows to accept to let the love in and fight a war for her child’s heart. 

I think letting the love in is a very “woke” idea. But I’m not sure! You tell me.

I would cautiously recommend EEAAO to those who read “woke” and reflectively think it means “libtard propaganda.” I think they should give this movie a chance. It embraces looking at life in new ways while also honoring tradition. (Come to think of it, that last bit is pretty conservative, actually). Everything Everywhere All At Once is about accepting people for who they are and keeping your commitments. The movie loves sex toys, but it also hates the IRS. Republicans hate taxes. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone, is my point. 

I’m not here to convert anyone, of course, I’m just being honest. I think this is a left-coast Hollywood movie worth watching. Trigger warning: it is about unconditional love. And kung-fu. And hot dog fingers. 

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So, is Everything Everywhere All At Once woke?

Evidence For: Gratuitous racial diversity, queerness, and non-Christian philosophies. White people as villains. Deviant sex toy humor. Jamie Lee Curtis is a vocal liberal on Twitter. 

Evidence Against: Pro-business and pro-marriage. Opposes suffocating big government bureaucracies. Everyone is special. Violence can solve some problems, but only unconditional love will ultimately save us. 

Final Judgment: Everything Everywhere All At Once is an imaginative sci-fi epic about the power of accepting people for who they are. So it is woke. Yup. Pretty sure. Woke. 

John DeVore is a sensitive and thoughtful writer living in New Woke City. His favorite movie is Fiddler On The Roof, followed by Hellraiser. Follow his politically-correct narcissism on Twitter.