When is a film not just a film? When does it aspire to be more than the medium that it ostensibly limits itself to? I don’t think I’ll ever have the answer to this, but gratefully the future of the art form doesn’t rest with me. However, in the hands of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Daniels) we are graced with the devastatingly beautiful Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, is the rare work of art that makes me think that I should give up on this blog, that any effort in trying to condense art so complex is as futile as attempting to mimic it.

Living up to its title jubilantly Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, is the rare film whose grasp exceeds its enormous ambition. Not everything lands, but I haven’t seen a film take as many swings as Everything, Everywhere does. Starring the forever vibrant Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere provides kaleidoscope look at Evelyn (Yeoh), a woman subject to an IRS audit of a laundromat she owns with her husband Waymond, played by an earnest as ever Kee Huy Quan. On top of all this, she feels the pressure of presenting herself and her life (and her lesbian daughter) in a manner her father (James Hong) would find acceptable. The generational anxiety is all too relatable. During the audit, she suddenly finds herself pulled into a multiversal battle for our existence, and I’ll not say much more (I promise it’s not because this film is as hard to explain as why dosa is served with sweet sambar in Bangalore). The film’s central deceit is its use of the multiverse to force the audience to look inwards in a jaw dropping metaphysical exploration of nihilism and love.

Let’s address the performances first. It feels like Michelle Yeoh read the screenplay and realised it was the role of a lifetime and brought everything to this. We feel everything that she feels. Her initial exhaustion feels entirely tangible, caught in a world where things just appear to move at a different wavelength, caught between generations that she doesn’t know how to navigate, and caught in a life different to one she envisioned. Versions of herself she encounters in different universes appear to play out fantasies of possible alternate futures, but the Daniels have an ace up their sleeve here. Each alternate personality feels like a loving callback to Yeoh’s career, in universes as diverse as her own CV. I must say it was most fun seeing her back to her wuxia ways. The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon reference isn’t the last of the Daniels’ cinematic references though. More on that later. Accompanying Yeoh is the delightful Kee Huy Quan as her forever cheerful husband. The character writing here is sublime and Huy Quan brings something to the role that no words in a page ever could, but only Data from the Goonies can. His optimism could so easily have become confused naivety, but instead it’s accompanied with reason and packs a serious emotional punch. On at least a couple occasions I found myself inexplicably in tears wanting to get off my chair and jump into the TV just to give Huy Quan a hug. This man must be protected at all costs.

Everything, Everywhere’s meditations on nihilism only works as well as it does because of its multiversal approach (unlike another certain film, which uses it to squeeze in pointless cameos). It’s a story that would never work if it werent’ for the Daniels’ outsized imagination and the Daniels really run riot here. The action too is brilliantly staged and treats its cast and their pedigree with the respect they deserve. Yeoh’s wuxia history and Quan’s career as a martial artist are exploited beautifully here. The action is always clear with wide shots and minimal cuts to effectively showcase the film’s. playful choreography. The action is deliriously good and is worth the price of admission alone. Ridiculous camera work and editing trickery reminiscent of Michel Gondry will make you constantly scratch your head thinking ‘How the hell did they do that?’. On a fraction of the budget of Doctor Strange, it has no right to have action as sophisticated as this. The Matrix references go beyond the parallel universe call for a saviour, and the Wachowskis would be proud of the use of Kung Fu once again as an excuse to explore deeper philosophical questions. Beyond this, Daniels bring back some absolutely absurd callbacks to 2001 A Space Odyssey and one riotous callback to Ratatouille. Probably it’s best callback is one to the gorgeous In the Mood for Love. A callback that not only enhances the product on display, but makes us look even more fondly at the treatment of the scene in the original film.

Unlike their previous (grossly underrated) feature, Swiss Army Man, which occasionally suffered from absurdism going nowhere and landing flat (all I’ll say is, this one is a movie about a farting corpse), Everything, Everyhere’s absurdism is its weapon, frequently grounding the movie to strangely relatable circumstances, even in instances where it has no right to be relatable. A universe in which our fingers aren’t what we’re used to, has no right to be as emotionally profound as it ends up being. The music by Son Lux can hardly be defined in a specific genre, but it is effective at conveying the tone of the film and is wholly original (a melancholic rendition of Debussy’s Claire de Lune aside).

There will never be another film like Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, nor should there be, but I’m hopeful that modern blockbusters are able to take a page out of its book and take a lesson or two on retaining creators’ originality. The best thing that can be said about Everything, Everwhere’s multiverse competitor, the vastly inferior Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is the unique vision of Sam Raimi. After years, we have a Marvel film that finally has a visual language of its own. Shame it didn’t have the narrative to back it.

Not everything in the film worked for me, the movie’s multiverse logic never really made sense, some universes were a stretch too bizarre for me, but I didn’t care. The Daniels realise something that so few blockbusters seem to understand, you can throw all the CGI nonsense at me, but an emotional undertow is crucial and it was all I needed to stay transfixed. I can’t promise that Everything, Everywhere’s bizarre world is for everyone, but buried in that world(s), is a message we can all relate to. A message rallying against apathy and cynicism, and one I’m all the better for watching.

If I’ll take anything away from the film, it’s the poignant words of Huy Quan’s Waymon, “Be Kind”.

So when is a film more than just a film? I suppose that answer is as hard to sum up as Everything Everywhere, All at Once.

But maybe, that’s the point?