Hi friend,
How are you doing? It’s been a while.
I like writing and thinking and good conversations, and I don’t want to keep doing these things only on social platforms that offer too little control, too much surveillance, or generate revenue for organizations I don’t like. Being a geriatric millennial who spent my teens and twenties Very Online, I’ve never been totally satisfied by social media; I long for longform. So while I don’t have the motivation to write physical letters, and LiveJournal is not longer a thing (RIP LJ 4EVER), now I have this.
There are many little newsletters, but this one is mine.1
This week, I saw a movie that reminded me how much our friends and loved ones matter — even though the world is mundane and the pandemic is ongoing and wars are happening and burnout is looming — even though, or especially because of those things. It inspired me to write to you.
Thanks for keeping in touch.
IKM
Everything Everywhere All At Once shredded me and put me back together.
(Extremely minimal spoilers follow.)
I’m sitting here still gobsmacked by this movie with tears in my eyes, just thinking about it, a day after seeing it.
The creativity and bravery that is so evident in every scene is just astounding. The editing and sound design were spectacular. The visuals were packed with silly and bawdy multilayered jokes and sly references that delighted my inner film nerd. It was like watching my mom accidentally get caught in the Matrix and out-badass Trinity: absurd yet incredibly cathartic from the standpoint of representation — seeing a mature, confident Asian woman absolutely owning the screen and the story. It was also a triumph of genre-defying cinema — a sci-fi-tinged black comedy that managed to be at once sophisticated (in its self-assured melange of references) and full of lowbrow laughs (including several butt plug trophies and an animated raccoon).
What I really didn’t expect from it, though, was how it would make me CRY for the entire second half.
I’ll explain, a little.
My life has been partly defined by generational trauma, but I didn’t learn the term until quite late in my 30s.
I had no language to describe the invisible walls between my parents and myself that prevented real understanding, real knowing; the many invisible scripts that precluded communication.
The first time I cried watching Everything Everywhere was the scene where exhausted aging immigrant business owner Evelyn looks deeply into her daughter’s eyes, declares she has something to say, and searches for the words.
I knew her fully Americanized daughter Joy wanted to hear, I love you no matter what; you are valuable just the way you are; I see you and you are enough.
And I also knew there was no way her mother would ever say that; Asian moms don’t tend to say these things, especially not Asian moms who have sacrificed so much and worked so hard to give every opportunity to ungrateful, aimless American daughters.
“You need to eat better. You are getting fat.” Michelle Yeoh delivers this line with brusque efficiency even as her eyes speak decades of sacrifice, and bottomless love that Joy does not see.
It’s impossible to name all the moments that made me cry in this film but another time I cried was when Evelyn realized how amazing one of her multiverse lives was and wistfully asked if she should go back and stay in that one. I’ve been there so many times, imagining how my life could have gone better, or some alternate path I could have taken, feeling sorry for myself, my failures or near misses. Depression can be like this, wishing for a life that you aren’t living, wishing any the moments you are in fact living — not fully present and subsequently not living in any moment in particular. The film essentially defines this as hell, yet we in the audience know full well we do this to ourselves all the time.
On top of this, Everything Everywhere has managed to tackle the American Dream, the absurdity of optimism, Asian immigrants and the disconnect between mothers and daughters, and destructive depression — all topics visited so often in movies that it’s easy to imagine we as a species have nothing new left to say about them — in a deeply inspiring and stunningly fresh way. It does while proving that great art can also be full of butt plug jokes. And it does so by reminding us that the tiny moments matter; that those we love and the little scraps of time we have with each other are sometimes all we have, and the very best we have.
Happy birthday Vivienne Westwood. | [image credit]
Side quests:
Time to revisit another gift of which we are not worthy from Daniel Kwan, Turn Down For What. Michelle Yeoh is a subversive superhero (NPR). The science of generational trauma: Fear of a smell (NewScientist). We’re getting more quality Asian representation in pop culture but there’s a long way to go. What is a “Model Minority” anyway? Glad you asked. How an Alamo Drafthouse film buyer juggles movies. Vivienne Westwood Autumn/Winter 1993-94, Anglomania. Fashion history: David Bowie and the birth of androgyny.
Of course, the obligatory: If you ever want off, go in peace. 🕊