Melancholy Across the Multiverse: The Everything Bagel and the Loss of Self in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Abstract

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) has received critical acclaim for its imaginative presentation of existential anxiety as well as the various practical challenges the Asian American identity is facing in contemporary society. Much attention has been paid to the film’s proposal of the many possibilities of the “self” through its creative depiction of the multiverse, and how Evelyn the heroine who was in for a self-discovering adventure, verse-jumped from one possible life to the next to be acquainted with her many selves, in search of solutions to her frustrations as a middle-aged Asian woman living in America. Amidst the seemingly hopeful verse-jumpings and the fantastic black comedy around the laundromat owners Waymond and Evelyn, who married and came to America to start their new life, what is unmistakeable is the profound melancholy experienced by their daughter Joy, who was so lost as to have created the Everything Bagel, an existential black hole. Evelyn, who was awakened to her other possible lives (and power) across the multiverse by Waymond, was actually driven into a journey of discovery of the deep wounds that contemporary life has inflicted on not only her daughter, but other members of her family including herself. This chapter attempts to engage with the film as a visual narrative of melancholy in the age of the multiverse. Despite the seeming reconciliation at the end of the film, the void of melancholy is so overwhelming that characters such as Evelyn have to conduct verse-jumpings to find enough meaning and presence to overcome it.