On March 11, 2022, exactly one year and one day before the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday, a supercharged and wacky movie called “Everything Everywhere All at Eleven”. The second feature from a pair of music video directors whose first film, “Swiss Army Man,” was known primarily as the film in which Daniel Radcliffe played a farting corpse, it was an ideal SXSW film, a cross between chaos of genres that, in the words of Wrap critic Robert Abele, “swirls sci-fi, metaphysics, martial arts, slapstick, star power, and pop culture screams into the kind of experience that one can imagine the late showmanship impresario William Castle, who notoriously wired theater seats to buzz, responding with, ‘Yeah, this doesn’t need my help.’”
What did No Seems like it was any kind of awards movie back then, except maybe if the Film Independent Spirit Awards wanted to go crazy. The 94th Oscars hadn’t even happened at the time, but if anyone had dared to suggest that at the 95th, a visitor from one of the wildest corners of the multiverse that Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang journeys through.
Do you think a world where people have hot dogs instead of fingers is weird? Well, how about one where a movie with hot dog fingers and dildo battles wins Best Picture?
But it turns out that we could be living in a universe where 9,579 film professionals at the Academy can come to a consensus that “Everything Everywhere” is the best film of 2022. Go figure.
And by the way, it’s a universe where young Irish actor Paul Mescal gets a Best Actor nomination over Tom Cruise; and a universe in which underrated British actress Andrea Riseborough is nominated for a film almost no one had heard of, let alone seen, before a December social media campaign; and a universe in which Netflix enters awards season with a handful of presumptive Best Picture nominees – “Glass Onion”, “Bardo”, “Blonde”, “White Noise” – and comes out with its only nominee being a German. . language war movie based on a book that had already become a Best Picture winner in 1931, “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Those nominations and this strange year are the product of the new Academy, swollen over the past half decade by the addition of more than 3,000 new members, many from outside the United States. After “Green Book” won Best Picture in 2019 in what was seen as a conservative election, voters corrected course by awarding their first award the following year to “Parasite,” a vicious social satire that ends in a ridiculous bloodbath and became the first non-English film to win Best Picture. The following year, it was “Nomadland”, much more austere and sober than the usual winner. Last year, “CODA,” which may have been more mainstream than critics’ favorite “The Power of the Dog,” but was also a completely ambiguous and decidedly independent choice, the first Sundance film to win.
Given that history, is it any wonder that “Everything Everywhere” is the clear favorite, heading into the Oscars with the rare breakthrough of wins at the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild, and Screen Actors Guild Awards?
Well yeah, that’s a bit strange. And one of the reasons it’s weird is because the most frequent conversation I’ve ever had about any The Best Picture Oscar contender in recent weeks is the one where, after a bit of prodding, the person I’m talking to grudgingly admits they didn’t really like “Everything Everywhere” or tried to watch it. (usually more than once) but couldn’t get over it.
I feel like I’ve had that conversation almost every day with someone new, from Academy members to the guy who cuts my hair. Granted, this kind of anecdotal evidence is hardly persuasive, and it certainly means next to nothing compared to the PGA/DGA/WGA/SAG sweep.
But it’s downright weird to find out that the movie that feels like a knockout, guaranteed Best Picture winner, is also the movie that so many people have told me they don’t like, even though they all seem reluctant to admit it.
Maybe there is something in all those conversations. Maybe “All Quiet” is the stealthy contender that can pull off a surprising surprise, or maybe “Top Gun: Maverick” turns out to be the true consensus favorite even though it hasn’t won any of the major precursor awards.
Or perhaps what eludes some people about “Everything Everywhere” connects with others so strongly that it really is the dominant winner that precedent suggests. I’ve been resisting this conclusion for months, partly (largely?) because I didn’t really like the movie when I saw it last year. He annoyed me, even though I kept telling myself that I had to give him another chance.
This week, I finally realized that my time was running out if I was going to give it that chance, so I rewatched it, in an actual movie theater, not at home. And about halfway through the movie, I slowly realized that I would be perfectly fine if it won Best Picture. Because, you know, a cool, weird, messy, cheesy movie is probably the right kind of movie to wrap up the past year. And summing up the past year should be one of the purposes of a Best Picture winner.
Let’s face it: “Everything Everywhere” is as sentimental as “The Fabelmans,” as transgressive as “Triangle of Sadness” (I’ll watch your vomit scene and pose an anal battle for you!), as feminine as “Women Talking,” as profane. like “The Banshees of Inisherin” and as dedicated to building the universe as “Avatar.” Plus he has his own Elvis and more wrestling than “Top Gun.”
Robert Abele summed it up near the end of his review of Wrap: “In his clever code-switching metaphor, we all have crowds,[the Daniels have]invented something that feels genuinely in tune with our modern anxieties, but also embracing our mechanisms. of coping”.
He’s still not my favorite nominee, but there’s something quite impressive about his determination to be everything at once. And after a year that’s been upsetting and messy, there’s nothing wrong with choosing this movie to represent our current time.
So go ahead, Academy, and give a bunch of Oscars to the guys who made that farting corpse movie. But in the spirit of their film, I’ll offer a suggestion to Steven Spielberg and Todd Field and anyone else who wants it. This won’t make any sense to people who haven’t seen “Everything Everywhere,” but if they eat lipstick during Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue on Sunday, maybe we’ll jump into a universe where his movie can win.
Or maybe we’re already in that universe, and the Daniels are the ones who will need to chew on their Chapsticks.
