What is a movie that defined 2022? No matter which of reality’s many universes that question is asked in, the most likely answer will beEverything Everywhere All at Once. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (colloquially dubbed the Daniels), the film has become A24’s highest-grossing project to date,outpacing former record-holder(and real head-turner)Hereditary(2018).
InEverything Everywhere All at Oncethere’s no shortage of surprises. It’s so unpredictable that a cosmic everything bagel ends up being a key symbol. So, here’s what it all means when the film’s nihilistic antagonist puts everything on a bagel.
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What Is Everything Everywhere All At Once About?
The award-winningEverything Everywhere All at Oncestars Oscar nominee Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese American woman who’s just trying to keep her business afloat and her family out of trouble, all while preparing for a life-altering audit with delightfully unhinged IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre (fellow Oscar nominee Jamie Lee Curtis).
Things take a wild turn, though, in true Daniels’ fashion. (For reference, they also directed 2016’sSwiss Army Man, a.k.a. the movie that features Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.) Evelyn becomes the key to saving the multiverse. Thanks to the help of a parallel-universe version of her husband, Waymond (otherfellow Oscar nomineeKe Huy Quan), Evelyn learns how to connect with the lives she could have led and take on their skillsets. This is all in the service of taking down the omnipotent nihilist Jobu Tupaki — and, by extension, rebuilding a relationship with her teen daughter, Joy (yet another fellow Oscar nomineeStephanie Hsu).
Why Is There A Bagel In The Movie?
For film nerds,there’s nothing quite like watching Yeoh, a Hong Kong cinema legend, in a martial arts sequence. So, when Evelyn inherits the abilities of her parallel-universe self who is, in fact, a martial artist and movie star, it’s this year’s equivalent of Captain America wielding Thor’s hammer inAvengers: Endgame(2019). But the movie is so much more than thrilling fight sequences and Raccacoonie gags.Everything Everywhere All at Onceis the definition of throwing “everything but the kitchen sink” at the audience. It’s profound, hilarious, surreal, and absurd — all at once.
The everything bagel encapsulates all of those threads. More than a one-off symbol, the bagel is a visual motif. Disassociating from life’s problems, Evelyn stares into the ever-spinning washers and dryers that line her business. Later, Deirdre circles an amount on one of Evelyn’s receipts — again and again — in black Sharpie. One of Jobu Tupaki’s hairstyles resembles a bagel, a nod to the “Hail Bagel” pseudo-religion she’s crafted. At one point,Waymondand Evelyn even eat bagels.
Thesecircles are ever-present inEverything Everywhere All at Once. Even the googly eye — Evelyn sticks one on her forehead, but there’s also a running gag about the art and crafts supply throughout — is bagel-like. A circle within a circle — the center dark and empty. Why is there a bagel in the movie? The literal answer is that Jobu Tupaki, bored by life and its lack of meaning, wanted to build something. Of course, that something ends up being an everything bagel.
An object of worship that sits just behind the veil in Jobu Tupaki’s shrine, the cosmic everything bagel swirls in place. It’s an object and the void. A contradiction, in some ways. It’s hard to look away from it — this everything and nothing. Yes, Jobu Tupaki puteverythingon this bagel — all of life’s stuff, as she explains to Evelyn — but it’s the gaping hole at the bagel’s center that feels most prominent. In short,the Danielsperhaps put a bagel in the movie because, like the film itself, the bagel with everything on it can be so many things at once: perfectly absurd and weirdly poignant; a solid pun and a plot device.
What Does The Bagel Symbolize?
Why is there an everything bagel at the heart ofEverything Everywhere All at Once? It’s the perfect visual encapsulation of what the film is getting at — even if it is a bit absurd. “All my hopes and dreams,”Jobu Tupaki says to Evelyn, describing that yesEverything— capital “E” — is on the giant floating bagel. “My old report cards, every breed of dog, every last personal ad on Craigslist, sesame, poppy seed, salt, and it collapsed in on itself, because you see when you really put everything on a bagel, it becomes this: the truth — nothing matters.”
For all of itszany sci-fi twists and turns,Everything Everywhere All at Oncewonders how a person can be everything — all at once. In Evelyn’s case, how can one person be the renowned opera singer, the lauded martial artist-turned-movie-star, the dutiful daughter, the understanding mother, and the business owner who gets her taxes done? Choices both big and small caused the existence of many different Evelyns in many different universes, but, with the help of the “jumping” technology, all of these versions of herself become one for a time.
It’s overwhelming, knowing what could have been. Frankly, it’s too much for her to hold. In thesemany different universes, Evelyn realizes: everything and nothing matters, but it’s still worth fighting for the things that do matter, no matter how imperfect. The everything bagel is the perfect visual for this philosophical musing.
“There’s a scientific calculation you can do for any object in the universe called a Schwarzschild radius, an object that when you compress it down to that radius becomes a black hole. It becomes a singularity and it’s hypothetical,”Daniel Kwan, one of the film’s directors, toldVulturein an interview. “But the idea is, at a certain density, anything will become a black hole. So everyone has their Schwarzschild radius. Wouldn’t it be funny if she did that to an everything bagel? Because this movie is about everything.”
Omnipotent and omnipresent, Jobu Tupaki has been everywhere and seen everything. There’s nothing left to wonder about. The nihilism takes hold, and the gravitational pull of the everything bagel’s empty center feels very much worth worshiping. Going back to simple science — well, simpler than what Kwan referencesin regards to his film— mass is the amount of matter in an object. The more mass, the greater an object’s gravity. Witheverything being on that bagel, it’s no wonder its nihilistic grip on Jobu Tupaki — and Joy — is so strong. That also makes it even more significant when, at the end ofEverything Everywhere All at Once, Evelyn finds the strength to live with that reality, both for herself and her daughter.
