#37 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS: "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once"

March 3, 2023 - Friday; 9:20pm

I’m not sure how to respond to having just watched the movie “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.”

I want to let my thoughts fly to the keyboard now, minutes after sitting through two hours and nineteen minutes of the film’s relentlessly frantic, perfectly appropriate musical tempo matching the lead character’s relentlessly frantic trek through the metaverse (“the next iteration of the internet: a single, shared, immersive, persistent, 3D virtual space where humans experience life in ways they could not in the physical world”).

I’m not sure whether the main character, Evelyn (wife, mom, daughter), was chosen for a duel between good and evil. I’m not sure whether it was about Evelyn learning not to be obsessively occupied with nonessentials, about the struggle between a mother and daughter owning power, or about whether it’s worth one rock’s mustered energy to follow another off the edge of the cliff (and I did like the rocks a lot).

I liked the subtle humor tucked between iterations of violent action. I liked seeing an Asian cast. I liked Jamie Lee Curtis’ frump. The special effects were amazing.

But here’s what surprised me; for two hours and nineteen minutes the non-linear message seemed to be that something mattered, and that something, though unspoken, was love, or at least deep caring. Something seemed to matter.

And then, the movie ended with a mother and daughter’s embrace, and two words: “Nothing Matters”

Really? That was what Evelyn learned? And that seemed good to her? That nothing matters?

Let’s get philosophical. Did the message mean, “In the long run, nothing matters?”

Or, was I being encouraged to believe that at that moment, in that healing embrace, “nothing matters” at the moment but this, that which we are experiencing?

Was this a sneaky philosophical conundrum stretched over two hours and nineteen minutes?

Can we live resting in the conviction that “Nothing matters”? What if I took the ‘O’ out of “Nothing.” Would that matter? Doesn’t even that matter?

Oh, gotta go. Here comes my dog with the small ball in his mouth, his tail wildly wagging. Shall I tell him that nthing matters?