A review
At its core “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a movie about Existentialism, Nihilism, and the main difference between the two. The protagonist “Evelyn” lives a mundane life, running an unglamorous laundromat that is being audited, with her husband (who is thinking about getting a divorce) that can’t live up to her standard, and has a daughter who she can’t understand. Evelyn dreams about what could have been if she made different decisions in her life, rather than accepting the absurdity of her current life.
One day, it is revealed to Evelyn that she is in fact, not the only Evelyn, but that there is a multiverse of parallel timelines, each created and branched off of a different multiverse by different decisions that people can make (so Evelyns life actually could have been much better if she didn’t make the decisions that she did lol). The specific universe that discovered the multiverse invented the ability to inhabit the bodies of their counterparts in different multiverses. However this came with a cost, as Evelyn’s daughter in universe seemed to experience too much alternate lives, fracturing her mind as she experiences all her lived possibilities at the same time. After this experience, she becomes extremely nihilistic as she develops the mindset that none of her actions matter since for every action she makes, a new lived experience will be created, one that she will experience through her fractured mind. Therefore, if everything is possible, no single thing is important (see Priority). She suffers from the consequences of her condition. As in, if there are infinite variations of her life, why does her specific one matter. This drives her to effectively create a device (a bagel) through which she can end her existence. Maybe the device being a bagel is symbolic of the continuity of life here, maybe it represents the absurd (which isn’t Joys experience here as she cannot accept the meaninglessness of her life).
Evelyn experiences the same condition that Joy does but moves to a different conclusion. She chooses in her life, to experience love and her relationships with her husband and daughter. In a world devoid of ultimate purpose, the onus is on the individual to find their own meaning. This is symbolized through Waymonds googly eyes. Look at mundane things through a playful lens since it is up to you to find joy in your life.
The movies message isn’t about life having a grandeur purpose, but rather that maybe there isn’t one, and thats fine, because the human lived experience can still be meaningful to the individual. Evelyn ultimately doesn’t defeat nihilism, but rather goes back to living her life, choosing to put more effort into her relationships with her husband and daughter.
Cosmic meaninglessness != Personal meaninglessness