Everything Everywhere… explores multiple themes—family dynamics, the immigrant experience, and a woman’s experience with ADHD—in a vivid science-fiction multiverse story. Directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan establish an impressive amount of this in the movie’s first minute.
The movie’s first shot is a push-in on a happy family activity shown in the mirror (looking back in time?). As they laugh, the frame closes in to trap this happy moment. We hear the sound of a mirror breaking and they disappear. Later we understand the meaning: we first see a universe in which this family are happy, then jump to a universe where they are not. The cut also establishes the style of universe jumps in the movie, and the cracking sound also recurs as Evelyn and her life begin cracking into pieces.
The scene continues by pushing through this mirror, into the current unhappy universe. We pass some tightly packed shelves as we go into the mirror. This gives the first sense of the ADHD theme, visually set by clutter and disorganization. The tight framing amplifies the effect and sets up a payoff in later scenes involving wide-open areas.
The push-in brings us to Evelyn at the dining table, surrounded by stacks of paper, working and worried. The shot crowds her, not just with the paper, but also a surveillance video monitor (part of a recurring motif) and knickknacks behind her. Then a figure crowds in from the side: Waymond. By now, we’ve started to feel Evelyn’s sense of overwhelm, and can understand her irritation when Waymond appears.
The first two lines of dialogue are delivered rapidly, emphasizing the stressed feeling, and the words show that this is a pattern between them:
WAYMOND. I know better than to ask to help you.
At this point, we’re still in the opening shot, what feels like a single take. It continues through their first conversation, and only ends at a character-defining piece of dialogue. The dialogue also waits a beat, leaving this ringing in our ears:
What we’ve understood so far:
- There was a happy family and it is no more
- There’s a couple who are stressed
- There’s something stressful about paperwork in particular
- One feels like the other isn’t listening, the return feeling is of not being serious
- This is a pattern, and previous attempts to have this conversation have gone the same
- Life is cluttered and disorganized
- Mirrors mean something (we see two in this opening sequence), we’re either remembering or being transported (or in this case, both)
This was all conveyed in an economical 1 minute and 10 seconds of screen time!
