Discovered with a handful of clips, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka the Daniels, are part of a new generation of filmmakers, as comfortable in the cinema as on streaming platforms or on television. But, far from many of their “content producer” cronies, they testify with Everything Everywhere All at Once, their second feature film together, with a very singular requirement and relationship to subversion. Studio A24’s biggest commercial success to date, the film is the first in ages to advance, in all defiance, in challenger to superhero movies that saturate pop culture and movie screens to the point of jeopardizing them. Release met Daniel Scheinert in Paris this summer.
Doctor Strange, Spider-Man… In your opinion, why does the multiverse come up so often in blockbusters currently in theaters?
We posed the question to a neurologist friend. According to him, there is a natural link between artists who invent stories and advances in science. The multiverse is at the heart of quantum mechanics. We can no longer put this theory aside when we try to understand the world, and reality. Also, it is a principle that resembles our lives. The exploration of the “what if”, the collision of contradictory ideas, is a way of depicting our connected lives. It has nothing to do with high-concept in the 21st century. Making a movie with three different Spider-Mans is a no-brainer in a world where so many versions of Spider-Man co-exist. We wanted to push to its limits this state in which the Internet makes us feel, with this saturation of stories that constantly assails us.
Inside this superstructure, you tell a simple story. A family story.
The spectator had to be able to project himself into this infinity. A family that can no longer communicate was the ideal canvas.
The multiverse also offers a new “place” to escape to, in a particularly anxiety-provoking time.
There was a time when we regularly went to the moon. It was our new frontier. Today that no one knows where this border is, that the future is so dark, why not escape to another reality?
The originality of your film reminds us of the obvious: that it is still possible to tell original stories in entertainment cinema.
It’s especially disappointing in films that appeal to sci-fi premises, but stubbornly refuse to explore them. Take the time travel movies. There is so much to do, so much to imagine. People would go crazy in reality. That’s why I like to draw inspiration from things other than cinema when I write films. I just read a book about the epidemic of undiagnosed depression in men. I already have three movie ideas in mind.
Is the American cinema industry suffering from a crisis of creativity?
I think a lot of us have a strong desire to tell new stories. But the financiers are terrified and no longer give the green light to stories that are not guaranteed to find a very large audience. I think even these financiers are desperate about this situation. But it is difficult. Always more difficult. And so much easier to validate a project that uses a proven formula. Our film, we had the opportunity to “pitch” it in two ways, the prudent one, and the less prudent one. That is : “It’s going to be our version of a Marvel movie, an action comedy starring a kung fu movie star.” That is : “It’s a film that takes place in several parallel universes at once, with at least a third in Mandarin or Cantonese, with subtitles.”
Speaking of which, how many studios did you present the film to?
A certain number. Some big studios, others closer to independent circuits. Streaming platforms too. In the end, it was A24, with whom we had already worked, who proved to be the most motivated. We were lucky, because A24 still believes in the room.
Are you attached to it?
Yes, and I’m sorry that we don’t see as many demanding films as before.
Why focus on a Chinese-American family?
When the idea for the movie first popped up in my head, it was an action movie. And what better kind of action movie than kung fu movies? This is the dream. Of course, we talked a lot with Dan [Kwan] to make a film that could fit into the movement of the current explosion of Asian-American cinema and integrate Dan’s perspective into our films… Then, we quickly realized how well it worked with our preamble. The multiverse is the exploration of “what ifs”, of potentialities. What better character than an immigrant who has left his country? The life he could have had literally started the day he left. Finally, our film deals with the gap between the generations, in particular that between Evelyn and her daughter, Joy. This gap is huge in immigrant families. When parents and children have not grown up in the same country, when they speak different languages, they live, in a way, in parallel worlds.
One of the most moving aspects of the film is the fact that the character of Michelle Yeoh would embody, in a way, the worst version of herself. In this respect, she is an anti-heroine.
It was one of our initial ideas. In the end, I don’t agree with this other character who tells Evelyn that she is the worst of all her avatars in the parallel worlds. She is full of qualities. He’s a beautiful character. But the lesson is there. I often joke that I’m one bad company away from being a bad guy.
Basically, Everything Everywhere All at Once, despite its obvious darkness, would it be an optimistic film?
Our desire was to make a philosophically terrifying film, which ends up embracing you. Fits of nihilistic thought are very healthy, they help to focus on the essentials. It’s kind of a consolation. But we didn’t want to end with a simplistic lesson. At the end, the world remains as it was at the beginning of the film, difficult, confusing, exhausting. It was out of the question for our film to pretend to give solutions that would make life easier. Dude, we’re not going to lie to each other. Life is hard, you’re going to piss off, we’re all going to piss off.