Tag Archives: Existential

Apocryphally Weird

62*. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

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“If we say that an individual’s character is revealed by the choices they make over time, then, in a similar fashion, an individual’s character would also be revealed by the choices they make across many worlds.” ― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

DIRECTED BY: Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

FEATURING: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong

PLOT: Evelyn Wang is overwhelmed operating a Simi Valley laundromat, caring for her elderly father, enduring an ongoing IRS audit, and trying to maintain her strained relationship with her daughter. Into this maelstrom steps an alternate-universe version of her husband, who informs her that a rage-fueled supervillain incarnation of her daughter is threatening to destroy the entire multiverse. Only Evelyn, using martial artistry and emotional intelligence that she never knew she possessed, can traverse dimensions and embody wildly different iterations of herself to stave off disaster.

BACKGROUND:

  • The original script was written with in mind, with Yeoh envisioned in a supporting role. Once the lead character was switched to a woman, Yeoh was the only choice for the role.
  • The Daniels cited inspiration from sources as diverse as the films of Wong Kar-Wai, the video game Everything, and the children’s book “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. “
  • The directors began work on the film after turning down an opportunity to work on Marvel’s “Loki” series, itself a show set against the backdrop of a multiverse. The duo worried that other contemporaneous multiverse projects, including Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and “Rick and Morty,” would make their concept out-of-date.
  • The film was released under different Chinese-language titles depending upon the market, including In an Instant, the Entire Universe in mainland China, Mother’s Multiverse in Taiwan, and Weird Woman Warrior Fucks Around and Saves the Universe in Hong Kong.
  • The team of martial arts performers and choreographers includes self-taught brothers Andy and Brian Le. (They are showcased in the fight over a suggestively shaped IRS auditing award.) Daniels discovered them on YouTube and hired them based on their familiarity with Hong Kong-style fighting techniques.
  • Appropriate to the diverse backgrounds of her family, Evelyn speaks Mandarin with her husband but Cantonese with her father, while her daughter’s Chinese is that of someone unskilled in the language.
  • An unexpectedly dominant force at the 95th Academy Awards, snagging 11 nominations and taking home seven statues for Best Picture (one of only a handful of films with science fiction/fantasy elements ever to take the top prize), Directing, Original Screenplay, Editing, and acting honors for Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis. More importantly, Yeoh took home the Weirdcademy Award for Best Actress.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: I know, I know. The hot dog fingers, right? They do make for a superb visual shorthand (sorry) for the film’s breed of weirdness, it’s true, especially when an alternate Jamie Lee Curtis uses her encased-meat digits to tickle the ivories in a rendition of “Clair de Lune.” But is it truly greater than a spectacular bagel that truly has everything on it? Or the transdimensional power of eating lip balm to imbue the consumer with extensive martial arts abilities? Or the introspective moment featuring two rocks as the only souls in the world? EEAAO luxuriates both the oddities of universes different from our own and the peculiarities unique to each realm. Fortunately, the film spares us from having to pick one of them by concocting a spectacular montage of our heroine across all universes and timelines, including some we will never explore outside of this split-second vision. It’s a dizzying triumph of editing and a wonderful visualization of both Evelyn’s dilemma and her power.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Hot dog fingers; rocky relationship

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Everything Everywhere All At Once is a family drama festooned with the trappings of Matrix-style ontological discussions, multiversal alternates, elaborate martial arts set-pieces, and parodies both reverential and cheeky. That mix alone would garner our attention, and the decision to center the story on characters well outside the Hollywood norm —Asian, immigrant, working-class, gay—further pushes it outside the mainstream. On top of that, the glorious and unexpected choice to ground all this mayhem in an atmosphere of playfulness and joy gives the film further offbeat credentials. It exemplifies this movie’s wonderfully deranged logic to employ googly eyes to stave off the apocalypse. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fun.

Original trailer for Everything Everywhere all at Once

COMMENTS: “I thought you said when she says (stuff) like that, it Continue reading 62*. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE ANNUNCIATION (1984)

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 Angyali üdvözlet

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DIRECTED BY: András Jeles

FEATURING: Péter Bocsor, Júlia Mérő, Eszter Gyalog

Still from The Annunciation (1984)

PLOT: After Adam and Eve get kicked out of Eden, Adam calls out Lucifer: “You promised me I’d know everything!” So, Lucifer gives him a dream, and Adam lives different lives through history: a knight in Byzantium, Johannes Kepler in Prague, Georges Danton in Paris, and a Victorian dude. Everywhere he goes, it’s the same—violence, betrayal, and all kinds of chaos, with Lucifer watching it all, smug as ever.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: András Jeles’ The Annunciation might just be one of the quirkiest films in cinema history.  Almost every role in this movie is played by children. And not just regular mischievous kids, but little angels who suddenly start talking about Homoiousianism—and do it as well as any theologian. Adam and Eve are portrayed by youths whose innocence is as obvious as it is paradoxical. I mean, how weird is it to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden in disgrace when you haven’t even lost all your baby teeth? Oh, and Lucifer, the dark dandy himself? You won’t believe it—a little girl plays him.

Still from The Annunciation (1984)

COMMENTS: Lucifer is beyond livid because the newly created humans, whom “Adonai” cherishes like a fool, are, according to Lucifer, a bunch of gullible simpletons incapable of anything truly elevated or even aesthetically useful. He hands Adam and Eve the infamous apple, crimson as shame. And as in the Old Testament, Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and find themselves whisked away into the innards of existence.

Still processing what just happened, Adam recalls the promise of his Dark Friend:

“You, Shameless Light of Darkness, said that I would understand everything!”

“Well, then,” Lucifer smirks with the swagger of a fallen angel, “here you go.”

At this point, a quick detour is in order.

This cinematic chaos is based on a play by Imre Madách, a Hungarian sage and prophet. “Tragedy of Man,” written in 1859 and first published in 1861, was staged for the first time on September 21, 1883, at the National Theatre in Budapest. Due to its scale, philosophical depth, and complex staging (time-traveling, changing sets, and a shitload of characters), it took more than 20 years to hit the stage. When it was finally performed, it swooped in like a bomb. The audience gushed about it. Today, “The Tragedy of Man” is studied in Hungarian schools and universities much like Tolstoy’s War and Peace is in Russia. The play breathes the air of Milton’s Paradise Lost, but it’s a throwback with its own quirky twist.

Still from The Annunciation (1984)

The 19th century, under the influence of Hegel, brought a strange Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE ANNUNCIATION (1984) →

Apocryphally Weird

61*. ON THE SILVER GLOBE (1988)

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Na srebrnym globie

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“The Ministry may have had various reasons for curtailing production, but it’s not inconceivable that someone there simply thought that another 40 minutes of this stuff might just have been too much for viewers’ sanity.”–Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Andrzej Seweryn, Jerzy Trela, Iwona Bielska, Grażyna Dyląg, Waldemar Kownacki,

PLOT: Three astronauts are stranded on an Earthlike planet and populate it with their offspring over the years. Decades later, another astronaut, Marek, travels to the planet and is revered as a messiah who the people believe will lead them to victory over the birdlike Shern. Meanwhile, back on Earth, it is revealed that Marek was chosen for the mission by two scientist, one of whom was his girlfriend, who wanted him out of the way so they could continue their affair.

Still from on the silver globe (1988)

BACKGROUND:

  • Based on the novel series “The Lunar Trilogy,” which was written by director Zulawski’s great uncle Jerzy Zulawski.
  • In the books, completed in 1911, the “silver globe” is the Earth’s Moon; in this modern adaptation this obviously had to be changed to an extraterrestrial planet. The Moon location explains why travel between the two locations is a relatively simple and quick matter.
  • After his second film, The Devil (1972), was banned by Polish authorities, Zulawski moved to France in a mutually-agreed-upon exile. When his first French production, The Important Thing Is to Love (1975) became a prestigious art-house hit, the same authorities invited him to return to Poland to work on a project of his choice. He chose On the Silver Globe.
  • On the Silver Globe had a torturous production history. In 1977 Polish authorities shut down the shoot before completion, citing both cost and ideological objections, and ordered the footage destroyed. Fortunately, this instruction was not completely followed (in the film’s prologue, Zulawski laments that the government “murdered” 1/5 of his work). In 1988 the director was able to reconstruct the surviving footage and create a nearly complete film, using narration spoken over new footage of Polish streets to fill in the gaps for the missing scenes and hiring new actors to overdub some of the old ones. The reconstruction debuted at Cannes in 1988. You can find more detail in El Rob Hubbard‘s reviews of the film itself and on the documentary Escape to the Silver Globe (2021).
  • Much of the dialogue was taken or adapted from various mystical texts, rather than from the novel itself.
  • Voted onto the Apocrypha by readers in this poll.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: On a beach, dozens of soldiers are impaled (apparently through the anus) on spikes which must be thirty feet high. (One crane shot shows us an actor who is actually precariously perched on the pole.) Two robed Pharisee types in leprous caked makeup converse as they are shot from below, with the torture victims soaring above them like orbiting bodies in the sky.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Messy orange-blooded bird/woman sex; interplanetary travel pill

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: On the Silver Globe is a Cubist science fiction epic, presented as if it were being performed by a severely stoned 1970s avant-garde theater troupe enacting obscure Masonic rituals on a beach in Estonia at a point when every single actor is undergoing either a devastating breakup or a profound existential crisis (usually both). Without commentary, the plot is nearly impossible to follow in a single viewing, but the movie is definitely something you’ve never seen before.

Trailer for On the Silver Globe reconstruction

COMMENTS: On the Silver Globe‘s plot is so difficult to divine that  Continue reading 61*. ON THE SILVER GLOBE (1988) →

Capsules

FANTASIA 2025: IT ENDS (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Alex Ullom

FEATURING: Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, Mitchell Cole

PLOT: Four friends miss a turn on the road, and it appears their route will now go on forever.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Riffing on The Exterminating Angel, four Gen-Z are trapped in much shabbier circumstances, and doomed to wonder when—or even whether—they end.

COMMENTS: It’s a simple, and pleasingly silly, little game: you choose two options for defense, and the two unchosen options are tasked with taking you out. The options are as follow: one man with a gun, 5 gorillas, 50 hawks, and 10,000 rats. Theoretical nonsense, of course, but not a bad way to spark conversation. James doubts the hawks’ merit, Fish thinks a lone gunman can’t amount to much, Day hasn’t been paying much attention (though later favors gorillas, after teaching them to shoot), and Travis wonders just why the heck he returned to town to catch up with his recently graduated high school buddies.

These friends are pleasant company, which is good: we viewers are trapped with them inside their Jeep for the better part of ninety minutes. Conversation becomes panicky, aggravated from time to time by mysterious forest dwellers, who swarm the vehicle whenever it stops, all of them screaming desperately for help. Inside the Jeep, it is safe. Kind of. Did you ever find yourself stuck in a car ride with someone and it went on a few hours too long? Imagine that extended across untold tens-of-thousands of miles along a generically forested highway, with the threat of violent death waiting just beyond the tree line.

It Ends is a simple movie, with one mobile set, and it runs a gamut of emotions. It goes on and on and on, its protagonists trapped and spurred by fear and boredom and the ever-so-rare flicker of hope. (Is it taking longer for the forest freaks to suss they’ve stopped? Is that another car off the side of the road? And… is it raining for the first time in months?) As with any road trip, particularly infinite ones, I suppose, things get cyclical. James, ever stoic, ever cerebral, and often a bit of a cold-blooded jerk, begins to wonder if that cycle is part of the key. Day, Fish, and Travis might be right, too, in feeling that an eternity of traveling down a highway is all that’s ahead. It Ends sprinkles comedy throughout, too, as the youths’ banter delightfully combines an entering adulthood flippant wit with  crumbling coping mechanisms.

The odd premise carried my interest, and if left to just that, perhaps I’d consider this to be some high-quality quirk. However, I’m inclined to pay substantial dues to a movie with a punchline, and this one hits hard, and sudden. Through tension, charm, and ambiguity, It Ends is a treat for film gabbers. Me, I’m choosing 50 hawks and 10,000 rats to watch my back. You?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“What begins as a casual late-night drive among recent grads quickly warps into a surreal nightmare… The film’s ambiguity works in its favor, leaving the story open to interpretation (although many are going to be frustrated by the finale).” — Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: AN EVENING SONG (FOR THREE VOICES) (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Graham Swon

FEATURING: , , Peter Vack

PLOT: Barbara and Richard, married writers from the East Coast, move to the Midwest and hire Martha, a quietly pious local, as their maid.

COMMENTS: One narrator evokes simple matter-of-factness; the second narrator segues into a reminiscence of another world; and the final narrator readily apologizes for what he’s about to do. These three voices in Graham Swon’s feature, An Evening Song, are its body, spirit, and mind; with the three characters—an innocent country local named Martha, the disillusioned writer-prodigy Barbara, and her mentally restless husband, Richard—conveying the film’s philosophical pull and tug. Events do literally happen in An Evening Song (indeed, it is loosely based on real events and individuals), but Swon has crafted more of a meditation oscillating around a narrative through-line than a traditional drama.

Over the course of eighty-odd minutes, Swon’s players perform the strange and gentle decline of a marriage on the rocks. Relocating to the Middle of Nowhere, Iowa, two different writerly types observe their hired help from their own perspectives. Barbara, having begun to give up on life more than a decade prior, has reached a critical stage of ennui that is only slightly alleviated by the discovery of this mysterious, scarred country girl, who seems to embody a delightfully unsolvable riddle. Richard, devoid of any bent towards mysticism, is commendably observant and empathetic, and entranced by Martha as well—but as a riddle to attempt solving. Under the couple’s gaze, Martha gazes back: she perceives Barbara’s ethereality with admiration, but also perceives Richard’s constantly ticking pragmatism with appreciation. We have here a love triangle, of sorts.

But in what way? Swon raises many questions in this film—and wanders (with purpose) down many avenues. Richard, bless his heart, accommodates to his utmost, and for all we can observe is impossible to offend, disappoint, or anger. (This is for the best, no doubt, as he has found himself dropped right in the middle of two particularly conundrous individuals.) Barbara does love Richard (maybe, probably), but longs for a life in the mystical “nowhere” reminisced throughout her narrations—which Richard cannot provide. Martha, on the other hand, does: her piety and humility raise her to ineffable heights in a dream she conveys to Barbara during a climactic, quiet encounter in a placid field, after which the story pivots and moves irrevocably toward the dissolution of Barbara’s will to remain on this plane of existence.

The song continues, narrations bump up against one another and fuse, with all three becoming harmoniously concurrent during a contemplative, sleepless night-and-day meshing of perspectives. This film is no Eraserhead, to be certain; but it is a curious experience. With full marks for dreamy ethereality, Swon’s pocket-sized meditation manages a tension from its competing and complementary voices, creating something nearly imperceptible, maybe close to a nothing, but which lingers in the mind like a mystifying apparition.

An Evening Song (for Three Voices) completed a short run in New York last week and will play at the Acropolis in Los Angeles for one night only, May 29. We’ll let you know when it’s available online.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Stylistically, Swon’s film shares an aesthetic kinship with some of Guy Maddin’s films, but it is far less accessible… The ambition and craftsmanship are laudable, but the hallucinatory haze too often produces a sensation of narrative drift. Recommended with the above caveats for experienced patrons of unconventional cinema” — Joe Bendel, J.B. Spins (contemporaneous)