Beyond the way that Everything Everywhere All At Once made queer & Asian people feel seen through the beautifully complex way it portrayed generational trauma and the struggle to just get your family to understand, there was also the little details that really stood out to me throughout the movie that made me feel so fucking seen as a Chinese diaspora kid. As much as Shang-Chi and Crazy Rich Asians were milestones in Chinese representation in western media, the way that EEAAO does it is just so much deeper than those two films.
God, where do I even begin? It's in the small the details. It's the way their rice cooker sings at the start of the movie with the exact same tune my rice cooker sings with once it's done cooking. It's the way that Waymond hums Gong Xi Gong Xi (恭喜恭喜) during the CNY party - the exact same song that I was taught in Saturday Chinese school. It's the way they seamlessly switched between Mandarin to English to Cantonese to Chinglish in a way that's completely familiar to me because that's how my household and community spoke. The small details made me feel seen in ways that Shang-Chi and Crazy Rich Asians only touched on briefly.
But there's also other details, too. Small moments. When Waymond looked longingly at the elderly Chinese couple embracing in the IRS building, that brief embrace reminded me of how I would see the same thing in the local Asian grocery stores in my home community. It reminded me of my grandparents, walking hand in hand here in Canada at the mall. It also reminded me of how you never, ever see sweet moments like that between Chinese elders in Western media, ever.
And on top of that, the way it framed the connection to China/HK hit close to home. In the brief shots of Waymond and Evelyn as young lovers, there's something about it that's just perfectly reminiscent of my parents. It's the narrow-ass balcony, the outfits, the grainy footage, the hairstyles. It looks like something straight out of my parent's albums. In addition to this, the way the fights were a tribute to Stephen Chow films and the way that the Wong Kar-Wai universe was shot just pulled me directly back to the times that I'd pass by my parents watching those films in the living room.
The thing I appreciate as well is the fact that it doesn't take the characters back to Asia like many immigrant stories tend to do. Yes, there are parallel universes where the characters never left their homeland, but there's nothing forcing them to go back like in Shang-Chi or Crazy Rich Asians. By keeping the film set in America, EEAAO tells us: here is home. You're still connected to your ancestral roots through family ties and cultural practices, but you've found a new home despite the difficulties living here. Your identity as someone stuck in-between as an immigrant family is valid and your story matters. It's worth telling. You matter.
