Movie Mommy and Daddy Issues, or EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE - Rick Rekedal
Two movies have taken the box office by storm in recent months. Each delivers an unflinching look at how we face the gap between parents and adult children. Is there a bridge that could bring us together, even when our own actions dismantle it? Let’s dive in.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is another incredible effort from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (the “Daniels”), in conjunction with A24, the amazing studio that earned 25 Academy Award nominations to date (see Ladybird if you haven’t). Everything Everywhere All At Once was produced in partnership with the Russo brothers’ AGBO entertainment company, to whom we owe eternal thanks for Thor, the Avengers, and The Gray Man, to name a few.
A few week ago my friend Gareth Higgins, author of the amazing book How Not To Be Afraid, asked me, “Have you seen Everything Everywhere All At Once?” When I hesitated, I could hear his voice catch. “Ok, I’ll wait and talk about it with you later,” he said. That was enough for me. I made it my next assignment.
I’m so glad I did.
As soon as I saw it, I told my wife, “I’m taking you back to see this movie with me,” and I saw it again the next day with her. We sat on the same row as an older couple, mid-70s, who were completely lost as the movie unfolded. We could hear them talking loudly to each other: “What’s going on?” “Who is that?” “What the hell?” Finally the wife turned to her husband and said, “This is rubbish.” She stood up and announced to the several rows around her, “We’re leaving before we lose our minds.” I felt for them. They couldn’t make sense of the giant metaphor unspooling before them. For me, however, the second screening moved me even more than the first.
I’m the same age as the parents in Everything Everywhere All At Once - a 54-year-old dad of three adult daughters. Whether you’re the parent of adult children, or an adult child trying to navigate your parents, the journey within EEAAO is exactly how it feels…struggling to bridge the universe-sized gulf from mother to daughter.
For two hours I watched myself on screen, surfacing emotions long-buried. As a parent, what am I willing to face? What am I willing to accept? Do I realize the cost of sacrificing my loved ones because of what I’m convinced is right?
Here’s a story (shared with permission from my bride of 29 years): a few years ago, she had reached a breaking p0int with our daughters, frustrated and furious, feeling like their life choices were throwing our values back in her face. The kids were home for Mother’s Day weekend, but she wasn’t having any of it. In the middle of church service, she just walked out, feeling like standing together was a sham. Later she announced “Mother’s Day is cancelled,” dismissing the day with one clear swipe of her hand. I watched as she held her ground, the strength of the woman who agreed to marry me so many years ago, that same voice so often directed toward me when I needed it (deserved it is more honest), now focused on her adult daughters. I watched my girls with tragic pride, being challenged by the strength of the mama bear. If we could withstand the honesty of this day, the ties coming out of this would be strong.
In EEAAO, the worries and traumas flaring inside the mind of a mama bear clearly losing control are played out in a broad metaverse, where every past regret is kept alive, playing out in a network of linked parallel universes. For a second, take a look back at the roadmap of your life, and think about decision moments where you could have turned right but turned left instead. How often do we yearn to re-make a past choice? Am I still dwelling there, sitting in the grief of a lost choice that will never happen?
In the film, the adult daughter Joy Wang (Stephanie Hsu) accuses her controlling mother Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, also an executive producer) of holding her to an impossible standard, of only doing the “right” thing. As a dad who spent many years hoping my daughters would do the right thing, I was struck by Joy’s analysis of her mom: “Right is a box constructed by fear.” When we first have kids, young parents do the best with what we know. Our value systems are earnest but deeply stained by the baggage we’ve each carried onto the scene. Plunged into parenting, we are too naive, or lack the spousal trust, to honestly talk through our values beforehand; instead we react at each new parenting challenge, our bodies and hearts mysteriously drawing from a well of scars and impact we learned from our own childhoods. Anger at small things flares up, we hear the voice of our parents spew out of our own mouths, phrases we swore we would never repeat landing on the hearts of our children.
In that context, what does “right is a box constructed by fear” mean?
Young parents’ biggest fear is loss of their child, whether physically and tragically, or through a change of values as they get older. So we instill, we shape, we mold, and think we’ll get back just what we put in. Why are we surprised when they grow up to look and act so different? We’ve done the same to our parents, just like every generation of humans.
Every apple finds itself far from the tree. I’m the tree. I’m so proud when the apple hangs on my branch, so afraid when it drops and starts rolling away. I construct a box to keep the apple in. As long as I can see the apple, my fears are soothed, no matter how the apple feels. My control over the apple is a salve over every fear that flares up in my tree. Yet the apple starts to rot. Welcome to EEAAO.
The landscape of child-rearing is so fraught with peril, no sane person would actually volunteer to bring one forth if they really knew the consequences that might follow a night of passionate love-making. It’s truly the hardest work you’ll ever love (well, most of the time). My first experience of watching EEAAO left me an emotional wreck. Alone in my row at the theater, sitting through all the credits, finally the lights came up, and there I still sat. The clean-up person saw me and said gently, “Do you need more time? A lot of people do after this movie. We can come back later.”
I look back to times when I projected on my own daughters, my casual dad jokes and comments creating pressures my daughters could never meet.“We’ll use that embarrassing photo at your wedding reception,” or “We’re praying for your future spouse, out there somewhere.” My words layered burden after burden onto my children, passively implying that their own father didn’t see them as complete until they could find a spouse - and not one they chose, but the one their dad prayed for.
Several years ago, an intense men’s retreat revealed to me the impact of my words. Arriving home on a Sunday night, I called an immediate family meeting and confessed that I had created an impossible hurdle of expectation for them to be the “right kind of daughter.” I had to ask myself, could I be OK if all three of them stayed single forever, or followed a different path? I had to embrace the yes of that answer. I had to let go of conditions that the only way to be my daughter was to fulfill my formula of rightness, to survive within the box of my fears I had built around their ability to become themselves. I was kind of hoping they would brush me off with an “Of course not Dad, everything’s all good.” No such luck. Each one of them nodded and confirmed: “Yep. You’ve been doing that.”
I asked forgiveness, and vowed to change. I’ve tried to learn that my one job is to make sure that when they see their dad, my girls see the one man in their life they can always count on to accept them unconditionally. No fixing, no judgment. Can we really practice unconditional acceptance? Zero conditions? It’s a daily journey of letting go.
Life is more messy than we’re willing to admit. We avoid the messiness, afraid to stare it in the face. Our daughters and sons don’t need our flawed, impossible expectations. Life is hard enough. They need parents who find the courage to honestly, unflinchingly face their own messy issues and, in turn, offer their children empathy as they face their own messy life. EEAAO is a powerful, metaphorical journey into the mind of a confused parent grasping at love, showing us the messiness in ways that brought me to delight, shock, sorrow, tears and joy. If you haven’t yet seen Everything Everywhere All At Once, this is your firm recommendation. Locally it’s still playing in theaters where I live in Pasadena, and it’s now streaming on Apple TV & Amazon Prime.
Bear with me as we pivot to…Top Gun: Maverick. You must be kidding, I can hear you saying. Nope. I mean it. Just as EEAAO stares into the gulf of acceptance between a mother and daughter, Top Gun: Maverick looks into the heart of father/son issues and doesn’t flinch. Bridging the gap of avoidance and disconnect between fathers and adult sons takes the firepower of heat-seeking missiles and the horsepower of an F-18 fighter jet.
The nostalgic reunion of Ice Man and Maverick was tender and bittersweet, at least if you’re a middle-aged Gen Xer raised on Kenny Loggins’ Highway To The Danger Zone. Having brushed shoulders with Val Kilmer when he did voiceover on The Prince of Egypt, and worshipping for years at the altar of Tombstone’s Doc Holliday, watching Val and Tom embrace was an emotional moment 35 years in the making. But the real father/son issues are between Maverick and Rooster, the son of Maverick’s former wingman Goose, tragically killed in the first film. The two circle around each other like fighting gamecocks, like so many dads/sons who acknowledge each other but don’t ever really talk.
In the role of surrogate father, Maverick has taken it upon himself to watch over Rooster from afar, but Rooster resents that Maverick has only ever held him back. Interestingly, the writers made a choice that Maverick beats Rooster in flight training over and over, always the better pilot. My friend Dr. Justin Barrett, author of Born Believers, says it’s important that fathers occasionally remind their sons that they can still beat them on the playing field, reminding their sons that for all their hubris, they have much to learn. I was 28 years-old, newly married, in a prime job at a major Hollywood studio, when my dad asked me a direct question: “Son, how many close male friends do you have you can truly count on, mentors who will be brutally honest with you, friends who take your call at 3AM if you need them?” I had nothing, and he knew it. My hubris had me way out over my skis. He cautioned me to make sure I had a small circle of trusted friends I could really count on when crises comes.
Looking back over the years, my dad couldn’t have been more right. I’m old enough that it's been about the same time-span since Maverick flew into the Danger Zone…. so full of bravado, so clearly missing those in his life who might have called him on his bullshit. In this second chapter, Maverick faces the reality of Goose’s loss, and must find the humility needed to repair things with the son of his former wingman. He has to re-build that bridge. If done out of selflessness, no longer about us, our loved ones may receive us. Even if they don’t, it’s still up to us to release our controlling expectations that keep them feeling held back and resentful.
I still think about that older couple who naively bought tickets to Everything Everywhere All At Once, so confused and offended at the sci-fi fantasy of it all. They couldn’t begin to comprehend how the story could all fit together. They walked out. I think of how I laid impossible expectations on my daughters, pulling from every part of my metaverse, yet lost in how the story might all fit together. I’m grateful they never walked out. In my own journey as a son, I’m grateful my dad and I were able to find each other in our adult selves, reconciling in a way that has let the past go, allowing us to build a bridge and find a bond before he passes away.
I have spent thirty years in kids and family entertainment. The “movie rule” for me is they must transport us into another perspective. When a story truly connects, it leaves me changed; the best stories aren’t just stories I like, but are stories like me. Both of these stories have those qualities for me, grasping at the strange, weird and potentially wonderful path of reconciliation between parents and their adult children. The bottom line for disappointed parents: are we willing to let our grip on past expectations become more important than our own actual children? I’m reminded of Princess Leia’s line to Grand Moff Tarkin in Episode IV: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” When my grip holds on to expectations, I can’t hold my kids’ hand, and they slip through, just when they may need me the most.
These two films do more than deliver a good time; they bring light to the baggage so many of us are living with, whether children (all of us) or parents (some of us). There is real freedom in true, unconditional acceptance, loving those right in front of us for just who they are, not what we want them to be.
Rick Rekedal helps bring stories to life through his company StoryCrate, building on 20+ years with DreamWorks; he is currently Senior Fellow for Storytelling with Belmont University, and takes his 18-year-old blind dog Winston on slow walks every day. rick@thestorycrate.com