Failing (into) Meaning: Everything Everywhere All At Once and Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes)

Introduction

Before he plummets to his death, eleven-year-old Jake's words about other worlds anticipate a web Stephen King threads throughout his eight volume Dark Tower series (1982-2012): a multiverse so extensive and expansive that characters in this series encounter characters from King's other novels (e.g., Father Callahan from Salem's Lot) and even the author Stephen King himself. ² After the fourth Dark Tower novel, King wrote, "I am coming to understand that [this] world (or worlds) actually contains all the others of my making." ³ King began to realize how all-encompassing this multiverse he had crafted was, a multiverse which eventually contained a version of himself.

Multiverses look different and function differently. Like unhappy families, every multiverse is a multiverse in its own way. Yet common to many multiverses is their function as a source (or distiller) of meaning. Milan Kundera begins his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by insisting on the need for repeating—over and over—our life experiences. "Einmal ist keinmal. . . What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all." ⁴

For Kundera, a meaningful life requires repetition so that one can learn from one's choices and choose differently the next time around. "Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions." ⁵ The lack of such multiple lives renders happiness impossible. "Therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition." ⁶

Kundera imagines a planet where everyone would be "born again" after living on earth, and where they would retain awareness of their prior life on earth. A third and fourth planet, ad infinitum, would provide inhabitants with knowledge of all their previous lives. On each successive planet, people "would be born one degree (one life) more mature." ⁷ These extended lives—and the repeated opportunities to learn from past failures—would facilitate personal growth and development.

Multiverses source and channel meaning in different ways. In Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the titular character constructs a narrative populated with animals in order to cope with unthinkable barbaric acts he witnesses and commits. This alternative universe enables Pi Patel to cope with his trauma. Belief in God operates for Pi in the same manner; although the "story" of God's existence—like the story with the animals—is fictional and not "literally true," it is nonetheless preferable to a story without God because it is a story that helps people bear the unbearable. ⁸ In Guillermo del Toro's El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006), belief and participation in a fantasy, magical-religious world helps one cope with trauma by letting one face and overcome monsters. ⁹ Quentin Tarantino's historical (re)imagination in Inglorious Basterds (2009) and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019) illustrates how a multiverse can help people cope with trauma by reliving a less horrific, and more cathartic, version of reality, whether it be spraying the Fuhrer with bullets in a movie theater or killing Manson's would be killers of Sharon Tate et al. ¹⁰ Still violent and vicious, but cathartic. ¹¹

Everything, Everywhere is Meaninglessness

The multiverse takes center stage in the film Everything Everywhere All At Once (Kwan and Scheinert, 2022). The many significant similarities between this film and the biblical text Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes, an unfortunate translation) invite considering both works in light of each other.

The film and Qoheleth insist on the omnipresence of meaninglessness. The word hebel (literally "vapor" or "mist," here translated as "meaningless") pervades Qoheleth's thought, appearing thirty-eight times in the book. ¹² Qoheleth's ubiquitous use of hebel reflects the inescapable and all-consuming nature of meaninglessness. There is nothing meaninglessness does not envelop. Nothing dwells outside its grasp.

Qoheleth opens and closes with a claim that everything is hebel, or meaningless (1:2; 12:8): ¹³

"Meaningless, meaningless, says the Teacher, meaningless, meaningless! All is meaningless" (1:2)

"Meaningless, meaningless, says the Teacher; all is meaningless" (12:8).

After twelve chapters of thoughtful reflection—including various tensions and contradictions (e.g., whether it is preferable to be dead [4:2-3] or alive [9:4-5])—the anonymous author remains convinced that meaninglessness abounds. Meaninglessness permeates and suffuses everything. So much so that being dead is preferable to being alive, and preferable to both is the person who has never been born (4:2-3). ¹⁴

Qoheleth's reasons for viewing everything in life as meaningless are legion. God is partly to blame. "It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with" (1:13). "Consider the work of God; who can make straight what they have made crooked?" (7:13). Life, moreover, is a repetitive cycle (1:4-6). Nothing new can ever exist. "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun" (1:9). The answer to his rhetorical question, "Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new?'" is a resounding "No" (1:10). Among the many specific things Qoheleth identifies as meaningless are toil, pleasure, wealth, and wisdom (1:3, 16-18; 2:1-11, 18-19, 23).

Death fuels Qoheleth's claim that life is meaningless. People are not remembered after they die (1:11). Wise and foolish people die in the same way (2:14). The righteous and the wicked are treated the same (8:14; 9:1-3). Qoheleth's rejection of claims to the contrary in Proverbs, Deuteronomy, and Psalms reflects a disenchantment with a simplistic binary view of the world in which God blesses the wise/righteous and punishes the wicked/foolish. Qoheleth cautions against being "too righteous" and against acting "too wise" (7:16). Humans do not even have an advantage over animals (3:19-20), since both return to the dust when they die.

For Qoheleth, death erases the infinite illusions of control to which people cling. Death reminds us that we cannot guarantee who will inherit our goods (2:18-21; 5:12-13), nor can we take those goods with us when we die (5:14-15). We cannot control when or how we die, nor whether or how we will be remembered (8:8-13). Death obliterates knowledge, memory, and emotions, erasing fundamental traits of what it means to be human (9:5-6, 10). All of this renders life utterly meaningless. Life is meaningless even with other people. Life is meaningless even with God.

The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once is that rare breed that garnered wide popular appeal and was a darling of critics. The highest grossing film from studio A24, it was the first film to receive four awards at the SAG Awards, and it received seven Oscars. ¹⁵ The genre-defying film (family drama/action/science-fiction/comedy) tells the story of a Chinese immigrant family in the U.S. As she struggles to navigate her home laundromat business and paying taxes to the IRS, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) struggles even more with the fractured relationships with her daughter, her husband, and her father. A man from another dimension—the spitting image of her husband—informs Evelyn that a malevolent entity (who happens to also possess her daughter) is on the verge of destroying the universe, and Evelyn is the only one who can save it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once shares Qoheleth's view of the all encompassing and pervasive nature of meaninglessness. The film concretizes meaninglessness in the creation of the "everything bagel" by Jobu Tapaki (Stephanie Hsu). A melancholic Jobu tells Evelyn (Yeoh) what she put on the bagel: "Everything. All my hopes and dreams, my old report cards, every breed of dog, every last personal ad on Craigslist. Sesame. Poppyseed. Salt. And it collapsed in on itself." Jobu adds, "When you really put everything on a bagel, it becomes this. The truth." Evelyn asks, "What is the truth?" and Jobu replies, "Nothing matters." ¹⁶

Circular images pervade the film, anticipating Jobu's everything bagel. The film's opening shot (a laughing Waymond, Evelyn, and Joy as they sing karaoke) is reflected in what initially appears to be a circular mirror in the center of the frame. After a door shuts, viewers see in this circular "mirror" the Wang living room. Evelyn enters the room, and viewers (via the camera) pass through this circle/mirror. Through the looking glass we go, in a nod to both Alice in Wonderland and (one of many to) The Matrix. ¹¹ The circle that had appeared to be a mirror now looks to be a mere pane of glass, for instead of seeing a reflection in it, we now see through it. This abrupt switch dislodges viewers, and anticipates how the film will play with—and unseat—our perceptions. Was the opening shot of the Wang family singing from a moment in the past? Or was it of a different Wang family in another universe?

Circular images are noticeable behind Evelyn who sits to work on her taxes: a circular mirror a round ceiling light, and a pair of googly eyes on a laundry bag (Figure 1). When her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) enters and speaks to Evelyn, we see his face reflected in the mirror before we see it directly. Other circles abound in this opening scene. ¹⁸

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Figure 1.

The initial shot of the living room, with the googly eyes on the laundry bag in the upper right corner of the frame.

Before the camera first cuts to Joy, Evelyn's daughter, we see a slowly spinning washing machine. With a forlorn look of melancholy, Joy stares at this spinning (mostly black) circle, the first overt nod to Jobu's everything bagel. Inside the laundry room where Joy stands, circles— washing machines and dryers—are everywhere.

Circles anticipating Jobu's everything bagel follow in quick succession. At the initial IRS meeting, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) draws a thick, black circle on one of Evelyn's receipts, circling it repeatedly. At Deirdre's desk, Evelyn sees her face in a circular mirror before she verse jumps (moving from her own universe into another universe) for the first time. Deirdre eats a cookie the Wangs give her. ¹⁹ Alpha Waymond eats a round bagel while hiding with Evelyn under a desk. Deirdre staples a black circle to her forehead. Most of Evelyn's "enemies" also have black circles on their foreheads. Jobu wears a black circle above her head, a kind of anti-halo. A black artifact in the shape of a circle adorns a table in the IRS building. Even the Ley Line logo that precedes the opening shot of the film is in the shape of a circle. ²⁰ Like the everything bagel, these scores of circles symbolize life's repetitive and cyclical nature and its pervasive meaninglessness. ²¹

Failing Into Meaning

Everything Everywhere All At Once and Qoheleth propose that pervasive and absolute meaning-lessness can catalyze meaningful living. Far from adopting a nihilistic worldview, Qoheleth's obsession with death's omnipotence (and its corresponding meaninglessness) leads the author to argue that the best thing a person can do is enjoy food, drink, and (sometimes) toil. ²² On seven occasions, Qoheleth argues that the "best thing" a person can do is enjoy these everyday activities (2:22-24; 3:12-13; 5:18; 8:15; 9:7, 9; 11:9). For Qoheleth, enjoyment of the mundane is the pinnacle of human existence.

Qoheleth does not propose enjoyment despite life's meaninglessness, but because life is meaningless. Confronting life's meaninglessness propels Qoheleth's recommendation to enjoy life. ²³ Such enjoyment, Qoheleth consistently contends, is also a divine gift (2:24-26; 3:13; 5:17-18; 6:2; 8:15; 9:7). The primary way people can experience God is through the enjoyment of food, drink, and (sometimes) toil.

The film also embraces meaninglessness as a portal to meaningful living. Jobu/Joy finds profound relief in recognizing that nothing matters. "If nothing matters," she says, "then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life, it goes away." For Joy, the totality of meaninglessness is a narcotic, a Slacker pill to dull the ache of utter and total failure.

Rejecting a central tenet of the religion of Americanism—the exaltation of success and achievement—Everything Everywhere All At Once insists that embracing failure is a vital step toward living meaningfully. ²⁴ At the IRS office, Deirdre draws attention to Evelyn's failure as a singer, novelist, chef, teacher, singing coach, and Watsu technician. Referring to a receipt for a karaoke machine, Deirdre says, "You may just see numbers, but I see a story." The story Deirdre sees in the mundane receipt is Evelyn's failure—over and over again—to become successful in any of her innumerable career aspirations. The quotidian taxes reveal a painful truth: for much of her life, Evelyn has been a consistent and abysmal failure.

Yet Alpha Waymond sees Evelyn's failures as a strength. He tells her, "With every passing moment, you fear you might have missed your chance to make something of your life. I'm here to tell you, every rejection, every disappointment, has led you here. To this moment." Evelyn can't comprehend why Alpha Waymond thinks she is so special. "I'm no good at anything," she admits. "Exactly," Alpha Waymond replies, adding:

I've seen thousands of Evelyns, but never an Evelyn like you. You have so many goals you never finished. Dreams you never followed. You're living your worst you . . . Every failure here branched off into a success for another Evelyn in another life. Most people only have a few significant life paths so close to them. But you, here, you're capable of anything because you're so bad at everything.

The other versions of Evelyn illuminate the extent of her many failures (as singer, actress, chef, opera singer), all accentuated in light of the more successful Evelyns. After visiting the universe where she is a kung fu movie star (utilizing footage from actress Michelle Yeoh's real red carpet appearances, further blurring the lines between fictional and nonfictional universes), Evelyn tells Waymond that she was happier there, and that she regrets marrying him.

The multiverse thus illustrates and enhances the chasm between what one could have become and the depths to which one has sunk.

Yet the film insists that the failed and failing Evelyn has more potential than any of her more successful versions. The failures littering Evelyn's life are the seeds of her self-actualization. Failure is the essential key to her growth and development. Evelyn is able to access so many different universes and acquire so many different skills from other Evelyns precisely because she has failed so catastrophically in her own life. Countering a prevailing American ethos, the film promotes failure as a quintessential virtue. Failure has intrinsic value and is intrinsically meaningful. ²⁵

Related to the film's embrace of failure are the various catalysts required for verse jumping. To jump into another universe, one must engage in uncomfortable, embarrassing, painful, or disgusting behavior. For her first verse jump, Evelyn switches her shoes to the wrong feet and imagines she is in a janitor's closet. Alpha Waymond chews a glob of chapstick for his initial verse jump. Deirdre staples a piece of paper (with a black circle on it) to her forehead. Other verse jump catalysts include chewing used bubble gum, inflicting paper cuts on one's fingers, silly dancing and putting hand sanitizer on one's eyes, speaking through a bird coo, swallowing a frog ornament, and guzzling a liter of orange soda. ²⁶

Verse jumping typically requires some form, or degree, of humiliation. Evelyn wipes mucous from her dad's nose and applies it to his tongue. She sniffs dust from a sex toy. She blows on someone's nose. She snorts a fly up her own nose. Two men insert butt plugs where they are designed to go. These humiliating acts unveil the film's distinct proposal: growth or development (in the form of adopting skills) requires a degree of debasement or humiliation. Descent must precede ascent. Masochism is the doorway to growth. ²⁷ This counterintuitive value for humiliation—an acute form of failure—militates against a prevailing American ethic that champions self-improvement and the aggrandizement of the self.

Vulnerability as Virtue: Intentional Acts of Kindness

The film offers vulnerability and kindness as the two primary meaningful responses to the omnipresence of meaninglessness. The catalyst for Evelyn's second verse jump is professing her love to Deirdre. This, while the fiendish, maniacal wrestler Deirdre tries to maul Evelyn. Under attack, Evelyn must adopt a vulnerable posture—physically and emotionally—that opens her up to being literally wounded by her attacker. This sets the stage for the film's elevation of vulnerability—and its main expression, kindness—as a chief virtue.

Waymond saves Evelyn's mind and her relationships from fracturing beyond repair. And it is through kindness that he saves her. In a crucial series of scenes near the film's end, we cut back and forth between three Waymonds in three universes. The Waymond in the laundromat convinces Deirdre not to arrest Evelyn, and instead to give them a week's extension on their taxes. He does this not through violence or threat. When a puzzled Evelyn asks how he accomplished this, Waymond says, "I just talked to her." Waymond then proceeds to sing softly as he sweeps up the broken glass on the floor.

In the Wong Kar-wai universe, Waymond delivers this monologue to movie star Evelyn:

You think I'm weak, don't you? All those years ago when we first fell in love your father would say I was too sweet for my own good. Maybe he was right. You tell me that it's a cruel world and we're all just running around in circles. I know that. I've been on this earth just as many days as you. When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.

And a tearful Waymond in the IRS building pleads with Evelyn and with her enemies:

Please! Please! Can we . . . can we just stop fighting? I know you are all fighting because you're scared and confused. I'm confused too. All day, I don't know what the heck is going on. But somehow, this feels like it's all my fault. I don't know. The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please. Be kind, especially when we don't know what's going on. Please. Be kind.

After taking Waymond's hand, Evelyn witnesses a memory montage of Waymond's unaffected enthusiasm, his authentic glee, and his childlike wonder. These images soften her. As does the Wong Kar-wai Waymond, who delivers what might now be the most romantic line in cinematic history: "So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say: In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you."

Waymond's posture in all three universes is one of radical vulnerability, an opening himself up to physical pain and exposing himself to emotional wounds. His vulnerability, lacking any defenses, in turn softens and opens up Evelyn. In the laundromat, she approaches the gently singing/sweeping Waymond and embraces him. The Evelyn in the IRS building laughs and opens up her clenched fist.

The film's ethic of kindness is possibly linked to Alpha Waymond's view of chance/fate. While he dies in her arms, Alpha Waymond gives Evelyn his final words: "I'm grateful that chance was kind enough to let us have these last few moments together." For Alpha Waymond, chance is—or at least can be—kind. The closest the film has to an overt theology is this proposal that the kindness Waymond promotes as the cardinal virtue is something he himself receives (and perceives) as a gift from chance or fate. Alpha Waymond's view parallels Qoheleth's most compelling theological point, that the primary way people can experience God is through the divine gifts of food and drink.

Waymond is strong enough to be weak. Evelyn's own development is signaled by her embrace of a similar type of vulnerability. Instead of fighting her enemies, she heeds Waymond's call and instead shows them kindness. "I don't want to hurt you," she says to them. She expresses gentleness to (and embraces) Deirdre in three different universes. She tells Deirdre, "You're not unlovable. There is always something to love."

On her way to save her daughter Joy from committing suicide, Evelyn encounters numerous opponents who seek to fight and kill her. But she meets their violence with kindness. As she tells a puzzled Waymond, "I'm learning to fight like you." Two of her attackers she brings together in wedded bliss. On an old widower Evelyn sprays his dead wife's perfume, making him giddy with glee. Her rapid chiropractic maneuvers heal a misaligned man. She spanks a submissive man (played by director Daniel Scheinert) into ecstasy. She helps a fellow chef reunite with his beloved pet Raccaccoonie. The remaining attackers she pacifies by giving them their heart's desires (e.g., a pet dog, a cookie).

Evelyn loves her enemies. When she finally reaches Joy, and Joy adopts a fighting stance, Evelyn opens up her arms in an inviting embrace. By championing kindness and love of the enemy, the film offers a more compelling ethic than Qoheleth, whose primary recommendation is limited to enjoying food and drink. ²⁸

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' call to love the enemy is tied to an observation made in Qoheleth. Both Qoheleth and Jesus speak of God treating the righteous and the wicked in the same manner. Whereas Qoheleth laments this unfortunate reality as hebel (8:14), and it helps fuel his proposal for enjoyment (8:15), Jesus channels this observation into an ethic of love for the enemy (Matt 5:43-48). ²⁹ Since God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous, then people become more like God when they also show love to their enemies.

In its promotion of vulnerability as a cardinal virtue, Everything Everywhere All At Once subverts the worship of strength and privileging of might that dominates the contemporary glut of superhero films. ³⁰ The film suggests that true strength lies not in physical prowess or power of any kind, but in a vulnerability that risks incurring wounds. In a weakness that reveals itself at the cost of receiving pain. It is the recognition of Wong Kar Wai Waymond who tells Evelyn, "He who loves the most regrets the most."

Kindness is the answer not only to the enemy, but also to personal failure. Speaking of her daughter Joy, Evelyn says, "It's okay that she's a mess. Because just like me, the universe gave her someone kind, patient" (here she looks at Waymond) and forgiving to make up for all she lacks." Here Evelyn reiterates Alpha Waymond's perception of the universe (or chance/fate) as kind.

Googly Eyes: A Different Kind of Circle

The first shot of Evelyn working on her taxes includes in the background a pair of googly eyes on a bag of laundry (Figure 1). When Evelyn goes downstairs to the laundromat, her first act there is to remove a pair of googly eyes from a washing machine. When she cannot find a missing bag of clothes, Waymond tells her he moved them upstairs. "I think the clothes are happier there," he explains. Once upstairs, he reiterates, "See, they're happier here." This "happier" bag of clothes is adorned with a pair of googly eyes, which Evelyn promptly tears off as she pronounces, "No more googly eyes!" When the first of three titles appears ("Everything"), the laundry bag with the googly eyes (from the first scene) is no longer there (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

The first title card, after Evelyn has removed the laundry bag (in the upper right corner) with the googly eyes.

The googly eyes on the laundry bag and washing machine signify the presence of what is silly, whimsical, childlike, and (ultimately) kind. They are planted directly on the mundane (laundry bag of clothes and washing machine). Kindness imprints the mundane. The mundane (laundry and taxes) need not preclude—and can even be the site of—the silly, whimsical, childlike, or kind. One memory Evelyn witnesses in the montage of Waymond that touches her deeply is of him sheepishly holding a big red ball with googly eyes on it (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Waymond's affinity for the googly eyes is a symbol of vulnerability and kindness.

Googly eyes symbolize and solidify Evelyn's shift from violence to kindness. In one of the film's many homages to The Matrix, Evelyn remains unharmed when sprayed with bullets. She pulls a bullet from her forehead and (just as the Evelyn at the laundromat sees the googly eyes on the baseball bat that she used to smash the window), she discovers the bullet from her forehead is turned (or she turns it?) into a googly eye. She places the googly eye on her forehead, a third eye of kindness (Figure 4). Googly eyes are then flung on to all her attackers. Echoing Evelyn's pre-conversion attitude toward the googly eyes, her father Gong Gong taunts, "So stupid!" Even Rock Evelyn now has a pair of googly eyes, as she sloughs toward Rock Joy. Evelyn's shift from violence to kindness is symbolized in her acceptance and adaptation of the googly eye.

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Figure 4.

Evelyn adopts the googly eye, signifying her shift from violence to kindness.

In the final shot of the living room, the two laundry bags behind Evelyn have googly eyes (Figure 5). We have come full circle: from the googly eyes on the laundry bag in the opening living room shot, to their later removal by Evelyn, and finally to their replacement (and then some!). Googly eyes end up supplanting the everything bagel as the dominant visual symbol. Kindness will live on in the midst of the mundane. Life remains meaningless, but it is possible to find meaning in its midst. Indeed, it is meaninglessness that illuminates the meaningful.

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Figure 5.

The film ends with multiple sets of googly eyes, illustrating Evelyn's embrace of vulnerability and kindness.

Laundry and Taxes: Meaning in the Mundane

Just as in Qoheleth, the film identifies the mundane as the principal arena in which meaning can be experienced. The mundane (laundry and taxes) is pregnant with meaning for those with eyes to see. As Deirdre tells the Wang family in their initial meeting, "Now you may only see a pile of boring forms and numbers, but I see a story. With nothing but a stack of receipts I can trace the ups and downs of your lives. And it does not look good. It does not look good." The story revealed in the tea leaves of the receipts, the debris and detritus of the mundane, is of the failures that litter Evelyn's life.

Laundry and taxes dominate Evelyn's life. When we first see her, she sits at a long table, almost submerged in heaps of piles of tax forms and receipts. When we last she her she sits in a meeting at the IRS office. In the opening scene, she leaves her work on the taxes to go downstairs to work in the laundromat. Taxes and laundry—these are the dull and dreary realms in which Evelyn ekes out her not so glamorous life.

If taxes epitomize the mundane, the IRS is its epicenter, the nucleus of the ordinary. It is here, at the IRS building, where the majority of the film is set. When the Wangs are not there, they spend almost all their time in the laundromat. The primary two settings are loci of the mundane. These settings suggest that peoples' lives are lived primarily within and among the mundane. That it is precisely there where meaning—if any—is to be found. For Wong Kar-wai Waymond, it is also the locus of love. Love is found, he suggests, not in greener pastures or more tantalizing universes, but in the tedium of laundry and taxes. It is in the IRS building, the epicenter of the mundane, where Evelyn gives Waymond a long kiss. ³¹

Love and Meaning in the Midst of Meaninglessness

Relevant to Evelyn's shift (from seeking to defeat Jobu to joining and sharing in Jobu's pain) is "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)," a 2000 song by Nine Days, which plays three times in the film. One of its lyrics even becomes one of Alpha Waymond's lines to Evelyn. ³² The song's chorus characterizes Joy's/Jobu's melancholia:

This is the story of a girl

Who cried a river and drowned the whole world

And while she looks so sad in photographs

I absolutely love her

This is the story of a girl

A pretty face she hid from the world

And while she looks so sad and lonely there

I absolutely love her

This is the story of a girl

Who cried a river and drowned the whole world

And while she looks so sad in photographs

I absolutely love her

When she smiles ³³

The alternative ending lines in the above three choruses lay out two disparate responses Evelyn can take toward Joy. One is loving Joy "when she smiles," a love conditioned on whether Joy displays a proper disposition. This is Evelyn's default posture toward Joy, one causing Joy deep pain. Evelyn cannot accept that Joy is fat, has tattoos, and has a girlfriend. Over a flashback to Evelyn lying to her father Gong Gong about Becky being Joy's girlfriend, Jobu tells Evelyn, "Right is a tiny box invented by people who are afraid. And I know what it feels like to be trapped inside that box." What Joy longed for was a mom who would join her in her misery and share her pain with her. "I wasn't looking for you so I could kill you," Joy/Jobu tells Evelyn, "I was just looking for someone who could see what I see, feel what I feel." ³⁴

Evelyn eventually adopts an unconditional, untrapping love toward Joy (as in the concluding lines of the first two choruses above), without regard for whether Joy is smiling or not. This is the Rock Evelyn that plunges over the cliff after her plummeting daughter. An Evelyn willing to be with Joy even if that entails joining Joy in her melancholia. Jobu reveals to her mom that she built the everything bagel not to harm others, but to destroy herself. And Jobu is comforted knowing that Evelyn will die with her and that she won't have to die alone.

Facilitating Evelyn's conversion to an unconditional love for Joy is her adoption of Jobu's point of view regarding life's utter meaninglessness. Rock Evelyn's comment ("We're all small and stupid") echoes Rock Joy's perspective ("We're all stupid. Small, stupid humans. It's like our whole deal. And who knows what discovery is coming next to make us feel like even smaller pieces of shit"). And yet. Rock Evelyn discovers that Joy's real hope was that her mom would "see something I didn't. . . that you would convince me there was another way."

Accepting Jobu's point of view that "nothing matters"—that it's all, as Jobu says, "just a pointless swirling bucket of bullshit"—leads Evelyn to give up in all of the different universes. With her laundromat at stake, she tells Deirdre on the phone to shut up. "Nothing matters," Evelyn says. She tells Wong Kar-wai Waymond that if they had gotten together they'd wake up every day "over a failing laundromat." Drunk at the Chinese New Year's party, she says, "Another year pretending we know what we're doing, but really, we're just going around in circles. Doing laundry and taxes and laundry and taxes." She signs the divorce papers and tells Waymond, "No more running." Eveyln's mind fractures, as do her relationships in all the universes. She stabs Waymond with a shard of glass, and at the laundromat she figuratively stabs Waymond, pushing the signed divorce papers into his chest.

In the second of two key parking lot scenes, Evelyn undergoes her final conversion. She reiterates Rock Joy's prior claim, saying,

You're right, it doesn't make sense. Maybe it's like you said, maybe there is something out there, some new discovery that will make us feel like even smaller pieces of shit. Something that explains why you still went looking for me through all of this noise. And why, no matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always, always, want to be here with you.

When Joy repeats what she had told Evelyn earlier ("Here all we get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes any sense"), Evelyn agrees with her and yet also adds, "Then I will cherish these few specks of time." Evelyn embraces Joy's view that life is meaningless. And although it may seem counterintuitive, it is her embrace of life's meaninglessness that fuels and propels her commitment to loving Joy. Evelyn's love, in the end, refuses to let Joy go. Evelyn's love holds on to Joy because Evelyn knows how precious are the few specks of time she may have.

As in Qoheleth, facing meaninglessness leads not to nihilism, but to a greater and fuller commitment to enjoy and appreciate the "few specks" that God or chance/fate/the universe give people. When Joy asks if Evelyn still wants to go to her party, Evelyn says, "We can do whatever we want. Nothing matters." As in Qoheleth, embracing life's meaninglessness paradoxically frees a person to enjoy. For Qoheleth this is enjoyment of food and drink; for the film it is a relational commitment to be kind, especially in the face of attack or disappointment. ³⁵ Evelyn realizes that kindness is the antidote to failures (in life and in her daughter) that had previously disappointed her.

New Beginnings (In Lieu of a Conclusion)

The presence of a multiverse in King's Dark Tower series enables young Jake Chambers to survive his death in The Gunslinger. Jake lives on in another world. And in that other world, what we would call "our world," Jake dies (a second time) in his effort to save an author named Stephen King from being run over and killed by a van. Jake succeeds. King is hit by the van and severely injured, but thanks to Jake, he survives. Such is the story told in King's The Dark Tower novel, and such is the story told—minus any multiverse connections—in "our world" of that June day in 1999 when King narrowly survived being hit by a van. And who can say that the reason King survived that day is not due to a young boy named Jake Chambers, a young boy no longer among us because he gave his life for the life of his author. At least this use of the multiverse might provide King with a profound gratitude for a boy who, although never recognized in our universe, gave his life so that King might live.

What King accomplishes with his multiverse may not be radically unlike how many people have found meaning in another story of another death, two thousand years ago, a death that many have similarly understood as saving them.