North American poster for the movie Instant Universe.
Many of the bad reviews of Instant Universe have focused on overexertion, low-end jokes, and chaotic rhythms. There are also many people who feel that the form of the film is far greater than the content, and tells an old reconciliation story in a fanciful way. Another reason for the controversy of "Instantaneous Universe" is its rebelliousness and the disconnection of the film's landing point. Because the style is too grotesque, when it says that it loves you with wild words, some viewers are moved, and some viewers feel a gap: it seems to return to a mainstream narrative, serving self-consolation and family stability.
In the view of the author, "Instantaneous Universe" shows a loser song of Asian women, and although it was produced at a small cost commercial cost, the film ended up saving itself. Interestingly, this self-salvation, presented in the form of a multiverse, is more like Gatali's schizophrenia than the fable of Freud's dream. The film also repeatedly uses media reflexivity, camp and other views to construct a unique visual and narrative method, challenging the public's acceptance category, but this rebellion is not unlimited, so it disappoints some viewers. In addition, the author will also analyze the multiverse settings that have appeared frequently in North American theaters in recent years and the social and psychological causes behind them.
Written by 丨 Yancheng
Loser's Song of Asian Women and Schizophrenia
At the end of the movie, I had to feel that compared with "Instantaneous Whole Universe", the previous translation of this film, "Mama's Multiverse", is actually closer to the core of this film.
defines the subject of the multiverse: it's a story that revolves around middle-aged Chinese women. Her social identity is "mom", a wife who is about to divorce, a daughter who elopes against her father's orders, a generation of Immigrants mixed with Chinese and English, and the owner of a run-down laundromat in North America.
It is said that after Jackie Chan refused to play the male lead of this film, the director and screenwriter changed the story into a script for the big female protagonist. So Evelyn (Yang Ziqiong) became the only core character of "Instantaneous Whole Universe". The film tells the story of the day when this Chinese woman had a nervous breakdown. The daughter wants to come out, the husband wants to divorce, the father wants to have a birthday party, and the officials of the tax office do everything they can to make things difficult... The indestructible reality was suddenly split by the paradoxical imagination. The husband seems to suddenly wear The Matrix and tell her that they are actually just one of the universes in the multiverse. And only she can fight against the dark forces that are now eroding the multiverse.
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
The curtain of the multiverse opened to her slowly: in one universe, she did not elope with her husband and became a movie star by chance; in another universe she was a chef, and her competitors were more favored, but she was actually manipulated by the raccoon hidden in the chef's hat; in a universe, everyone had a soft "sausage hand", and her lover was the tax bureau official in this world who was cold to her; in other universes, she was an opera actress, a ragdoll on a tree, a stone on a mountain...
Under her guidance, Evelyn borrows her own powers from other universes to fight against the dark forces. She also had a glimpse into the different possibilities of her life, each of which seemed to be much better than her own version of the laundromat owner. The husband from the Alpha Universe then points out the truth:
What makes Evelyn special is that she is a complete loser. Not only did she not achieve anything, but she also fell into a deep dissatisfaction with life. This dissatisfaction with self-perception manifests itself in the number of multiverses she has. People more or less do some imaginings with "If only" at the core when they fail, but no one thinks as much as Evelyn, so her multiverse map is really as complex as a galaxy. So, this chaotic comedy movie has a bitter core. Its tone is gloomy, the light is dark, the scene is generally in the room (laundromat and office), accompanied by a chaotic dream-like story line, which infinitely oppresses the protagonist's nerves.
So unlike many people who think that the core of this film is parent-child relationship, I think that "Instantaneous Universe" is fundamentally a loser song for middle-aged women. The multiverse unfolds entirely with Evelyn's personal subject at its core. One obvious proof is that in some universes she has no daughters and no husbands.
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
Evelyn's state reminds me of another failed middle-aged woman image on the big screen in the past two years: Miss Li played by Ma Yili in "Love Myth". Miss Li summed up the first half of her life to Lao Bai, saying: "If you can't get the best, you are willing to go another way." When Lao Bai asked her if the road was going well, she had an impressive self-deprecation: "Downhill road, can it not go smoothly?" Recalling the beginning of the movie, Miss Li and Lao Bai watch a play. The drama actor dragged out his voice and said, "I'm in line, but the sugar that belongs to me has not come." Miss Li immediately shed tears. Interestingly, the film hints through Lao Bai's intention that the play is not a good play, but it just happens to be such a pretentious play that hits the heart of the "loser".
The more clumsy the play, the more it seems that human empathy and vulnerability are not enough for outsiders, like a patch hidden in the pocket. Many people think that Evelyn's adventures in "Instantaneous Universe" are chaotic, too much work, and do not know what to do. Without talking about the level of technology, I can even understand the necessity of this chaos in a symbolic sense: how could Evelyn's adventure not be the clumsy drama that Miss Lee had substituted for? Many wounds can only be known to themselves.
As a small-cost commercial production, "Instantaneous Universe" did not make Evelyn fall to the ground in failure, just like miss Li in "Love Myth" finally returned the old white message. Evelyn's eventual rescue of the precarious multiverse actually reshapes her collapsing self-perception and mother-daughter relationship.
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
So I have to ask, what saved her? There's an efficient answer called "Dream Parsing": You can assume that Evelyn has actually gone through only a realistic timeline (what might be called the "laundromat universe"), that is, she gave up sorting out her tax returns after returning from the tax office. Came out for her daughter at a family gathering, then collapsed through windows under the watchful eyes of tax collectors and eventually reconciled with her daughter. In addition, all the plots containing fights, intrigues and multiverse are Evelyn's dreams, fantasies, and delirium, reflecting the anxiety and desire in her subconscious. Thus all irrationality can form signifiers and sit in opposition to signs; all cosmic adventures serve the purpose of finding the true meaning of love in the overworld, the real-life version of Evelyn.
But is that all there is to it? I think the best part of The Instantaneous Universe is precisely that Evelyn experienced more schizophrenia than Freud's dream.
Gatali's most famous book may have been capitalism and Schizophrenia (Volume 2): A Thousand Plateaus, co-authored by Deleuze, but outside of this book, Gathali devoted his life to the study of schizophrenia. In Chaos Interpenetration, he proceeds from Bakhtin's theory and claims that "subjectivity is plural and polyphonic." Unlike the Freud school's dualism of consciousness-unconscious, subject-object, signifier-signifier, Gathali's unconscious refuses to be incorporated into an established, consensual, scientific "collective device" and should be a "heterogeneous stack with varying bodies, i.e., heterogeneous stacks with variable extensions and coherences." Thus, the study of schizophrenia we are talking about here is not a defect in the pathological sense, but a symbol of the philosophical and aesthetic dimension, which indicates a tendency to fully open subjectivity to diversity.
Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Volume 2): A Thousand Plateaus, by Felix Gatali / [France] by Gil deleuze, translated by Jiang Yuhui, Six Points Book | Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, December 2010.
The multiverse in Instantaneous Universe happens to be close to such a decentralized polyphonic structure. Rather than having a "master universe" as the root of existence, and Evelyn of other universes being her self-projection, we should say that Evelyn in all universes together constitute her self. Evelyn's multiverse, or schizophrenia, demonstrates a kind of "self-generated" subjective production: unlike the "self-producing" machines (which produce things other than themselves), "self-generated" machines continuously conceive and prescribe their own organization and their own boundaries. Despite the length of the space, each Evelyn universe actually lives next to each other and exists as an equal.
When Evelyn makes the bizarre gesture of being a psychopath in the eyes of others to obtain the energy of the self in other universes, the different subjects establish a flowing connection. It is important to note that this borrowing of power does not act unilaterally on the "tax office universe". Instead, Evelyn's performance in one universe is not isolated, but actually echoes her self-behavior in other universes: along with her fight in the tax office, Evelyn in "Chef Universe" accidentally spills sauce on customers, Evelyn and her partner in "Sausage Universe" begin to quarrel, and Evelyn in "Sichuan Opera Universe" loses her voice on stage.
These bright egos that make Evelyn of the "tax bureau universe" envious have also revealed the cracks behind them. Rather than saying that these cracks are caused by the fights of the "main universe", it is better to say that any version of happy life is inevitably accompanied by scars: the workplace competition of the "Chef Universe", the middle-aged emotional crisis of the "Sausage Universe", the loneliness and regret in the "Actor Universe"...
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
Evelyn's actions are completely out of bounds, especially after she chooses to "run wild" like her daughter. She breaks the boundaries of the "realm of existence" and allows the subject to fully expand into the "invisible world" that is not controlled by coordinates. As the title Everything Everywhere All at Once suggests, everything in space-time happens simultaneously, independent of sequencing and causality.
So, what struck me about the ending of "Instant Universe" was not the mother-daughter confession outside the laundromat, but Evelyn in different universes who took different actions to pursue the same goal: to be kind, to find love and meaning in life. They help their colleagues chase cars to save raccoons, listen to their partners play a piano song with their feet, reconcile with their old lovers with their past... Rather than saying that Evelyn of the "laundromat universe" is the main axis of all universes, it is better to say that this existential crisis and self-empowerment have become the integration line of the multiverse.
These fragments of different universes, as Gatari put it, form a "ritournelle existentialles" that contain harmonies, polyphony, counterpoints, rhythms, and ensembles in the existential sense of different worlds. And "Instantaneous Whole Universe" seems to play a poetic role: it "reconstructs the subjectivized world that is considered rare and singular" in a broad sense. It is also in this "self-created" dislocation activity that the multiverse narrative completes the inspiration and salvation of Evelyn, Joey, and the audience inside and outside the film.
Excesses and transgressions: Non-necessity is a romance in itself
At present, the score of "Instantaneous Universe" on Douban has dropped from 8.9 points to 7.8 points. Many bad reviews focus on excessive force, low-end jokes, and chaotic rhythms. There are also many people who feel that the form of the film is far greater than the content, and tells an old reconciliation story in a fanciful way. In addition to disgust and disappointment, there is also an emotion called confusion: someone completely loses the understanding of the narrative in the transition of the scene.
Although it has a bitter core, "Instantaneous Whole Universe" does package itself as a hilarious absurd drama of high-speed switching. In addition to the "laundromat universe", "chef universe", "actor universe", etc., which occupy more space, near the end, the film directly smashes more bizarre universes directly on the audience's face through high-speed cutting mirrors. In many universes Evelyn paints more bizarre makeup, and in some universes she doesn't even exist in human form.
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
So some people say that it's been a long time since you've seen a movie like this that completely shatters your perception of time. According to the creators, they crammed 300 pages of content into the length of the film that could only carry 200 pages of script. This highly compressed information density has forced people to face the confusion of information overload in the era of information explosion. The two-hour version we see now has even gone through multiple rounds of editing. Even the crew will tell the director that we have shot too many strange scenes, but this scene is still too strange.
From this perspective, I can understand the decline in the wind ratings of "Instantaneous Universe" in the last week. Cultural differences aside, many of the film's tricks would work more effectively on the big screen, such as the pseudo-ending, which is the abrupt insertion of a subtitle for the end of the film in the middle. It is said that this trick was tried and tested during the Screening in North America. Almost every time, the audience will stand up and leave. Some viewers are embarrassed to leave the scene and return to their seats, and they will stand in the aisle to watch the movie.
This kind of disorienting experience caused by information bombardment and media games will obviously be greatly reduced if it does not occur in a closed, dark, and collective place, but on a computer screen that can view the progress bar at the flick of the mouse and can also pause at any time. The deliberate experience of loss will turn into impatience with "this movie is endless".
In addition, the exaggerated visual style of "Instantaneous Universe", and even some pretentious low-level joke fragments, also seems to be a manifestation of camp culture. In the film, Joey's role as the main villain in the parallel universe, his high-saturation contrast costume and the exaggerated shape of the black hole on the top of his head are obviously influenced by the Camp style. Discussions about Kemp first appear in Susan Sontag's Notes on the Camp. In Susan Sontag's eyes, The essence of Camp lies in the "love of unnatural things", an active and exuberant sensibility that can transform "serious things into trivial things".
"Against Interpretation", by Susan Sontag, translated by Cheng Wei, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, June 2011.
Simply put, Camp is "almost a bad art." It is vulgar, rough, frivolous, excessive, offensive. Camp isn't just irony, sarcasm — Susan Sontag sees it as a traditional and serious approach — its real skill lies in drama. So you see Jobu Tupaki fighting with two indescribably shaped sausages, not directly mocking any paradigm or values, but a sense of offense and visual impact that goes straight to the audience without explanation. This is, of course, a terrible scene, otherwise it would not have become a node for conservative audiences to leave the table en masse. But as Susan Sontag points out:
"Camp's Final Life: It's Good Because It's Terrible."
"The key thing about Kemp is the dethronation seriousness. Kemp is playful and anti-serious. Rather, Kemp has forged a new and more complex relationship with seriousness. People can treat frivolity in a serious way, and they can also treat serious things in a frivolous way. ”
It's hard to ignore that Campo enthusiasts aren't necessarily queer crowds, but Campo style and queer culture are deeply intertwined. This also explains why Joey, or Jobu Tupaki, became a walking camp symbol in this film. Joey's immediate conflict with her mother stems from her queer identity. This is not a new topic, even in the Works of Chinese Literature and Art in North America, the best works with this as the core can be traced back to "The Wedding Feast" and "Face". But when Camp culture was introduced into the intergenerational struggle of Chinese backgrounds, this stark style further visualized the differences in language, values, and cultural backgrounds between the two generations of immigrants whose blood was thicker than water.
Stills from the movie "The Wedding Feast".
Seemingly hilarious, Kemp actually digs deeper into the bitter core of the film, the loser's song, which was presented in the first part of this article. As Susan Sontag puts it: "When a man realizes that sincerity is not enough, he is attracted to the Camp." Sincerity can also be superficial banality and narrow-mindedness. "The reason Joey killed everyone in the multiverse with a camp posture is precisely because she is disappointed in the serious things in life: from the report card, to the family, the family, and even life itself. So when she put all this above the "bego", they all sank uncontrollably. Nothing is important and nothing has meaning. At this time, a tempting question arises: if it is the "self" on the shell fruit, what happens?
At this point, The Instant Universe shows perhaps the most romantic and out-of-context setting: she let Joey's Camp crash into Evelyn's multiverse. Although they are in a terrible parent-child relationship, which is almost a very cruel struggle with the ultimate goal of destroying each other's egos, the crisis of existentialism has never been just in the beginning for her daughter Joey, but in the body of Evelyn. At one point, she could not persuade her daughter to abandon the self-destruction symbolized by the black bagel, precisely because she had no less self-doubt than the other party.
So in the end Evelyn gave Joey not a touch of love, but understanding. In the end, she did not stop Joey in the form of a stone from falling to the top of the mountain, but chose to fall with her. In the reconciliation scene in front of the laundromat, Evelyn's last words happen to agree with Joey's point of view: "Nothing is important." "Nothing is serious enough to allow for banter. On this basis, it is more likely to live a bad but healthy life.
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
You may say, such a simple story, why can't you make everything clear on a timeline? I think of this spring that is limited by "non-essential ___". It made me more aware that excesses and arrogance are an unnecessary romance. Rather than necessity per se, it is actually a kind of romance.
The limitations of rebellion and the inflation of parallel universes
Another reason for the controversy of "Instantaneous Universe" is also its rebelliousness and the disconnection of the film's landing point. Because the style is too grotesque, when it says that it loves you with wild words, some viewers are moved, and some viewers feel a gap: it seems to return to a mainstream narrative, serving self-consolation and family stability.
In this perspective, "Instantaneous Whole Universe" is indeed similar to the "Metamorphosis of Youth" released a while ago: the same is set in East Asian immigrant families, on the one hand, even if I cross the entire universe to hunt you down, I love you; on the other hand, even if I become a giant red panda and smash the stadium, I love you. It's just that the R-rated texture of "Instantaneous Whole Universe" will inevitably bring a bigger gap to the audience than the cartoon-style "Youth Metamorphosis".
But I also don't agree that these two films have the same core, because as mentioned above, The Instantaneous Universe is too bitter in nature. Mei Mei, the protagonist of "The Metamorphosis of Youth", is a teenager after all. It's not that teens don't have sincere troubles, but rather that during her formative years, confusion and wandering come from "wanting to do something, but this world/school/parent/family responsibility doesn't let me do it". So when she strengthened her heart and gained the support of her parents and friends, the door of the world unfolded to her unreservedly.
Stills from the anime "The Metamorphosis of Youth".
But in "Instantaneous Universe", both Evelyn and the young Joey have entered a pool of stagnant water, realizing that "no matter how hard I try, I can only stop here". And this perception is indestructible and cannot be changed at the end of the movie. Instead, the film took more than two hours to get you to say it. In other words, it is for you to "confess your destiny." Reconciliation, especially self-reconciliation, based on this cruel perception, is called "leaving the dead and coming back to life."
Another movie that is also reminiscent of "Instantaneous Whole Universe" is "Doctor Strange 2: Crazy Multiverse", which was released at the same time. Combined with "Spider-Man: Parallel Universe" released in 2018, "Avengers 4: Endgame" in 2019 and "Spider-Man: Homeless" in 2021, it is not difficult to find the high-frequency appearance of the multiverse. Although it is by no means the invention of these years, the multiverse has definitely become a hot topic in superhero movies, or commercial movies, in recent years.
From this multiverse "inflation," I think we can read two signals:
First of all, the parallel cosmology of commercial films reflects the tireless enjoyment of media games in contemporary society. A universe can no longer satisfy our desire for legend, so not only must there be prequels, sequels, epilogues, and fandoms, but also to string them all together in one story to form a multiverse. Like "Spider-Man: Parallel Universe" and "Spider-Man: Homeless", they all use the interaction of Spider-Man images in different media to arouse the enthusiasm and feelings of fans.
Stills from the movie Spider-Man: Homeless.
Although "Instantaneous Whole Universe" is an independent film, rather than a mature IP with a classic historical image to cite, there are still a series of classic pop culture references in the film, from the mutual dissection between men and women under the light of "Fancy Years" to the Jackie Chan universe in the martial arts action of husband Waymond. This is actually a characteristic of postmodern culture: gameplay is more important than content. Or, in Gatari's words, there is no longer opposition and distinction between form and content of expression. So although the plot of "Spider-Man: Homeless" itself suffered bad reviews, the film still relied on the three-worm meeting at the end to trigger a huge topic and box office frenzy.
Second, the multiverse also symbolizes a kind of escapism in people. Affected by the epidemic, class contradictions, racial contradictions and international environment, people increasingly feel that the space of life and the possibility of development are limited. As shown in The Whole Universe in Moments, we begin to tend to enter into the fantasy of another possibility through the idea of "If only" in frustration. Of course, Avengers 4: Endgame and many previous superhero movies have shown the illusion of traveling to the past and saving the world through a time machine, but "Instantaneous Universe" applies the multiverse setting to an ordinary person rather than a superhero, which further reflects the urgency and flood of this escape and self-help mentality.
Stills from the movie "Instantaneous Universe".
Due to space limitations, in this article I did not talk about the significance of "Instantaneous Universe" as a Chinese film, and its presentation of East Asian identity. In my opinion, on the basis of basic respect for cultural characteristics, this film restores the dilemma of a common person, and this commonality actually exceeds the characteristics of identity politics. That's why the film has received good word-of-mouth in Both North America and at home, and when browsing the discussion about the film, I don't see as much of the war of words around identity politics that I imagined.
After all, as long as you have gazed at your dissatisfaction with life and made some assumptions that begin with "If only", you can probably understand this failed middle-aged woman and the truth that perhaps all people live bright lives next to a hundred parallel universes and hide a patch of their own.
Text/Yancheng
Editors/Qing Qingzi, Luo Dong
Proofreading/Janin