LGBTQ+ – Solving the Mystery of Murder

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) by The Daniels

January 3, 2023l. StumpLeave a comment

To celebrate the beginning of 2023, I wanted to be a little self-indulgent and review my favorite piece of media (mystery or otherwise) in existence. I will not be making a habit of these off-topic posts, so if you’ve followed my blog for mystery review and discussions and think I’m abandoning my core topic for a more eclectic spread of content, then don’t worry, I am not. This is a one-time occurrence to celebrate my blog’s third year in existence, so I hope you can forgive me these small and occasional indulgences.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a messy, chaotic, loud, and anarchical film which refuses to decide what it wants to be. Does it want to be a science-fiction action film? A madcap comedy? A tragedy about the interpersonal failings of a gay daughter and her intolerant mother? A drama pitting the philosophies of absurdism and nihilism against one another? All at once, it seems to want to be everything. It wants to be the kind of movie you turn your brain off to and munch on popcorn, and yet it also wants to be the film you spend hours of your life combing through its symbolism to analyze and pick apart every little nuance of framing and imagery. It wants to be an intimate story about interpersonal relationships, but it also wants to be a reality-spanning musing on the very nature of meaning and the futility of objectivity. It wants to be chaotic, and then it still wants to jam-pack every scene with dense foreshadowing and contextualization that shows an underlying sense of focus and directness rarely seen in this caliber in cinema.

It is everything, everywhere, all at once. That is not by accident.

Everything Everywhere All At Once stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, an exhausted Chinese-American immigrant who lives overtop of her laundromat business with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), who is over-zealous and childishly optimistic, and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who has grown distressed with her mother’s simultaneously overbearing but also emotionally-detached nature. It is Chinese New Years and Evelyn’s home and business is soon to be foreclosed, costing her everything, after multiple failed meetings with IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre due to the language barrier. The Wangs were supposed to bring their daughter, Joy, as a translator, but because Evelyn refuses to introduce Joy’s girlfriend Becky to her father, who flew in to celebrate the holiday, the two had a falling out and Joy is nowhere to be found.

It’s at this final and most critical of meetings that Waymond is taken over by another Waymond, and Evelyn is introduced to The Multiverse, a collection of every possible universe that could exist, and told that an interdimensional monster known as Jobu Tupaki seeks to take the entirety of the Multiverse over for the most bizarre of reasons: it wants to find Evelyn, alive. Evelyn is told that for one reason and only one reason she can be given the power to tap into the memories (and by extension the abilities) of any version of herself from any other reason. The reason? Evelyn is living her worst life, and by being the worst version of herself, she represents a maximum of untapped potential and unachieved dreams, and it’s that lack of accomplishment that gives her the ability to tap into every version of herself she could have been. With that potential, and with that power, Alpha Waymond (the Waymond from another universe) needs Evelyn to join him and his team of universe-hopping soldiers in the war against Jobu Tupaki.

At first, Evelyn wants nothing to do with inter-universal wars, Verse Jumping, or superpowers, and is more preoccupied with getting her life in this universe back together. However, when she discovers the truth behind Jobu Tupaki’s motivations and identity (that Jobu is her daughter, Joy), Evelyn becomes involved in an attempt to stop Jobu’s conquest and save their life before they can be senselessly killed…

From a synopsis of the first third of the film, bookmarked in-film as “PART 1: EVERYTHING“, you may be tempted to write off Everything Everywhere All At Once as a generic superhero film coasting off of the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Doctor Strange films. Superficially, the two resemble each other, involving a reluctant hero pushed into the role of a superhero who uses their powers to cross the boundaries between universes to save the very fabric of reality as we know it. However, there’s very important subtext at this point in the film that demarcates the film’s departure from its ostensibly bogstandard superhero premise: the metaphor of universes.

Structurally, Everything Everywhere All At Once tell its story split across every universe in existence, but there are a few alternate universes singled out as being cornerstones of the narrative and its themes. In one universe, Evelyn is a chef in an obvious parody of Disney/Pixar animated film Ratatouille in which she gets involved in the drama of her co-chef hiding a raccoon, named Raccacoonie, in his hat who pulls his hair to help in cook. In another universe, although she’s divorcing Waymond in her home universe, she experiences a romance with a movie star version of him in a universe clearly paying homage to In The Mood For Love. Earlier in that very same universe, Evelyn trains as a martial artist in a sepia-drenched sending-up of most typical kung-fu films. The common denominator in all of these universes is that every different universe represents a different style and genre of film, with everything from animated comedy to martial arts film to romantic drama being represented, and even Evelyn’s own universe acting as a stand-in for superhero movies.

The core of the movie’s identity is in the end of its first act, in which Evelyn’s mind is shattered across every universe. She experiences everything, everywhere, all at once. Not only is this, on a surface level, the moment the film pivots to its more bizarre, absurdist preoccupations, but it’s also subtextually the moment the film chooses to be everything, everywhere, all at once. To know that the universes represent style and genre, and to see that the inciting incident of the film is the boundaries between universes being broken, means one thing: Evelyn experiences everything, everywhere, all at once, and so do we, the audience, as the boundaries between genres (universes) being shattered gives the film free reign for absolute genre anarchy. It is every genre, all at once.

The shattering of the boundaries between universes represents the film’s rejection of the institution of rigid genre, and it’s with that rejection that the film begins to cultivate its identity as an absurdist film. From this point onwards, Evelyn is forced to cope with the simultaneous awareness of not millions, not billions, not trillions, but an infinite number of potentialities all running through her mind at all times. It’s this awareness that slowly leads her to the same conclusion that Joy had: nothing has meaning in and of itself. No moment has meaning, it’s merely a statistical inevitability. No person has meaning, they’re merely a cough of the universe. Every new discovery is a reminder that all things and all people are small and stupid.

The core conflict in the film, however, comes with Evelyn learning what to do with this information. Joy has learned nothing has meaning in and of itself, therefore trying to ascribe meaning to anything is a pointless endeavor. The only worthwhile pursuit is suicide. In this way, Joy represents the philosophy of nihilism. Evelyn, on the other hand, represents absurdism — yes, she agrees, nothing truly matters, but that is not a fact to be dreaded. It is to be celebrated, because the lack of inherent meaning gives you the unique opportunity to substitute in your own meaning, to find value in the moments and lives shared with the people around you.

However, the film is more than just musings on the nature of meaning. At the same time, it’s an intolerant mother learning to come to terms with her daughter being gay and having a relationship with a woman. It’s an overbearing mother learning to come to terms with her child’s independence. It’s a burnt-out, falling-out-of-love wife learning the true value of her relationships with other people and seeing her husband in a new light. It’s a depressed immigrant finding a new lease on life. It’s a superhero fighting to save the universe from assured destruction.

When is it all these things? All at once.

The cussedly impressive thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once is that it’s structurally four movies occurring at the same time and crossing over with each other constantly, and therefore every line of dialogue is ultimately contributing to the development of each of these films constantly. No part of the film just represents the obvious one thing it’s meant to; if you pick out a single scene in the movie, you can tie it into every other ongoing plotline in the film.

Consider, if you will, Joy’s statements that she feels like she’s fighting a never-ending battle all alone in a world where nobody cares. Can you pick out whether these statements are about the philosophy of nihilism? Or are they about the isolating experience of being discriminated against as a queer person in a heteronormative society? Or are they about living an abusive household with an emotionally detached and seemingly uncaring parent? Shockingly, at all times, the answer is “all three”.

When you start to peel away the layers of the film’s maximalist structure, you begin to realize that what once seemed like a mess, directionless chaos, is in actuality a dense and focused effort to build up its central themes, to not only state but demonstrate its core philosophy. Absurdism. If nothing matters, then the institutions of storytelling don’t matter, the boundaries between genres don’t matter, the boundaries between different films don’t matter. And so it rejects those ideas, and lovingly embraces what’s left behind. The film can be whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and it can be whatever it wants, all at once. Absurdism is not only a philosophy the film exposits, but a philosophy baked into the very skeleton of the movie, informing its style, tone, mood, and (lack of) genre.

So, I reiterate:

It is everything, everywhere, all at once. That is not by accident.

The movie is insularly conflicting, a writhing mass of paradox and identity shifting, a hodgepodge of tone and style, a swirling typhoon of every genre of storytelling in existence… and at being that, Everything Everywhere All At Once is a glorious triumph. All of these traits, typically the calling card of a confused movie with no identity, no vision for what it wants to be, are in reality the very goal, the intention, and the thesis statement of Everything Everywhere All At Once.

It’s smart in a stupid way and stupid in a smart way, and smart in a smart way and stupid in a stupid way, it’s fun and boring, it’s quiet and loud, it’s science-fiction and fantasy, comedy and tragedy, mundane and universe-spanning, intimate and all-encompassing, chaotic and focused, messy and tidy, it is cerebral and emotional. It is a superhero film, but also a Christopher Nolan-esque high-concept science-fiction story, but also a motivational Wuxia martial arts film, but also a family drama, but also a romantic comedy, but also a philosophical drama, but also a mad-cap comedy, but also Looney Tunes, but also a drama about the life of an immigrant, but also a story about the queer experience… all at once.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a maximalist triumph that orients itself around the ambition of encompassing all things at all times. Rejecting the inherent meaning of institutions of storytelling, the film is able to bring all genres and all styles into and unto itself to tell one of the densest narratives of narrative history, combining its many disparate plot threats and sub-narratives incredibly. A beautifully absurdist masterpiece that is not only brainy in execution, but heartful in message, not only pulling out some of the smartest storytelling of all time but also delivering some of the most raw emotional gut punches in cinematic history. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a love letter to everything everywhere all at once, it is everything everywhere all at once, and it is truly exceptional at all things, a beautiful cacophony of contradiction and irreverence. Nothing short of stunning cinema, and a neat and tidy “mess” I’ll always love to love myself in.

Ripples (2017) by Robert Innes

July 19, 2022August 20, 2022l. Stump3 Comments

Although the Golden Age of Detective Fiction officially ended in the 1940s, with riddling classical whodunits being replaced by the grit and grime of crime noir, to act as if those so-called “puzzle plots” had ever entirely fallen out of vogue would be more than a little faulty. Even after Dashiell Hammett and Julian Symons had their way with the detective fiction genre in the 40s, for the following eight decades many authors defiantly held on to the tradition of those literary brainteasers dearly beloved. Oftentimes, these authors were merely Golden Age puzzle plotters wearing the hats of contemporary police thrillers, and often they were authors who wanted to see how puzzle plots could evolve with the new identity of the genre.

The 50s saw Derek Smith take a stand with Whistle up the Devil, a dazzling locked-room mystery homage to his contemporary, John Dickson Carr. The 70s spawned Roger Ormerod, an incredibly imaginative author of alibi plots in the tradition of Christopher Bush. Much of the 80s and 90s were taken by Colin Dexter and his sullen Detective Inspector Endeavor Morse.

And for the 2010s (as far as the English-speaking world is concerned), can Robert Innes take up the mantle as a modern disciple of those authentically Golden Age plots?

A self-published author of 13 novels, Robert Innes has given much of his focus to Blake Harte, about whom 11 of this 13 novels have been written. Blake Harte is a gay cop who ended up fleeing to the he-thought-idyllic countryside village of Harmschapel after he caught his boyfriend Nathan in bed with a woman. However, much to his dismay, Harmschapel doesn’t give Harte any sort of retreat, and instead keeps piling on top of him impossible crime after impossible crime, all of which seem to center around the handsome young farming man Harrison — a young man with whom Harte becomes quite infatuated.

At the beginning of Ripples, Harte’s nosy neighbor Jacqueline, noticing the budding romance between Harte and Harrison, tricks them into taking a romantic retreat together to a manor-cum-hotel in the Lake District, The Manor of the Lakes, to the two men’s great discomfort. After all, neither was ready to go jumping into another relationship under such precarious circumstances as two murder cases! Nonetheless, the two men rationalize that they do need a getaway, and it’d be perfectly fine to go as “just friends”.

While there, however, the two Schrödinger’s Lovers encounter, and later learn about, the hooded man who has been stalking The Manor of the Lakes. The two proprietors of the hotel are Rupert and Polly Urquhart, a “modern-day Romeo & Juliet” who come from two warring families, Rupert from the Urquharts and Polly the Lumoxes. The ground on which The Manor of the Lakes was built once belonged to the Lumoxes, once containing a steam railway before being purchased by the Urquharts. The Lumoxes were fine with this arrangement, under the condition that they be allowed to remain as staff to work on the railway. Only, of course, the Urquharts demolished the railway and built the manor on top of it, earning the ire of the Lumoxes who have been haunting the family for half a century!

The hooded man, Rupert and Polly explain, must only be a member of the Lumoxes!

That is, of course, their story. However, Rupert’s elder brother Duncan simply doesn’t believe him, and accuses him of making up excuses for the failure of their business venture. Despite not believing in the hotel, however, Duncan makes it his business to be involved with every part of it, including upsetting and firing staff.

To make matters worse, on top of the Urquhart-Lumox family drama Blake is extremely distressed to discover that Nathan, his ex-boyfriend, was also at The Manor of the Lakes on a romantic venture with his wife Davina. Nathan spends the better part of the week harassing Blake over their failed relationship, and trying to manipulate Harrison into losing faith in his potential courtship with Blake. To put it bluntly, the trip had gone exactly the opposite as planned.

Upon discovering a little cabin situated between the the two rivers, Harrison is invited by Polly and Rupert to attend a small dinner with Nathan, Davina, and Blake, which he readily accepts, not wanting to be rude. It was at this dinner that the relaxing getaway had finally entirely derailed…

While the members of the cabin are together, they look out of the window and see Duncan fishing in the lake. And nearby, a haunting figure of the hooded man, who steps out onto the lake and, as if the water were solid ground, walked across its surface and stabbed Duncan to death! A spectral killer apparently capable of defying the very laws of physics has manifested at The Manor of the Lakes and committed the most ghastly murder any of the occupants have ever seen! And Blake gets roped into solving it before his blowhard of a boss..!

To my understanding, romance-mysteries have something of a negative reputation for essentially using murder mysteries as an excuse for pushing half-baked love stories and sex. I was more than a little worried that, when most of the first half of the novella was dedicated to the romance between Blake and Harrison, I wasn’t in store for much of a mystery. Yes, the romance was charmingly awkward, with both men openly having feelings for one another while nonetheless trying to pretend that their little excursion was merely platonic… but, of course, to read a self-proclaimed impossible crime in which the crime takes second billing to a love story would, at least for me, be ungratifying.

However, at almost exactly the halfway point of the novel, we get to see the hooded stranger step onto the surface of the lake, stroll on top of it as if it were solid ground, and stab the ornery older brother of the owner of The Manor of the Lakes, and I was happy to be proven wrong! The investigation takes off in full-force, with inquiries into the Lumoxes and their whereabouts, interviewing the remaining members of the Urquhart family, and probing around the scene of the crime. An autopsy reveals a shocking truth that totally turns your understanding of the crime on its head. At first blush, it really does have all of the trappings of a good mystery puzzler!

During this segment, the relationship between Blake and Harte is also explored more beyond the initial superficial fluff. The investigation introduces a seamlessly-written character arc about Harte confronting his hyper-fixation on solving unsolvable cases, which can often make his partners feel inadequate and unloved, as Blake continues to spurn Harrison’s attempts to help and be involved in his life. Although the first half of the novel felt like the romance was eating up much of the plot without ever really progressing, it was nice to see the love story intertwined effortlessly with the investigation without detracting from it. In fact, using the murder to enhance the relationship between the two men was very well-done.

And then, finally, come the denouement, we get a genuinely surprising explanation to the impossible problem of the man who walks across the lake! Although certain elements of the solution will doubtless occur to most people, it is much harder to divine the way in which Ripples utilizes these pieces in a resolution that’s equal parts technical trickery and genuinely classical misdirection. The impossibility is beautifully-established, and furthermore beautifully-explained, retroactively referring to scenes where Innes all but threw down the explanation to the mystery in front of you in such a brilliantly brazen way that it’s so easy to just breeze right past it!

However, the question is “does Ripples pass snuff as a puzzle mystery?”. To that, despite the genuinely smart explanation to the impossible problem, I’d say “no”. Don’t get me wrong, there are some genuinely inspired and downright brilliant clues here, not only to the howdunit but also the whodunit. But for my money, I wouldn’t say this novel is actually fairly clued. It makes a pass at trying to be, but truthfully it only just gets as far as giving you room to potentially infer the method rather than being 100% assured that your solution is correct. The whodunit in particular is only really clued insofar as a very smart piece of evidence pops up that the culprit is lying about something, and while the reasoning is convincing to a point given the situation and circumstance, there’s still some wiggle room that permits for some other people to be guilty that hasn’t been reasonably discredited… Both the culprit or culprit(s) and their motive or motive(s) almost entirely come out of left field, with very little cluing or hinting as such — so much is actually acknowledged in the story, with the denouement being filled with confessions that vindicate Harte’s hunches or assumptions. There is one bit of foreshadowing to one aspect of the who(y)dunit, in a scene where a character is confessing to something, but admittedly it’s very heavyhanded, so the mystery savvy reader will very likely read it as misdirection away from what Innes clearly intended it to foreshadow.

In fact, I think the culprit(s) identity(ies) are very underwhelming, given the context of the mystery, but it’s something that’s very hard to expound upon without entering spoiler territory. The following segment will be in ROT13 cipher.

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Nonetheless, this is all really minor. It’s clear that Ripples was only flirting with the “puzzle mystery” here, and wasn’t out to be some Ellery Queen-esque dissertation on airtight logic and ratiocination. Although the cluing is a little loose and not entirely fair, the fact that we got what smart hints we did get is still impressive. Trust me, there’s more than a few daring clues here that recall aspects of Christianna Brand’s style of plotting in the best way possible, and they are stunning come the denouement.

As for the romance side of the story, I only have one major gripe: Nathan. Nathan as a character is very unpleasant, but not entirely for the reasons Innes intended. Nathan is the only bisexual character in the story. When you only have one character from a particular marginalized group, it gets a little difficult to write them in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re your token representation of your views on an entire demographic of people. When the character is an unrelentingly bad person, you need to be especially careful that you’re clear that the unlikable sides of their personality stem not from their identity but from their own personal shortcomings. Unfortunately, Innes doesn’t do any of the things necessary to manage that, and ends up writing a character who feels like they only exist to reinforce not-so-great stereotypes about bisexual people. The most common negative stereotype about people who are bisexual is that, because they’re attracted to multiple genders, they’re more likely to end up cheating on you. Given that Nathan ended up cheating on his boyfriend with a woman, and he spends the entire novel rubbing that fact in Blake’s face, I walk away from the story with a somewhat bad taste in my mouth. Obviously I’m not calling for Innes for be cancelled, his books burned, or whatever. I don’t think Innes had poor intentions with writing the Nathan character — the whole book turns on a tender queer romance! I only feel like the character might end up unwittingly being a somewhat damaging depiction of an already marginalized group of people, and it’s worth acknowledging that for what it is.

All told, though, I don’t want to sound too negative. Because I really did enjoy Ripples a lot. The cluing didn’t quite reach the level of feeling truly “fair”, but nonetheless brilliant hints, and a truly inspired solution to its unique impossible crime of a man walking across water show Innes flirting with the puzzle mystery enough to leave something here for classical purists to get a kick out of. The romance plot never felt like it detracted from the mystery, and was very tender and charming, doing a fantastic job of combating my negative views of this subgenre of crime fiction. There’s plenty here to enjoy with Innes, so that even for its minor bumps I absolutely look forward to reading more of the Blake Harte series!

(*note: This novel spoils its two predecessors, Untouchable and Confessional, naming the culprits explicitly)