In a parallel universe—a universe where, at the Oscars, fantasy and science fiction weren’t an anomaly—the triumph of this All-At-Everywhere weirdness wouldn’t be particularly significant. His victory would seem fair and deserved, quite normal. But on this side of the multiverse, which is ours, this madness by the Daniels that has won seven statuettes, including best film and best direction, is a singularity that, not for being announced, is less surprising.
Its success was already recommended by the awards it has been collecting on its way to the Oscars, where it started as a favourite. An unlikely triumph a year ago, however, as soon as we think about it. We are talking about a story that is impossible to classify, not usual at Hollywood awards. His plot, apparently complicated (although it is not), progresses by leaps, as if he were playing hopscotch, with which one is sure that Cortázar would have loved it. Where the most spectacular kung fu meets science fiction; and the wildest imagination is combined naturally with the realism of a family drama on a stretcher table.
The new generations, those that fill the Sitges film festival, for example, are increasingly indifferent and refractory to the cinema that comes with the Oscar label. Fantastic cinema, however, continues to maintain its ascendancy over them. Or so the data says. “Mom, dad, this year I really like the Oscar movie, when are we going to the movies?” would be what Hollywood professionals would like to hear from their own offspring, those young people who only sit in front of a large screen when the movie is superhero or fantasy.
We can say that the Daniels film belongs to the fantastic genre, comedy branch. Its directors want us to have fun with it. We can even say, without mistake, that it belongs to the subgenre of superheroes. It is still the story of a grieving mother of Asian origin – wonderful Michelle Yeoh – overwhelmed by the day to day of her family and her laundry. She discovers, to her surprise, that she is not only the most powerful being in the universe, à la Thanos from Marvel, but the most powerful being in all the universes one can imagine. She is also the only one with the power to stop the sinister and nihilistic force of evil whose purpose is to destroy everything (and who happens to be her own daughter).
One couldn’t tell if the Oscars for All at Once Everywhere signal a significant change in attitude in Hollywood. That the so-called genre cinema begins to find its place in the evaluation of the Academy, condemned until now to the subaltern awards.
An imaginative cinema with which the different generations can find themselves in front of the big screen. That means, for example, movies like Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko; Forget me, by Michel Gondry, recognized only with the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay; Origin, to highlight some of Nolan’s, recognized with four Oscars of a technical nature, or all of Charlie Kaufman’s as director, all of them great fantastic films, would never again be left without the Oscar for Best Film and the Oscar for best direction.
Although perhaps the triumph of the Daniels remains in that, in a simple rarity. An anecdote in the multiverse of Hollywood that, next year, and the next, and the next, will be corrected with the usual most important awards for dramas, each more tearful; for the stories of human improvement, and for the most exemplary and sublime biopics. Very dignified in their own, I have no doubt. But without the magic, the genius and the audacity of All at once…
