Who wants to go back to Covid Summer 2020? That question alone is enough to divide audiences. And with the ever-innovative director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Beau Is Afraid) at the helm to stir things up, along with an A-list cast, no cinephile around would dream of missing this. I’m all for seeing an ambitious director like Aster take on the provocations of our modern societal collapse and morph it into something for audiences to go wild arguing over its themes. Unfortunately, the arguments about Eddington may end up focused solely on whether it’s actually a good movie or not.
Aster begins his latest film by dropping us into the fictional New Mexico town of Eddington, the pandemic already having taken hold, evident in the empty streets and the sense of paranoia that has the whole town on edge. Remember how scary it was to go to the grocery store during that time? Aster hilariously recreates that here—everyone wearing masks (some with noses out) and looking at one another not as neighbors anymore, but as potential risks. It doesn’t take long to sense the dread bleeding out of a world knocked off balance, amplified by right-wing radio hosts unleashing torrents of conspiracy theories on virtually everything.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, a MAGA-ish sheriff who’s had enough of the mask mandates—and apparently also of liberal-leaning Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, playing a Gavin Newsom type). The friction between them fires off from the get-go. And hey, there’s Emma Stone as Joe’s conspiracy-obsessed wife, Louise, already deep in the “Save the Children” rabbit hole after months of lockdown with her even more conspiracy-obsessed mother, played to maximum ridiculous effect by Deirdre O’Connell. There’s some kind of backstory about a relationship between the mayor and Louise that’s led to her mental lapse—it’s frustratingly unclear (abuse? trauma?)—but it adds to the boiling tension between Joe and Ted. Toss in a viral religious cult leader (a somewhat forgettable Austin Butler) known for recruiting victims of sex trafficking, and a Black Lives Matter protest that erupts after George Floyd’s death, and now you’ve got all our current culture wars ready to rock.
I’d love to say Aster finds something profound to say about our world on fire, but instead we get a Wikipedia page’s worth of each of these issues—sometimes to cringe-inducing effect, especially from the always-screaming “woke” protestors. What Aster seems more interested in doing is taking the surface of these themes, dropping them like a grenade into a small town, and setting off the mind-bending silliness of it all. Sure, you’ll laugh—often. You’ll even be shocked at times.
But a lot of the film meanders, especially with characters constantly spouting mumbling nonsense in scenes that grow slow, tedious, and lost in the insanity. (If mumbo-jumbo were a legitimate language, the folks of Eddington speak it fluently.) Still, the duel between Joe and Ted keeps the underlying suspense alive, with Joe eventually going viral when he decides to run for mayor against Ted’s re-election. It’s only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose, and the signature menace we’ve come to expect from Aster’s films takes hold. Bullets fly, gore splatters, and even drones and the “Deep State” make an appearance. But what does it all add up to? Is it even supposed to? Is this thing even a western?
I’d say it’s a dark comedy and western noir about the madness of living in our own truths and realities. Aster trades revolvers and spurs for smartphones and our fractured psyches. And the film is gorgeous to get lost in, thanks to stellar photography by Darius Khondji and production design by Eliot Hostetter. Or hey, maybe you’ll hate it. The uneven mix in tones sets the movie’s momentum back. But even if his ambitions here don’t always connect, there’s no way you’ll leave Eddington without thinking about how disturbingly similar our out-of-balance world is to the one he creates.
A24 will release EDDINGTON in theaters July 18
