Ari Aster and I have a complicated relationship. Like many, I thought Hereditary was a modern horror masterpiece, a stunning debut feature from a filmmaker with a lot on his mind. Then came Midsommar, a film that just didn’t work for me, primarily because it took better folk horror pictures, shoved them in a blender, and produced something painfully hollow. Beau is Afraid was even worse, a highly ambitious jumble of a film that had nothing to say, and didn’t know when it had long overstayed its welcome. Even at the Q&A for that film, Aster himself couldn’t even express what the film was about. Why? I suspect he, himself, didn’t know. Maybe he did when he started it, but he certainly didn’t when it was over. Now we have Eddington, which features his most star-studded cast to date and his most divisive material. To say my expectations were low would be an understatement. It’s Aster’s best film yet.
Set in 2020 in the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico, the film follows Sheriff Joe Cross (a Western name if there ever was one) as he navigates the challenging climate of fear surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and a world that is changing more quickly than he might like. He lives a small life, with his unstable artist wife (Emma Stone) and her conspiracy theorist mother (Deirdre O’Connell), and does the best he can with a small police force and an antagonistic relationship with the town’s mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who once dated Joe’s wife. Garcia is a liberal who is treating the pandemic as seriously as a heart attack. Joe leans more conservative and doesn’t understand why he should have to wear a mask at all, given he has asthma and it might cause breathing issues. In 2020, we all knew people just like Ted, and we all knew people just like Joe.
After an incident at a local grocery store that probably occurred thousands of times across this country, Joe decides that he’s going to run for mayor and challenge Ted, a proposition that does not excite his wife, nor does it seem to excite many of the residents of Eddington. But, Joe barrels ahead, sometimes embarrassing himself, and sometimes coming across like an actual leader. When the Black Lives Matter movement comes to the town, the ideas of racial injustice and inequity get thrown into the already complicated plot, inflaming the young people in the town, and giving Joe another fight to wage. Austin Butler co-stars as a religious zealot and pseudo-cult leader, and Clifton Collins, Jr. as a COVID-stricken houseless man who serves a crucial role throughout the picture. It’s clearly Aster’s most impressive ensemble yet.
What is this film trying to say? That’s the million dollar question, a question which folks are attempting to answer in think-pieces all over the internet. I had the same question with Beau is Afraid, and was never able to devise an answer that was sufficient. Eddington isn’t just saying one thing – it’s saying a lot. About how we create battles to make ourselves feel less complacent. About how we use violence as a means to an end. About how we all deal with our traumas in different ways. Aster is using the pandemic and the racial and societal divides it elucidated to tell a sprawling tale about a country undergoing rapid change, and how not everyone, liberal and conservative alike, can keep pace. Yes, it’s a contemporary Western, and one of the better recent examples. Yes, it’s a political thriller, though on a small scale. But, at its heart, it’s really just a wickedly funny pitch-black comedy/satire about America.
Young people do not come across well in this film, that’s for sure. Almost every character in this film, of a certain age, is either virtue-signaling or talking about things they have no business talking about, which they even self-reference many times throughout. Neither Aster nor the film criticize the movements themselves for existing, but rather the individual people who attached themselves to those moments out of sheer boredom from the pandemic, or for other, more human motivations. At a certain point, it all just became a game to people, choosing their sides and acting on those values even when they flew in the face of common sense. It’s been just over five-years since the pandemic slammed into the world. It feels both like an eternity, and as if it were yesterday. While many films have been released that were shot during the pandemic or deal with it in some way, Eddington is the first that really evokes those feelings from it.
Across the board, this cast understood what Aster was getting at, and they dove in head first. In his second time working with the director, Joaquin Phoenix is a powerhouse as the bumbling sheriff who finds himself in way over his head. Phoenix manages to toe the line between someone you’re rooting for, and someone you wish were dead. He’s certainly our gunfighter in this contemporary Western, and far darker and more complex than we’re accustomed to seeing from characters designed to be the protagonist. I’d argue there is no protagonist in this picture, and the bad guy isn’t even the pandemic, but how the pandemic changed people. Pedro Pascal, an actor I’ve always found to be somewhat overrated, is just terrific here, easily his best screen performance. He and Phoenix have some electric scenes together. Emma Stone is all nervous energy and muted hysterics in a role that deserved more, and Austin Butler has a lot of fun in his brief role. One of the real revelations was Deirdre O’Connell as Phoenix’s overbearing mother-in-law who gets maybe the most interesting arc in the entire film.
What makes Aster such an interesting filmmaker is his ambition. He goes for it, whether or not it works. Many times, it does not. With Eddington, he seemed entirely keyed-in to a singular time in American life that absolutely deserved this sort of critical dissection. It contains the visceral violence of Hereditary, the rich character development of Midsommar, and the balls-to-the-wall bravado of Beau is Afraid. People get so worked up trying to find meaning in a film like this when the simplest explanation is typically the correct one. What Eddington is ‘about’ is written all over it, from moment one. You’re either with Aster or you’re not. I walked into the theatre a defector, and walked out a convert. Not a lot has changed in America since the events depicted in this film. In fact, it’s probably gotten worse. It’s strange to say, but Eddington harkens back to a simpler, more innocent time. It’s a significant achievement.
Rating: ****/***** (currently playing in theatres everywhere)
