Eddington, 2025.
Written and Directed by Ari Aster.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Micheal Ward, Deirdre O’Connell, Austin Butler, Emma Stone, Matt Gomez Hidaka, William Belleau, Clifton Collins Jr., Cameron Mann, Amélie Hoeferle, Landall Goolsby, Elise Falanga, King Orba, Rachel de la Torre, David Pinter, Keith Jardine, David Midthunder, Christine Hughes, William Sterchi, and James Cady.
SYNOPSIS:
In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.
With Eddington, writer/director Ari Aster continues to stray further from his horror roots; however, in tackling the height of pandemic civil unrest head-on, this is arguably his most terrifying film yet, and one that is still operating on themes explored throughout his filmography. It’s also damn funny, depending on where one stands about what should or shouldn’t be mined for comedy.
The masks mandate has recently hit the titular small New Mexico town, and Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix once again in whiny sadsack mode, albeit this time determined to do something about it with one disastrous choice after another) isn’t having any of it. Even his surname feels cheeky, as if the character would rather be nailed to a cross than observe someone denied entry into a store for not wearing one, or himself having that regulation enforced upon him. His marriage to Louise (Emma Stone) and home life alongside her mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), are also in disarray, as they are drawn to quack conspiracy theories more than he is.
That emptiness in conjunction with a rivalry with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who comes across left-leaning for show as a decoy for his planned AI-based data plant construction, seemingly causes something to snap inside him, making a rash decision stopped in his squad car to go on social media and announce that he will be running for mayor. It’s a self-destructive tale as old as time, now rendered more modern and relevant than ever.
And for as directly confrontational to 2020 as Eddington is, it’s also dealing in broad strokes radicalization, searching for the line, moments, or dynamics that cause a tear in someone’s reality to go off the deep end and make the absolute dumbest non-controversy their entire identity. For Joe, his life has reached an all-time low, and that controversy is masks. Naturally, Eddington itself goes off the rails (complementary) in ways that are purely Ari Aster, but here also feels like a match made in heaven given that this is technically a period piece (which is not to say that we aren’t still feeling the effects of things such as COVID) about, unfortunately, wildly interesting times. At this point, it’s safe to say that, among modern-day filmmakers, no one handles such drastic tonal whiplash with explosive, chest-tightening momentum better than him, who remains in control of the material even when it seems to have left his grasp like a bullet leaving a gun.
However, this is not just a story about Joe; it is, as previously mentioned, about the times themselves, whether it be activists protesting against racial inequality, something that reaches a fever pitch once the shattering news of George Floyd’s death breaks out. Even briefly bringing up that topic borders on grotesque exploitation; yet, at the same time, another question weighs heavily: how does any filmmaker manage to get the film to that point without acknowledging that tragedy? The simple answer might be “don’t make the movie”, and that’s a valid belief to hold. To Joe, it’s more of an annoyance that gets in the way of his absurdly dopey, endlessly amusing political platforming.
Ari Aster is also playing some of that for satirical laughs, much like everything else here, with predominantly white characters speaking utter nonsense, at one point resulting in a smash cut to a teenager/young adult’s home, repeating the same virtue signaling drivel that he believes will 1) make a difference and 2) more importantly, get him in the good graces of a girl he likes, which gets into another discussion entirely about the sad but true rampant manipulation of social justice allyship as a different kind of mask.
Eddington is also getting at the heinous actions some people will take to gain control or win an election, often acting in bad faith and employing ill-advised reasoning as a moral justification. In Joe’s case, one of his trusted officers also happens to be Black, Michael Ward’s Michael, a man caught between his profession and joining the BLM movement, who may or may not also have engaged in inappropriate relationships with the same girl (allegedly 18) that the aforementioned fake activist is pining over. Then there is Louise, who is not only enraged that Joe’s entry into the mayoral race will, by association, bring her history with sexual abuse into media attention (because anything and everything somehow becomes a topic in bitter blood-feud political races), but also begins falling under a brainwashing spell at the hands of a pseudo-intellectual nut job played by Austin Butler she finds through the Internet (social media brainrot figures into things, although thankfully not as blunt as one might expect from a film like this) hypnotizing her into believing that he can cure her pain and bring forth hidden memories and spiritual enlightenment.
To say that all of this is on a collision course in one way or another would be an understatement: the question is how, and Ari Aster excels at locking viewers in here, whether it be through the wacky but grounded and fractured characters themselves, a funhouse distorted mirror-reality with firearms stores named Gunther’s Guns (or something to that effect) reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto’s Ammu-nation, white knuckle tension (elevated by regular Aster collaborators The Haxan Cloak and the reliably terrific Daniel Pemberton) that beautifully makes use of the dusty scenery whether it be in conversation or action (courtesy of veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji), and the sobering, depressing realization that not only is it largely realistic, life in 2025 has only gotten nuttier, now with AI here, looming large, consuming data.
Eddington, though, is not only the definitive pandemic-era film; in an age where banning and burning books has become a worrisome thing, we need movies like this as both unhinged entertainment and a fictionalized time capsule. It will likely become a timeless text, as future generations use it to analyze the collective craziness of a pivotal point that marked society’s breaking point. We can only hope that by then the course will have been reversed.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
