Dir: Ari Aster
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, William Belleau, and Michael Ward
2h 28m
The newest film from writer/director Ari Aster, the mastermind behind some of cinema's most compelling films of the last decade, including "Hereditary", "Midsommer", and "Beau is Afraid", returns with a challenging movie that reflects the complicated realities of recent pandemic-era memory—focused with a wild-eyed gaze on commentary centered on topics such as COVID-19 protocols, mask mandates, and Black Lives Matter. "Eddington", a fictional small town on the border of a Tribal community in New Mexico, is Ari Aster's most grounded film while also being the most dense with ideas, both intriguing and infuriating. There is much to admire about an artist engaging in difficult conversations and displaying the ugly truths about society, forever changed by a fear of the unknown and a crumbling trust in the political structure. Ari Aster's film is divisive, in a good way, and reflective in its pacing, tone, and story structure of the ever-changing chaos felt during the years lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is a world-weary Sheriff in the small town of Eddington, New Mexico, a tight-knit community that reaches its boiling point over new mandates for public health protection in early 2020. At the center of the conflict, which is driven by both public policy and a long-held personal vendetta, are Sheriff Cross and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Sheriff Cross's wife, Louise (played by Emma Stone), and the Mayor have a history, which infuriates the Sheriff whenever political ads for the Mayor's reelection campaign appear on television. The contemptuous relationship between the two men only grows more radical as the world around them unravels with the invading paranoia surrounding the worldwide pandemic and social media outcry over police brutality that sends the Eddington townsfolk into protest.
Writer/director Ari Aster meticulously composes "Eddington" with a strong emphasis on its visual language, an impressive design that has highlighted the director's work since "Hereditary". The town of Eddington feels like a maze in the early part of the film, as Sheriff Joe Cross encounters resistance from the bordering Tribal police department for not obeying mask mandates on tribal land, and responding to disorderly conduct calls at Mayor Garcia's bar, which leads to an altercation. Director of Photography Darius Khondji ("Uncut Gems") builds paranoia into every right turn and empty street in the city while also showing the desperation of Sheriff Cross as the driving scenes grow more erratic and panic-driven as the town folds in on itself. Aster's ability to build tension into any scene, whether complex or straightforward, is a masterclass in how to emphasize characters and movements within a scene.
The diverse cast in "Eddington" brings the odd mix of characters to life. Joaquin Phoenix delivers a standout performance in the film. Phoenix, whose choices of characters in films are always fascinating decisions, adds so much to the composition of Sheriff Joe Cross's descent into paranoia and madness. It's infuriating to watch the character grow more desperate, but also quite funny. Phoenix has excellent comic timing, both with the stammering of words and the intention of movements. Pedro Pascal is also interesting, playing a do-good political figure who, regardless of saying all the right things, still feels untrustworthy. The chemistry between Phoenix and Pascal is magnetic whenever the two actors are on screen together. Emma Stone, playing the role of Sheriff Cross's lonely and fed-up wife, Louise, and Austin Butler, who arrives as a cult-like leader who spouts conspiracy theory rhetoric, are underwritten but still effective in their performances whenever on screen.
There is so much going on in "Eddington", with social, political, and personal commentary built on commentary about feelings and perspectives from the not-too-distant past. These story movements create abrupt plot twists and turns, culminating towards a finale that feels like it can only end one way: violently. Still, Aster builds fascinating metaphors throughout the film, ideas that have stuck with me days after watching the movie. The classic Western story characteristics are updated in the modern but still lost-in-time town of Eddington, with a white cowboy-hat-wearing Sheriff who is desperately resisting change, protecting antiquated ideologies as if it were a showdown at the O.K. Corral. The neighboring Native American community police team, who do everything right, abide and enforce all the right laws to protect their people, yet are consistently undermined about where their land boundary is located and disregarded when they try to operate within the realms of what is right and good, getting so close to solutions only to be taken out at the knees and pushed back behind everyone else. Aster brilliantly, perhaps over abundantly, builds these conversations into the entire structure of the story.
"Eddington" may feel like a joke someone will inevitably respond with "too soon" after you tell it. All the feelings of anger, frustration, fear, and mourning people felt when forced to shelter in home, while watching death tolls increase, while fearing for the lives of friends and family you could only talk with through a window, while watching protests for the protection of Black lives, and many more feelings every single person felt in different ways while we all lost two years of our lives to a world-changing event; Ari Aster takes all this, turns the mirror, and forces the viewer to watch all these feelings come to life again in a small, seemingly inescapable fictional town in New Mexico. Instead of thinking an intelligent, challenging film like this is a joke told "too soon", perhaps, as cinema has always done, maybe it’s more appropriate to call it a cautionary tale, a warning to remember how we behaved, who we let have power, and how we responded when our beautiful world was threatened by forces both within and out of our control.
Monte's Rating
4.00 out of 5.00
