It was with equal parts anticipation and dread that I sat down to watch Eddington (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video). It’s a satire/drama/comedy about the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic starring Joaquin Phoenix and written and directed by Ari Aster, and this very sentence is the precise source of my aforementioned mixed feelings. Aster, of course, is the filmmaker behind Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau is Afraid, and considering eight years have gone by without a new movie from Michael Haneke, Aster has therefore become the new master of Miserable Shit. To be more precise, he’s produced varying degrees of Miserable Shit, and Eddington might be his most Miserable yet, considering we’re still feeling wounded by the year 2020, which I’m convinced is still happening despite what your calendar may say. Now let’s see if the film is cathartic or just a wallow.
EDDINGTON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: We begin with a homeless gent (an unrecognizable Clifton Collins Jr.) wandering into Eddington, New Mexico, crazy-talking to himself – and did he just cough? I think he might be a symbol of the Outside World, because upon his arrival, the shit in this mostly peaceful small town starts hitting the fan. It’s late May, 2020. Sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix) ain’t so sure about this wearing-a-mask thing. The mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, who barely registers here), is all about wearing a mask – and he’s also supporting the construction of a moisture-sucking cryptocurrency data center on the neighboring Pueblo, selling it as an opportunity for growth and development and all that yada. Now waitacottonpickinminute – you’re telling me the liberal guy is exploiting American Indian land to support a rich-getting-richer development, and the conservative guy opposes it on the grounds that the mayor is in bed with Big Tech? Don’t they (and Aster) realize there’s no room for complexity or nuance in American politics today? Idiots. Either way, they dislike each other, so Joe impulsively decides to run against Ted. Joe’s platform can be distilled down to two simple words: F— Ted. That’ll make everything better!
Joe goes home to his wife Louise (Emma Stone) wiling away lockdown by sewing creepy dolls and selling them on Etsy, and his mother-in-law Dawn (Dierdre O’Connell) wiling away lockdown by listening endlessly to conspiratorial rants on the internet, and printing them out for her daughter and son-in-law to read. While Joe plasters his police truck with campaign signs (“YOUR BEING MANIPULATED” reads one of his anti-Ted placards, and yes, (sic)) Louise and Dawn get drawn into a wholly expendable and frustratingly underdeveloped subplot about a weird cult led by a charismatic creepo named Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler). Meanwhile, everyone uses social media like it’s a utility, since it’s a grossly addictive and exponentially spreading cancerous disease of putridity disguised as a connection to the rest of the world for people who feel increasingly isolated.
Things only get worse, of course. George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police, and Eddington’s young people get to protesting, which in this movie consists of shouting high-minded conceptual assertions about intersectionality and whatnot that they read on the internet, at people confused by such rhetoric because it hasn’t popped up on their own social media feeds. At this point the plot tangles in Joe’s deputies, Guy (Luke Grimes) and Mike (Micheal Ward), the latter of whom is notable because he’s a Black policeman. Same for a kid named Brian (Cameron Mann), who’s protesting only because he has the hots for Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), who’s like wayyyyy into social justice; Brian is also pals with Mayor Ted’s son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka). To say everything escalates is gross understatement. This is a powder keg that’s about to explode and test our empathetic mettle because we’re being forced to ruminate on whether Eddington – very much so a microcosm of America – being turned into an empty crater is a good thing or not.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Where Beau is Afraid went inward, Eddington goes outward. I think Aster is better at the inward stuff.
Performance Worth Watching: Phoenix is the modern master of playing characters who try to navigate situations that are well above their intellectual capacities (Beau is Afraid and Inherent Vice are the other big ones), and he’s as engaging and committed as ever – although the material is so scattered, it doesn’t allow him to dig in, focus and deliver the intense comedy and drama he’s capable of.
Memorable Dialogue: Joe records a batshit stump speech accusing Mayor Ted of some… things… and instructs his deputy-slash-videographer thusly: “Don’t make me think. Post it.”
Sex and Skin: Full frontal Phoenix.
Our Take: I’ll be damned if I can pull a sense of purpose from Aster’s film, and that’s probably the point. The “damned” bit, I mean. We Americans are currently in an untenable situation and Eddington depicts little hope for change for the better. You have to admire the director for not giving a f— thematically, aiming to make a love-it-or-hate-it movie that is itself about divisiveness. There are no kumbaya or redemptive moments here. There is no buying the world a Coke to achieve unity. The film just slogs through an endless mire that keeps thickening with every step. It will soon suck you and me and all of us down into darkness, misery and death. Have a nice day!
Now, Aster is still a vital filmmaker despite Eddington being such a transparently contrived mess. I’ll admit to two biases: One, I love Aster’s other films, with Beau is Afraid treading similar territory, but with enough subtextual fury to grossly differentiate it from the loud howl of Eddington. And two, I don’t want to see a movie that’s about the mask debate and the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines and gun control issues and cults and White privilege and the difference between protests and riots and politics and quarantine and social media and bad spelling by people in power and hypocrisy and dumpster fires and Antifa and all the stuff that crashed down on us in 2020. Pick one or two, and I’m game. Pick them all and I want to kick Aster’s ass. Oh, and it’s also a Western. Sort of.
I might feel less… violent… theoretically, mind you… if Aster wasn’t such a subtly wily visual stylist with a propensity for ramping up intensity until prickly goosebumps lift us off our chairs. The deeper struggle with Eddington is its inability to lean into either absurdist comedy or sincerity. The former would work nicely, and it does when he has his characters say shit like “denying denial” or when he frames the action of someone clicking “like” on a social media post like it’s a moment of ominous dread from a horror movie. The sincerity rears its head when Sheriff Joe insists that Covid is “not a ‘here’ problem,” a clueless refusal to accept that an infected internet unites us all. The film is A BIT MUCH, all caps necessary. And Aster’s dogged insistence that every character be ridiculous on one level or another means we remain at arm’s length throughout – that is, if the subject matter didn’t already have us pushing Eddington away from its very first moment.
Our Call: Eddington isn’t enlightening, focused or, frankly, thoughtful. Not in the least. So what’s the point? I haven’t the foggiest. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
