Directed by:
Distributed by:
Written by Taylor Baker
82/100
Ari Aster’s “Eddington” arrives as a fever dream of American paranoia, where Amazon delivery trucks become harbingers of doom and COVID masks transform into tribal markings. Set within a heightened, hyperreal version of a medium-sized town on the outskirts of New Mexico, a battle between policy and law emerges, with a politician dining in a restaurant closed to the public calling on the local sheriff to remove a troublesome vagrant from the sidewalk. If you despised Aster’s “Beau is Afraid,” then “Eddington” is a film you may well loathe.
The COVID era serves as a sandbox for references that permeate the dialogue, world-building, and screen lives of “Eddington’s” characters. A momentary invocation of a Pizzagate-meets-Bohemian Grove crossover emerges through Austin Butler’s Vernon (who, alongside Emma Stone, will reappear in Aster’s next film from this world). “Eddington” opens following Clifton Collins Jr.’s as the town drunkard wandering into Eddington in a haze not unlike our modern populace emerging from the past six years—drifting into theaters wondering what their future holds and how they fit into a world where business, community, political, and industrial leaders seem incapable of articulating just where we’re heading or what we can invest in. When we collectively look back on those six years, though, we surely remember one thing above many others: witnessing people—ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and communities—making social fads into identities.
Phoenix melts into our anti-hero Sheriff Joe Cross instantly. Both his deputies, Luke Grimes as Guy and Michael Ward as Michael, effortlessly bring their characters to life, with Michael Ward delivering a remarkably understated but magnetic performance and cementing the sheriff’s office as a single point of groundedness in a film that seems to tilt at a new windmill at every turn. In a particularly effective world-building moment, Michael asks Joe if he’s being promoted because of the news—simultaneously revealing his character’s internal perspective, and Joe’s disconnection from what’s happening on mainstream news despite being perpetually online (or at least having his mother-in-law perpetually online) when he replies confusedly, “What news?” This small scene and a few lines of dialogue quickly and effectively establish the world our characters inhabit. The “news” being the death of George Floyd.
To a paranoid mind, the conspiracies involving wetwork operatives and the financial elite make what is business seem personal—reality has long been forged by bullets and painted in blood. Aster’s vision remains as uncompromising as ever, presenting viewers with a mirror that reflects our collective unease with his unique thematic entanglement that brings to life a world with its characters first. Reflecting how digital spaces transformed social trends into personal identities against the backdrop of 21st-century anxieties: COVID shivers, doom scrolling, and equity campaigns funded by business interests that want to contaminate your water supply for their data centers.
In the end, “Eddington” emerges as a singular and sickly American fable, destined to leave nearly equal amounts of dissatisfaction and amusement in its wake.
“Eddington” Trailer
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