Think back to the summer of 2020. I know, I get it, you don’t want to, neither do I, really.
But picture the kind of brain rot that set in during those months of the pandemic when everything felt bizarre and scary and on fire. Ari Aster’s Eddington is sort of like that brain rot in movie form.
That, of course, might not seem broadly appealing, but when has Aster, the provocateur behind Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid, tried to make everyone like him? Instead, this is a blistering addition to his canon of cinematic anxiety, one that builds to a gonzo conclusion that is both incredibly violent and incredibly absurd.
But for a while, Eddington, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, almost seems bracingly tame for an Aster movie. The early scenes come off like an intimate drama about how a tiny community reacted to the onset of COVID. Well, that is, except for the opening shot of a haggard looking man muttering and clutching a dead pigeon. After that subsides, however, we meet our protagonist Joaquin Phoenix‘s Joe Cross, the sheriff of the title New Mexican town.
Despite that position, Joe is no swaggering western hero. He’s essentially ineffectual, both in his job and in his life. When he complains about mask ordinances he sounds like a petulant child. At home his wife, Lou (Emma Stone), who makes strange-looking dolls she sells on Etsy, won’t let him touch her. His mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell) babbles on about conspiracy theories.
His enemy in Eddington is the mayor, Tim Garcia (Pedro Pascal), an ambitious politician running for reelection with plans to build a sprawling data center operated by the hilariously named “solidgoldmagikarp.” (That seems to be an extremely online in-joke on the part of Aster.)
The screenplay doesn’t specify party affiliations but it would be easy to see Tim as Blue and Joe as Red mainly over how they align on the mask issue. A conflict over face coverings at a local grocery store prompts Joe to decide to run for mayor. And that’s where whatever normalcy starts to unravel.
Because—not unlike Beau Is Afraid, also starring Phoenix—this is the story of a man losing his mind, but, in this case, it’s also the country around him going insane as well. With Joe running for office he grows more and more impulsive, much to the chagrin of Lou, dealing with unnamed mental health issues. Looking for solace she turns to the internet—oh no—where she finds Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler, in suave cult leader mode), whose brand of conspiracies differ from the ones her mom sells.
Meanwhile, the Black Lives Matter protests of that summer start to descend on Eddington thanks to some socially conscious teen girls and the boys who want to impress them. Soon everything blows wildly out of proportion for this place that looks like it could be on the soundstage of an old Hollywood Western.
Aster throws just about every 2020 talking point into his stew and, at times, that can feel overwhelming. What makes it ultimately work is that he somehow drags you into the mania his characters are feeling—which in many ways is an (extremely) heightened version of what many of us felt in that moment. He uses the images of Twitter feeds, Facebook profiles, and YouTube videos to his advantage. As a viewer you are sucked into the doom scroll where anything can happen—and anything eventually does.
While Eddington has a very starry cast, Phoenix is his anchor. Joe is a tricky role. Aster is well-aware that the left-leaning audience that trots out to A24 films will not be on Joe’s side from the get go. He is the one railing about masks, after all. Yet, Joe is also the whole narrative’s anchor even as he turns increasingly more depraved.
Phoenix makes this work by playing him as such a consummate loser that you can’t help but pity him even when he’s absolutely despicable. He’s a man who is his own worst enemy, as evidenced by the cough that grows more labored as the plot moves forward. Can anyone guess what disease he might have? (Hearing unmasked audience members cough at the Cannes screening made it feel like 4DX.)
Phoenix, of course, is buoyed by everyone else. Pascal’s Tim is an ideal foil for Joe. Though Tim has ostensibly good politics, Pascal plays him with a smarm that makes him just a little bit hateable. Stone’s part is relatively small, but she is haunting as a woman so tormented she’s willing to believe a snake oil salesman like Butler’s Vernon. (That said, Butler does look very good in shaggy hair.)
Eddington isn’t a movie that moralizes, but at the same time it doesn’t take the stance that both sides make some good points. Rather it’s a period piece about recent history that articulates why everything feels so doomed right now while still finding the space to be utterly ridiculous. And isn’t that exactly what it felt like back then?
