Five years out from the start of the pandemic we are still struggling to reckon with it in art. Exactly how deeply it changed us individually and as a society writ large we still need time to grasp. We know it was a turning point of the modern era, but what that really means still eludes us. Ari Aster identifies it as such, and in his neo-western film Eddington endeavours to assign specific cultural weight to it. He makes it a nexus point of the fraught politics and divisiveness of our times. As can be imagined, his attempt to illustrate that theme through dark satire is rather clumsy to say the least.
It is not entirely unexpected, given both the tense subject matter we all have opinions on, and Aster’s own tendencies. He is not a filmmaker with a light touch, and as he strays from the horror genre he got his start in, it only becomes more apparent in the plunges he is willing to take. Beau is Afraid was proof positive of that, as eccentric and unapologetic a movie as they come; and Eddington is demonstrative of that same fearlessness -though in this case it comes paired with an awfully shallow perspective offering little real nuances on the conflicts it wants to convey.
The choice to centre the story in the perspective of a character like Joe Cross perhaps informs that perspective. Played by Joaquin Phoenix, Joe is the long-standing but fairly ineffectual and unpopular sheriff of the town of Eddington, New Mexico. He has asthma and in these early days of the mask mandates is incredibly reluctant to wear one and openly argumentative with those who ask that he do. This clashes starkly with the policy as enforced by Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), a more socially responsible and broadly progressive politician for this rural town. As greater social activism from young people takes off and Black Lives Matter protests emerge in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, Joe declares his candidacy for the local election against Garcia, running on a flurry of general conservative rhetoric on masking, social justice, and law and order. Not much of a savvy politician and deeply uncomfortable with the scrutiny placed on him as an officer in the digital age, his actions through the campaign only exacerbate the powder keg in this town, a microcosm of America at that volatile time.
Aster recognizes that the summer of 2020 will go down as an incredibly distinct point in not just American history but history around the globe, characterized by two huge and intense shake-ups to our collective status quo -neither of which were ultimately sustained. And it is an interesting idea to examine those through the lens of one deeply impacted community at its own political turning point. The problem is that Aster exhibits a very agnostic attitude around the whole thing, presenting the story of Eddington as a theoretical scenario of modern political divisiveness pursued to its ultimate end. To do that he has to suggest warring factions that are not only diametrically opposed ideologically, but equally irrational in their attitudes and actions. For this a few fictions need to be legitimized.
For example, the notion that antifa is a movement with any kind of organizational framework to carry out precise acts of terrorism -or that this is an equitable exaggeration to a cop lashing out and killing civilians. The latter comes off as somewhat hyperbolic too in how it is carried out, but is modestly justified through the subjective lens of this character. The violent actions of a collection of young anti-racists, already portrayed as ideologically disingenuous, shallow, or ignorant, doesn't come with the same distinctive lens -rather it is presented as an objective fact of the moment, as much as anti-maskers humiliating themselves on camera. The film trades in caricatures on either political end, whether it is Joe's conspiracy-addled mother-in-law (Deirdre O'Connell) or the young protesters shouting buzzwords of the BLM movement they clearly can't back up. These are stubborn gullible conservatives as written by CNN and unserious leftists as written by Fox News …or CNN, and it is pretty obvious Aster has never engaged honestly with small-town Americans or even joined a real protest.
That ire towards both sides is naturally the intent, to draw false equivalencies and imply each side of the mask and protest issues need to calm down. Of course for one side that means following public health initiatives for the safety of all and not abusing power and privilege, for the other it means stifling justified anger at corrupt institutions and reigning in a level of violence made up for this movie. It is a pretty hollow message and as satire it isn't particularly cutting either. We've seen these same scenarios postulated about, this same sentiment that grievance politics and culture war issues (and social justice activism apparently) are ultimately distractions from bigger entities, and it's not very new or interesting as touched on here. Aster is good at imbuing social commentary into his horror, but he is much less equipped to take it on independently in a context like this.
The chaos of the movie is built to at a simmer and where Aster does rely on his horror-adjacent techniques and structural habits, it is effective on the surface. A street confrontation between Joe and Garcia for instance that feels like a classic western standoff even with no weapons in sight; a follow-up confrontation that tracks Joe through a campaign party feebly responding to a noise complaint -neutered in the aftermath of a stunt baselessly accusing Garcia of sexual misconduct towards his wife Louise (Emma Stone) that backfired in the most dramatic way possible. It’s the kind of tension that Aster does very well, with Phoenix fittingly playing a live-wire veneer. His performance is dominated by insecurity, stubbornness, desperation, and a sense of performative idealism, all drawing on past choices in Beau is Afraid and Joker -and often a pain to watch for similar reasons as the latter. Pascal and Stone are solid but not notably impressive, while Micheal Ward as the town’s black cop (tokenized as a symbol of an anti-racist police force) is not much more than a utility. The most fascinating character is Austin Butler’s online conspiracy theorist with sizeable influence -unfortunately he is merely a glorified cameo, exiting the movie after a single notable scene.
Other characters like Garcia's son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) and his dim friend Brian (Cameron Mann), a deputy played by Luke Grimes and a homeless man played by Clifton Collins Jr. feature in sustained threads designed to create a holistic picture of this town in this critical time. And certainly it does translate as a collage of modern America as Aster sees it. But Eddington isn't so defined to be a character in its own right. Neither the geography nor the community outside of the featured characters is given much development beyond dull archetypes. Though certain bits of southern U.S. cultural ephemera is present (Joe's obnoxious campaign truck among them), you'd be hard-pressed to identify the film as a western beyond its surface aesthetics.
The movie is modestly improved through its third act, where it succumbs to increasingly insane leaps of plotting and a pretty amusing ending in spite of itself. But the points about American society that Eddington tries to get across are pretty lacklustre, coming from a place of fairly miserable cynicism on top of everything. How much of these perceptions Aster actually holds is unclear -he refuses to distinguish against the general absurdity of 2020. But the way he attempts to be equitable in his targeting is revealing of a certain level of either ignorance or intellectual disinterest. And all in the name of a neutral, vaguely mundane statement not especially profound or compelling, certainly not five years on.
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