Eddington

by Mike McGranaghan

Eddington is the most intellectually stimulating movie I’ve seen so far this year. It is the fourth home run in a row for writer/director Ari Aster, the maker of Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau Is Afraid. In every case, he takes major storytelling risks that challenge the audience. That’s undeniably true here, especially since the plot is set in a time period few of us are eager to revisit – May 2020, the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and the beginning of widespread civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the sheriff of small-town Eddington, New Mexico. He clashes with mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) over a host of issues, from wearing a mask in public to the planned construction of a massive, high-tech data collection business in the area. One man obviously leans to the right politically, the other to the left, yet there’s a level of respect between them, despite differences of opinion. That changes when Joe decides to challenge Ted in the upcoming election. The announcement creates a series of firestorms around town.

Inhabiting that basic premise is a series of complex characters who contribute to and are affected by the tensions. Joe’s wife Louise (Emma Stone) has fallen under the spell of shady online preacher/cult leader Vernon (Austin Butler). His mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell) is always trying to “awaken” everybody to crazy QAnon-style conspiracy theories. Black cop Michael (Micheal Ward) experiences a crisis of conscience being a law enforcement official amid the BLM protests organized by local teens Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle) and Brian (Cameron Mann). These individuals bump up against Joe and each other in increasingly intense ways.

Eddington is structured like a modern-day Western, with the two central characters squaring off for control of the town. Inside of that is incisive, incendiary social satire that attempts to explore How We Got Here Now. Aster mocks people who fall victim to insane alt-right nonsense while also reserving a few digs for those who engage in performative acts of political progressiveness in order to pat themselves on the back. Nobody is spared. The film infers our nation’s divide has become so wide that we’re all just trying to piss off whomever we don’t like, as opposed to actually solving the problems, and this, in turn, creates scary forms of extremism.

Every new development in the plot prods you into deep thought. Aster additionally touches on how social media makes it easy for incorrect information, distorted facts, and outright bullshit to spread rapidly, thereby muddying the waters and allowing people to decide for themselves what the “truth” really is. In so doing, blaming our perceived enemies, regardless of genuine culpability, becomes a simple solution.

This unfolds within a beautifully acted framework. Across the board, the stars bring the characters to vivid life, capturing their qualities and their flaws with equal precision. Eddington reminded me of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in how it assembles a cross-section of citizens in a small area, then uses their interactions to analyze how a major problem manifests itself. Joaquin Phoenix is the glue holding everything together. His turn as Joe Cross is sufficiently nuanced that the sheriff’s trajectory becomes downright harrowing.

It is important to know one thing about Eddington: a certain facet of the ending is left deliberately unexplained. The movie sends us away asking what could possibly be next for society. Could things get worse than they already are? That unresolved element stands in for the mystery of the future, as well as for the idea that we can never fully know what unhinged step some anonymous soul will take in expressing their anger. With sharp writing, taut direction, a stellar cast, and a slew of big ideas, Ari Aster has crafted a riveting drama guaranteed to leave you mulling over its observations for days, if not weeks, afterward.

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