REVIEW: ‘Eddington’ shoots its social commentary from the hip
Joaquin Phoenix as Sheriff Joe Cross in Eddington, written and directed by Ari Aster.
The year 2020 was, to put it mildly, a lot. A number of movies have already tried to reckon with the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns, political schisms, and online discourse that followed. We’ve had a comedy lampooning a socially distanced movie production, a heist movie where the thieves use lockdown to their advantage, a Soderbergh-directed home-invasion thriller and one of the greatest musical comedy specials of all time. All of them, and others besides, all tried to sort through what that time did to us as a species.
The timing of Ari Aster’s latest feature is curious, in that it’s come along in 2025, when the pandemic is a somewhat dulled memory for many. To be clear, the health crisis is still technically underway; people can still get the virus and some people are still very vulnerable to it. But it’s an open question whether audiences are interested in seeing all the familiar sights unearthed. How many of us miss queuing up for groceries, six feet apart, and debating our neighbours over their masking etiquette? Is there still something to be learned from the collective trauma?
Aster believes there is. In fact, his new film is so jam-packed with ideas and observations about 2020 that they spill out of the screenplay, like the blood that eventually soaks the sands of Eddington, New Mexico. It’s not hard to figure out where Aster is going with the movie — the tone is pitch-black satire — but it’s the repetition of the material that becomes its stumbling block. I’ve seen at least one take that this reiteration is intentional, meant to imitate the experience of scrolling through social media and seeing the same faces flood your device with opinions. Even if that’s true, the film would have been better as a tighter, more targeted critique of our preoccupations during a bewildering era.
Emma Stone as Louise, Joe’s conspiracy-addled wife.
As the story kicks off in May 2020, we meet Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the sheriff of the titular town. Joe is what you might call an old-fashioned conservative. He’s suspicious of mask mandates and believes in personal freedoms. But he doesn’t really subscribe to the conspiracy theories that have come to define so many people on his side of the political spectrum. Meanwhile, his wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell) have both spiralled down different rabbit holes about deep state coverups and mind control. In one of the movie’s first trenchant observations, it shows how contradictory and self-cannibalizing COVID trutherism became, to the point that both of these women believe in misinformation, but they disagree over which misinformation is more true.
Joe is at odds with the progressive mayor of the town, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who performatively ticks every box for what a Democratic politician should do or say in 2020. This is encapsulated in one of the funniest gags in the movie, a melodramatic campaign ad for Ted that gives us an early hint that Eddington is trying to skewer both Democrats and Republicans equally. Joe and Ted’s disputes over COVID protocols, and Joe’s frustrations with his domestic life, bubble into Joe impulsively deciding to run against Ted in the municipal election. Joe then launches a shambolic campaign alongside his two deputies (Luke Grimes and Michael Ward), a task made more difficult by the Black Lives Matter protests that make their way to Eddington in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
Aster is being noticeably provocative in choosing his targets. In several spots, he follows a B-plot about a couple of local teenage boys who cynically adopt the language of left-wing politics to competitively woo a female activist they’re crushing on. Ultimately, everyone in the movie is wrong, some more than others. It’s played for comic effect, but Aster repeats the point ad nauseam. By the midpoint of the film, you may have already had your fill of the social commentary. And then a shocking twist, stemming from Joe’s humiliation at a social event, turns the movie into a sudden Western. A cascade of violence ensues, building to a ridiculous series of events involving wealthy Antifa crisis actors. Again, the satire is obvious, but the question is whether overstating it dampens its effectiveness.
Pedro Pascal as Ted Garcia, the town’s mayor and Joe’s political rival.
The cast of Eddington is expertly chosen. Phoenix has a unique ability to bury his movie star persona and inhabit sad-sack characters; as Joe, despite his childish disregard for social responsibility, you almost pity him for how uncharismatic and ineffective he is. Pascal, meanwhile, is the perfect foil: a guy who succeeds by saying all the right things, despite being willing to hand over the town to corporate interests to develop a data centre. Stone is utterly convincing as a deeply unwell woman, who was raised by another deeply unwell woman who’s just a little bit better at hiding it. Special mention also goes to William Belleau as Officer Jimenez Butterfly, a character who feels like he belongs in one of the best seasons of FX’s Fargo; a natural detective who you root for more than anyone else. It’s just a little frustrating that characters this well crafted are stuck in a movie that feels so unbalanced.
Is Eddington worth digging up the injustices and insanities of 2020? Maybe if you’ve always been tuned into Ari Aster’s specific filmmaking wavelength. Personally, I still see the reverberations of that time on culture to this day, and I have no trouble remembering all the little weird blips that defined that year, so maybe that’s why this movie felt so needlessly exaggerated. But if you share Aster’s specific worldview and believe that there’s still a vein to be mined here, Eddington may be the perfect waypoint.
Eddington gets two and a half stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
Austin Butler has a few creepy scenes as a cult leader — while it might seem like too small of a role for an actor like him, the story isn’t really about cults.
I didn’t even recognize Clifton Collins Jr. as Lodge, the homeless guy wandering around town.
The visual of Joe in his campaign truck, as a half-hearted Alex Jones imitator, was another comedic highlight.
Between this movie, Joker, and Napoleon, we seem to be in Phoenix’s “impotent rage” era.