Sweet, scared, Ari Aster. The master filmmaker hasn’t really recovered from the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic, and astutely realized, neither has the United States. Aster drops us into Eddington during that waking nightmare, trying to wrap our collective heads around what led us to where we are today.
It’s May 2020. New Mexico has just dropped a mask mandate on the state, including Eddington. Current Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is fully onboard with this choice, but asthmatic sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), is hesitant, disliking how masking makes him breathe. This “disagreement” among the two spreads like the coronavirus across the town and online, pulling in people like Cross’s wife Louise (Emma Stone) and mother in law Dawn (Dierdre O’Connell), Garcia’s son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) and best friend Brian (Cameron Mann), and other Eddington police officers Guy (Luke Grimes) and Michael (Micheal Ward). So much so, that Cross decides he wants to run for mayor, setting up an election cycle for the, um, ages I guess?
Like a mad scientist, Aster goes full bore into dissecting all the pandemic related societal ills in Eddington. We start pretty small: seeing how a homeless man (David Pinter) highlights the philosophical divide between mayor Garcia and police Chief cross. At the small scale, Aster shows us the points of both sides: Mayor Garcia is looking out for the bigger picture of making sure people in Eddington don’t fall prey to this scary disease, while Chief Cross correctly points out that having a little heart goes a long way, and to not lose sight of actual people who have questions about these policies. But with no one outside of our little bubbles to help bridge this gap, both men and the town in general rely on social media for their information. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram live off of engagement, so they become amplifiers and pot stirrers, turning this small town disagreement into a larger than life split between the two halves of the town. Remember, the George Floyd protests happened around this time as well, which get glommed onto this essentially blackless place except one police officer, very confusing for the young white protesters. In general, that pandemic forced loneliness has made everyone a little madder, and so they glom onto whatever societal ill hurts them the most, and pick a side. Louise finds comfort in a megachurch type prophet (Austin Butler); Will becomes a BLM mega supporter to try to impress the hot “woke” girl in high school Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle); local restaurant owner Paula (Rachel de la Torre) worries about the big “computer AI” business that might take over the town. With sides taken, everyone burrows deeper into their bubbles, doing mental gymnastics to justify their viewpoint on the world at large. It’s all played acidic and funny by Aster, openly mocking the blatant hypocrisy of everyone choosing madness instead of empathy for one another, no better exemplified than one great scene with Katy Perry’s Firework playing the background that almost had me in tears laughing.
And then, we take a big hard dramatic turn when we hit the boiling point. Aster’s movie then shifts into a modern spin on a classic Western, investigating what just happened. The jarring tonal and story shift clashes pretty harshly with the 90 minutes or so beforehand. It’s hard to “both sides” here which Aster tries to do unartfully, turning the tale into a bit of a convoluted mess. To make up for that, Aster amps the tension pretty high, turning the movie into a very effective small town thriller and mystery. The last 30 minutes or so is pretty horrifying, using darkness and those empty pandemic streets to great chilling effect. Aster sticks the landing eventually, but loses some of the power of Eddington along the way getting there.
Yearning for a bit of summer escapism? Well, for the sickos, Ari Aster’s got you covered! This is the mental torture porn no one wanted but still is here, so brilliantly executed to keep you in that mental vice for longer than anyone really wanted to be. So naturally, I loved Eddington, hypocrite that I am.