Enter Eddington, a hilarious and unnerving journey back to late May 2020, the powder keg period where the pent-up frustrations from COVID-19 restrictions clashed with outrage over the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota, leading to global Black Lives Matter rallies.<\/p>\n
Billed as a neo-Western comedy, this wild, unpredictable film is the fourth feature by Ari Aster, the American writer-director behind acclaimed horrors Hereditary and Midsommar. Aster delights in discomfort, and everyone’s uncomfortable in Eddington, a fictional New Mexico town where the population of 2,435 struggles with the three-month slump of lockdown.<\/p>\n
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Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe Cross is Eddington’s libertarian sheriff and a fervent anti-masker. (Supplied: Universal)<\/p>\n
Despite the on-edge airs and occasional neighbour-shaming, the town continues to mostly abide by restrictions, even if largely incompetent sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) isn’t fond of wearing a mask.<\/p>\n
After a tussle over masking at a grocery store, Joe runs for mayor on a libertarian platform against popular liberal incumbent Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).<\/p>\n
Ted is charming if not slightly smarmy, a savvy political player who may or may not bus in people of colour to star in his election ads. Joe is the self-styled renegade in a cowboy hat whose entire campaign revolves around covering his vehicle with anti-lockdown signs. Is Joe MAGA? Maybe, but only in that his politics aren’t coherent, other than that they are all linked by deep-seated frustration.<\/p>\n
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Emma Stone is Louise, the withdrawn wife of Eddington’s sheriff. (Supplied: Universal)<\/p>\n
At home, Joe struggles to connect to his depressed and withdrawn wife Louise (Emma Stone), who is increasingly attached to charismatic conspiracist Vernon (Austin Butler), whose videos allegedly expose elite paedophilic rings.<\/p>\n
Louise’s mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), also lives with the couple and is constantly ranting about “deep fakes from the deep state” and more conspiracies, prodding Joe and asking why he’s not angrier.<\/p>\n
Eddington’s cast is top-tier, but this trio are particularly enigmatic with their small screen time. Butler is building a career out of an intense magnetic darkness (see: The Bikeriders, Dune: Part Two, Elvis); O’Connell is unhinged but never a caricature, and Stone betrays a brokenness in a stony face, her connection to Joe eroding but remaining in the slightest twinkle in her eyes.<\/p>\n
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Austin Butler’s Vernon is a disturbing conspiracy theorist who charms much of the town. (Supplied: Universal)<\/p>\n
Joe’s inevitable explosion of anger arrives alongside the town’s BLM protests, via several predominantly white teenagers who self-flagellate and scream about their own privilege on main street.<\/p>\n
This is just one of the ways Eddington rips into plenty of liberal posturing, and many of its funniest scenes reveal how virtue signalling is often a power-play, whether or not characters are aware of it.<\/p>\n
On paper, the punchlines \u2014 Instagram’s black squares, land acknowledgements at inappropriate moments, enforcing a 6-foot distance to avoid a conversation \u2014 read more like reactionary memes than insightful comedy.<\/p>\n
Some audiences might find Eddington a little mean-spirited, because it is. While the film’s first half might offend viewers with its mocking critique of COVID community policing and the way masses engaged with the Black Lives Matter movement, Aster’s sympathies for both impulses are laid out by the film’s end, without being painfully scolding or prescriptive.<\/p>\n
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Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe and Pedro Pascal’s Ted battle it out for mayor. (Supplied: Universal)<\/p>\n
Behind the more attention-grabbing political points, Aster has repeatedly stressed<\/a> in interviews that Eddington’s true purpose is within one of its quieter plot points: the presence of tech company SolidGoldMagikarp, which is building a data centre in Eddington’s outer area.<\/p>\n Mirroring how Amazon and Tesla have both transformed several small US towns into company outposts, SolidGoldMagikarp promises jobs and revenue for Eddington, which Ted campaigns on, and the complex is bigger than the town itself.<\/p>\n The company’s strange name comes from a ChatGPT glitch<\/a>, where this phrase (itself a Pok\u00e9mon meme) causes the language model to break down. It seems to be responsible \u2014 Literally? Metaphysically? \u2014 for Eddington’s hallucinatory second half as the film spirals into a conspiratorial, violent showdown completely removed from reality.<\/p>\n The internet in Eddington is depicted as a source of division and conspiracy. (Supplied: Universal)<\/p>\n But there were always signs that life in Eddington was already slightly unreal. Cinematographer Darius Khondji adopts a gamified approach to his camera’s movements throughout, often strafing behind Joe or others as if re-aligning with a right click.<\/p>\n The film’s most grounded elements, ironically, are its depiction of the screens and phones that are helping unhinge reality with conspiracies and siloed feeds. Eddington is unafraid to be ugly, whether diving into the visual pollution of Vernon’s over-stuffed website, or the relentless cold blue glow of a phone screen that lights up characters’ blank faces in isolation, lost within their own worlds.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n Eddington feels like the culmination of Aster’s career to date. There’s a touch of Hereditary’s festering terror here, mixed with the daylight dread and ultra-black humour of Midsommar<\/a>. Its taboo jokes about COVID-19 and the BLM movement carry on the edgelord spirit of The Strange Thing About The Johnsons, Aster’s 2011 student film that went viral for its shocking twist.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n