The Film landscape, much like the societal fabric it often reflects, possesses a curious sentience, an ability to channel and amplify the anxieties and absurdities of its time. Ari Aster, a director whose name has become synonymous with “elevated horror” through an H&S culture with unsettling works like Hereditary and Midsommar, has consistently demonstrated a penchant for plumbing the depths of psychological discomfort. His latest offering, Eddington, premiering at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, plunges headfirst into the tumultuous zeitgeist of 2020 America, crafting a “deranged” and “surreal, gory western” that, while perhaps overstuffed, undeniably showcases a singular and audacious directorial vision. Creativitys.UK will tell you about this ambitious, if divisive, cinematic endeavour, a film that attempts to encapsulate a nation’s pandemic-era divisions within the confines of a dusty New Mexico town.
A Microcosm of Macro Mayhem
Following the more self-indulgent, psychedelic journey of 2023’s Beau is Afraid, Eddington sees Aster return with a slightly less sprawling, yet still characteristically excessive, narrative. The film’s central conceit is to compress the myriad contentious talking points of 2020 – Covid-19, online conspiracy theories, Black Lives Matter, white privilege, cult leaders, and cryptocurrency – into the claustrophobic setting of Eddington, New Mexico. This Ari Aster Eddington project is less about the director’s personal neuroses and more an attempt to grapple with the “general fears and neuroses of the US” during that pivotal year. The result is a blackly comic modern western that, while ambitious in its thematic scope, struggles at times to “weave all of those subjects together” cohesively. As our reviewer notes, the film might have benefited from being “more focused (and shorter),” yet Aster’s “deranged vision makes most directors seem timid in comparison.” This cinematic approach aims to capture the US pandemic divisions in a uniquely unsettling way.
Phoenix’s Shambling Sheriff
At the heart of this chaotic narrative is Joaquin Phoenix, delivering another masterclass in discomfort as Joe, Eddington’s “shambling, barely competent sheriff.” Phoenix, renowned for his portrayals of men ill at ease in their own skin in films like Joker and You Were Never Really Here, embodies a character who believes that national crises like the pandemic and racial injustice are “not here problems.” His resistance to mask-wearing and anti-racism demonstrations is juxtaposed with a host of personal grievances: the town’s mayor, Ted (played by Pedro Pascal), has approved a vast tech-hub development nearby; his wife, Louise (Emma Stone), grapples with anxieties potentially linked to the mayor; and his mother-in-law, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), relentlessly critiques his inadequacies. Joe’s ill-conceived solution is to run against Ted as an anti-lockdown candidate in the upcoming mayoral election, further fuelling the town’s simmering tensions. Phoenix’s querulous sheriff, even at his most wrongheaded, retains a degree of sympathy, largely because “he has a habit of making things worse for himself than for everyone else.” This Joaquin Phoenix Eddington performance is a key anchor in the film’s sprawling narrative.
A Jarring Journey Through Genres
For a significant portion of its runtime, Eddington meanders, shifting between a “quirky lampoon of small-town politics” and a “feverish state-of-the-nation satire.” This combination can be jarring, leaving the viewer with a mixture of “detached respect” for Aster’s thematic ambition, “gloom” at his pessimistic outlook, “mild amusement” at the eccentricity, and “frustration” at the lack of a consistent plot. The film cultivates a “thrum of constant, headache-inducing stress,” not from specific character peril, but from the pervasive ignorance and antagonism of nearly all its inhabitants, creating a relentless sense of impending disaster. This deliberate cultivation of unease is a hallmark of Ari Aster films, designed to provoke and disorient the audience.
A Mid-Film Metamorphosis
It is not until approximately the halfway mark that Eddington shifts gears, a murder transforming the film into a “farcical crime thriller” with distinct echoes of the Coen brothers’ Fargo and No Country for Old Men, as well as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice (another Phoenix-starring example of “delirious auteur excess”). While the sheriff’s investigation doesn’t seamlessly integrate with the preceding satire and tragicomedy – an Austin Butler cameo as a “cool new-age demagogue” feels somewhat extraneous, and Emma Stone is given “perplexingly little to do” – the tension and intrigue undoubtedly heighten. The narrative suddenly gains a sense of urgency, and the outcome begins to matter in a way it previously hadn’t. This structural shift, while perhaps uneven, injects a much-needed momentum into the Eddington movie plot.
Gonzo Heights and Heroic Unhinging
Just as the audience is drawn into the murder plot, Aster executes another characteristic swerve. The film’s “low-level strangeness jumps to surreal and gory heights,” relentlessly escalating until it reaches a “peak of gonzo high-adrenaline fun that leaves you reeling and breathless.” Many viewers may find their patience exhausted long before this climactic eruption, but there is something undeniably “heroic about Aster’s uncompromising determination to go his own way.” The fact that he has managed to get such an “unhinged project” greenlit so soon after the equally divisive Beau is Afraid is, in itself, remarkable. The “overstuffed nature of Eddington” suggests that the sheer complexity and multifaceted conflicts of 21st-century America may have ultimately been “too much for him to process” into a perfectly coherent whole. Yet, as the review concludes, “you have to hand it to him for trying.” This dedication to a singular, if chaotic, vision is what sets Aster apart and makes his films, including this Cannes Film Festival premiere, events of significant cinematic interest.
Ari Aster’s Eddington emerges as a challenging, ambitious, and ultimately unforgettable cinematic experience. It is a film that wears its influences on its blood-soaked sleeve, yet forges its own uniquely unsettling path through the American psyche. While its sprawling narrative and thematic density may prove alienating for some, its audacious spirit, coupled with compelling performances, particularly from Joaquin Phoenix, ensures that it will be debated and dissected long after the credits roll. It is a potent, if imperfect, distillation of a specific moment of national neurosis, a “deranged” western for a deranged time, solidifying Ari Aster’s reputation as one of contemporary cinema’s most fearless and provocative auteurs.
