Which ever way you look at it, 2020 was a crazy time for the world in general. I mean, I wouldn’t exactly claim things have gotten much saner since then, but trying to operate and continue some form of normalcy after COVID-19 had effectively shut the world down and split whole communities in two. Enter Ali Aster, a filmmaker who may be gradually edging away from the horror genre after Hereditary and Midsommar put him on the map, but still seems to delight in tugging on the strings of reality until everything just unravels spectacularly. This is his approach to Eddington, a truly bizarre drama/thriller that uses the backdrop of unprecedented social chaos to stage the meltdown of a small, New Mexico town. While it’s important to note that while the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protest feature predominantly in the plot, Aster has actually not made a film about either topics, but instead stages an incredibly surreal farce that might stand as the blackest of black comedies of the year. Yep, nothing says jokes like rampant paranoia as the world collapses around you.
As COVID-19 and it’s many regulations holds the world in its grip, there’s a generally tense atmosphere in the town of Eddington, New Mexico before people are turned away from stores because they’re not wearing a mask. It mostly stems from the animosity that’s built up between town sheriff Joe Cross and Mayor Ted Garcia, who is hoping to get re-elected for another term over something that occured with Joe’s emotionally unstable wife, Louise, back when she was sixteen. Sparking multiple touch papers is Garcia mandate to implement a lockdown and that all residents wear masks to combat a virus that hasn’t even entered Eddington yet – but on the flipside, Cross believes that the decision violates freedom of choice and does everything he can to either sabotage this order and even argues about it with Garcia in public. However, a line is crossed when Cross suddenly announces on social media that he’s going to run against Garcia as Mayor and enlists his rapidly shrinking force to help him with his campaign.
While the twin pillars of the community find that their feud escalates even further after the arrival of a rambling vagrant in their town, various townspeople have their own issues with societal changes and each other that all soon combine to bubble out of control in various spectacular ways. The ever more fragile Louise is caught up between the beef between her husband, a man she dated once years ago and her conspiracy theorist mother; Garcia’s son and his friend make a play to date a local activist wannabe who used to be linked with one of Cross’ deputies; and the pressure builds even further when the death of George Floyd and the subsequent BLM movement causes the divide between residents to grow even further.
Eventually something has to give and as a result everybody’s lives will be caught up in a whirlwind of death, misunderstandings and a whole shitload of bullets.
Intriguingly marketed as a black comedy western, Eddington is the latest film to attack out of control politics by choosing to argue from the centre in a fashion that’s not entirely unlike what Alex Garland tried with the frankly terrifying Civil War. However, while some might complain that to not take a side with the politics that they’re trying to mock, lampoon or outright criticise is “cowardly”, it’s obvious that Aster is using this real-life backdrop of unrest to show how kneejerk and reactionary we can all be when personal animosity merges with social unrest. We do live in a time where it’s insisted that we all choose a side and anyone truly expecting this film to vindicate their beliefs may leave confused as to the point that Aster is trying to make. However, Eddington chooses to shine the light on everybody to get to where he needs the film to be.
In their prime, the Coen Brothers probably could have told the story in half the time with twice the laughs and if Martin McDonagh had had a crack at it, we certainly would’ve gotten something far more incendiary, but Aster eschews exaggerated characters and cutting dialogue in favour of sticking with his own strengths which is the slow degradation of reality as the situation becomes all the more unhinged. As a result, the film takes a bit of time to build up the momentum it needs to take its plot into the realms of the surreal and to be fair, you may wonder a certain points what exactly the point of all this is, but once that threshold is crossed and all the frustration bubbles over, things take on almost a nightmarish quality where things just keep getting worse. Of course, it may be getting worse for the residents of Eddington, but the more drenched in paranoia and desperation the movie gets, the better it becomes until a final act freak out pushes it into the darkly amusing territories of the absurd.
The ensemble all do their part to play the various cogs in this fucked up machine and heading the charge is Joaquin Phoenix as the emotionally feeble who delivers a performance that looks and sounds very much like Jeff Bridges desperately struggling not to cry and in comparison, Pedro Pascal (in approximately his 362nd role of the year) is a bastion of frustrating calm who seems to want to keep everyone safe when his plans to build a data center outside of town would most likely negatively effect his constituents. Elsewhere we find the likes of Emma Stone looking creepily like Sissy Spacek from Carrie as Joe’s incredibly delicate wife, Deirdre O’Connell as her tyrannical, conspiracy obsessed mother and even Austin Butler in an extended cameo as a radical cult leader and at times, you can see Aster’s old horror roots peeking through each of these individuals, especially in the bizarre, malformed, cuddly toys that Louise knits for sale.
While certainly more accessible than Aster’s last foray into nightmarish, over long, anxiety-comedy, Beau Is Afriad; Eddington may not go as heartily into full blown cinematic psychosis, but it does contain a staggeringly final reel that reliably detaches from reality in spectacular fashion. Be it the sight of Phoenix engaging in a huge, running gun battle while suffering the effects of COVID-19, to a final denouement that is a darkly funny as it is disturbing cruel. Similarly, arguments that Eddington is too long may be totally valid, but part of Aster’s entire style is to literally get you to get utterly lost within a hefty running time in order to let all the triggering misunderstandings and damaging grievances unfold in their own time in order to give us a nice long run up to the disturbing shit.
While it won’t be to everyone’s tastes (using COVID, BLM and various other social hot topics to springboard into brutal farce simply isn’t going to gel with certain types who won’t get the joke), Aster seems to be having perverse fun jabbing the ribs of panicked extremists on both sides of the divide. I have to say, I enjoyed it with him, and I’m curious to see what the buttons the filmmaker chooses to push next – especially if his idea of a comedy is a chaotic howl of frustration.
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