Eddington Review: A Gorgeous Neo-Western Is Lost In A Messy, Covid-Inspired Plot

Five years ago, most of us were stuck in our homes, disconnected from our physical communities, and experiencing a previously unheard of level of constant digital conflict through the tiny pocket computers that had become our only tether to the world outside our walls. It was an awful, exhausting time for a variety of reasons, and the apotheosis of the politically divided nature of our present day society. So, why for the love of God has Ari Aster decided to make his latest film "Eddington" a 145 minute recreation of this psychosocially cursed moment in time? 

His first two features were more straightforward horror exercises and his last outing was a sprawling, drugged-out anxiety fever dream, but for his fourth film, Aster has chosen to explore the distinctly American iconography of the Western genre by setting it against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and everything else that made Summer 2020 such a tumultuous fissure point in history. It's not that no other filmmaker could draw meaningful connections between all these ideas, but only Aster possesses the particular audacity necessary to think the resulting experience would be something anyone would truly want to subject themselves to if they knew in advance just how off the rails the film's simple premise would go. 

"Eddington" is a fascinating film whose high points are sure to grow in the public estimation with the distance of time, but whose murky themes and punishing runtime have more in common with advanced torture tactics than with traditional cinematic expression.

Though "Eddington" begins as what feels like a dark comedy of errors, it slowly but deliberately reveals itself to be a harrowing dramatic Western that runs off in some surprising directions. The initial central conflict between the titular New Mexico town's Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and its mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) has the tenor of an "SNL" sketch about the virtues of masking. Joe veers to the right, as an anxious asthmatic who can relate to the elderly who don't want to mask up just to get groceries, while Ted is in liberal lockstep with the state's Governor as an image-conscious politician in a re-election year. But one verbal altercation leads Joe, who would have been a cowboy hero if this were a John Ford movie, to take up arms like a modern maverick — setting up his smartphone on his truck dashboard to spontaneously run against Ted for mayor. 

Phoenix stays in the same pocket he's been in for his last few performances, exploring wounded masculinity with the same dedication to self-effacing vulnerability presenting as misguided action (including in Ari Aster's own "Beau is Afraid," which Looper also reviewed). Meanwhile, Pascal offers new wrinkles in his complex portrait of Ted that makes his work stand out from the million other appearances he's making in the near future. But rather than a sharp two hander, the large ensemble features other startling turns, like Emma Stone as Joe's artist wife who has a history with Ted, Austin Butler as a burgeoning cult leader, and Deirdre O'Connell as Joe's mother-in-law ensnared into the world of online conspiracies. 

Before this complex web unravels into a more violent, suspenseful, and ultimately action-packed second half, the narrative is trapped in this frustrating prison of poking fun at the many warring sides of 2020's political awakening. This pursuit is responsible for some of the film's funniest and most searing moments, but the deeper it goes, the more it becomes a stomach churning time capsule to be forced to open.

As enticing as it may seem, the biggest mistake one could make in trying to unpack "Eddington" and its political ideas would be to treat the Overton window like the game board for Monopoly and Ari Aster a thimble for whom a roll of dice will situate him squarely on the property of one ideology or another. It does, at times, feel frustrating that the film seems to have more fun poking fun at teenage replications of the Minneapolis race riots than it does the absurdity of anti-vaxxers, suggesting Aster may be telling this story from a holier-than-thou, center-right "both sides" perspective a lot of cowardly comedians tend to employ. But in actuality, Aster seems really taken with extrapolating one core truth among a sea of conflicting ideas.

The more isolated we became during the pandemic, the easier it became for everyone to separate themselves into increasingly partisan digital silos. These echo chambers had less and less dependence on shared truths or observations of fact, as much as ever mutable concepts of fealty to whichever causes and movements brought comfort, kinship, or safety from ridicule, embarrassment, and "cancelation." If the narrative bones of "Eddington" are built on the strictures of the Western genre, and its protagonists all modern interpretations of that genre's archetypes, then who are the good guys and the bad guys in a world where no one can agree on a shared reality?

The most dramatically nourishing points in "Eddington" are the ones that explore the limits of creating your own rules, your own justifications, and your own truth. Aster mines equal measures of tragedy and comedy from the conclusions his story draws. But across its 2.5+ hour tenure, his script does such an exceptional job of capturing one of the most tumultuous and irritating points in our national discourse, that the simple act of bearing witness to various dialogues feels like having a rail road spike lodged in the frontal lobe.

When it works, it works, but when it doesn't, "Eddington" feels like a moving experience hindered by the same quirks and indulgence that have made Aster such a divisive filmmaker to begin with.

"Eddington" arrives in theaters on July 18.