Eddington Review: A big bite to chew, but what’s the point with no taste or smell?

“Can you please put a mask on?” 

There is nothing like being a 16-17 year old retail worker working in a red state at the height of the pandemic. “Sir, 6 feet please,” “Ma’am please pull the mask over your nose.” The year 2020 was truly a litmus test to see who has basic human empathy and those who are dicks through and through. Crisis can truly reveal peoples’ true colors. And that’s what Ari Aster attempts to examine to decent effect in his latest feature, Eddington. Making its premiere in Competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival this past week, this is Aster’s fourth feature film, coming off the tail of his divisive Beau is Afraid from 2023.

Written and directed by Aster, and stars Joaquin Phoenix (who also starred in Beau is Afraid), Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, and Austin Butler. The film follows the sheriff of Eddington, New Mexico, Joe Cross (played by Phoenix). He’s your stereotypical conservative Middle America sheriff, and with a knack for petty grudges and a lack of social awareness, he struggles to adapt to the standards of the pandemic in his little desert town, much to the dismay of Eddington’s mayor Ted Garcia (Pascal). He’s everything Joe isn’t: Well-liked, confident, assertive, liberal. As he butts heads with Ted, things aren’t helped by his unhappy and distraught wife, Louise (Stone), who spends her time shut in at home making uncanny art pieces to sell on Etsy. After a heated confrontation, Joe must step up for the “betterment” of his community. With mask mandates, Facebook conspiracy theories, performative white savior BLM protests, and a healthy dose of ironic right-wing rhetoric, Eddington is a time capsule of a very specific moment in 2020. However, it falls flat narratively, giving us something big to chew, but ultimately with no lingering taste or smell. 

Following up his performance in Beau is Phoenix, who once again plays a large man-child, albeit with slightly less anxiety attacks. Phoenix does a fair enough job at bringing this character to life. He is at his best in the first act of the film, and slowly he just becomes a repetitive and irritating character. Which might be the point, but it nonetheless becomes frustrating. Even after he takes things into his own hands, can’t help but feel uninterested. This can also be said about most of the big name characters within the film. It’s fun meeting them and getting acquainted, but after a while they just fade into the background. Stone, Butler, and Pascal aren’t giving much, and are pretty absent through most of the film, which is unfortunate. They are sidelined with no real weight on the narrative. Butler comes then goes, a cult like preacher that had the promise to be a fun character, ends up not adding much; Stone’s character is talked about often by the other characters, but lacks any presence on screen. Pascal has the most to play with and the time we do spend with him is a fun outing, but honestly, we see more of his face on Mayoral campaign signs than we do him as a person.

However, the smaller named characters shone on-screen. Louise’s mother—played by Deirdre O'Connell—was a particular standout with her endless spouting of conspiratorial nonsense about the pandemic. She sounds like your crazy aunt ranting about vaccines and China after absorbing a litany of deluded Facebook posts. The three younger actors: Cameron Mann, Matt Gomez Hidaka, and Amélie Hoeferle, hold their own against the set of A-listers as they often have the funniest moments of the film portraying the complications and ridiculousness of coming of age during the pandemic.

Eddington’s inclusion of the BLM movement feels, frankly, dubious. Specifically in the way it was handled and shown within the film, used as the vehicle to build to the climax. Never particularly stopping and reflecting on the movement and its importance. Always tiptoeing around the meaning, instead using the uncomfortable silence or off handed comments as a punchline to a concerning topic, leaving us with a sour taste in our mouth.

However, with that being said, the commentary on performative activism and white guilt was rather funny, as is most of the humor in the film. Aster is as good at writing comedy as he is at writing horror. It’s just a shame the uneven narrative doesn’t live up to the same standard. Aster has once again steered away from his horror roots to explore more of the anxiety-inducing, secondhand embarrassment comedy as displayed first in Beau is Afraid. So, fans of Beau will be eating well with this one, but Hereditary and Midsommar fans might be left feeling underwhelmed and starved.

There are a lot of moving parts in Eddington. Some of the gears don’t click as well as they should with others, resulting in confusion and frustration—particularly in the third act. A certain plot point gets shoehorned in out of nowhere with little to no integration. Which is unfortunate, as it ends up being a major component of the film’s climax.

Eddington does a great job at reenacting a very specific period of 2020 in the United States. However,  it suffers from underdeveloped characters, messy narrative, and a head-scratching third act. But it does capture the anxiety and uncertainty that the pandemic brought with it, how friends, family, neighbors can turn on each other in times of crisis, how easily fear turns into mistrust, then is exploited against us.

For many of us, thinking back to working retail in the trenches of the pandemic, often you think about those people who refused to listen and comply for the safety of others. But then we have to remember, this is the United States of America. Land of the free, guns, and unchecked, unruly, individualism. Exactly what Aster recreated with the citizens of Eddington. So let’s all come together and propose a new 28th amendment, the right to empathy.

And to shut the fuck up.