Eddington: Entertaining, Frustrating

2020 was a rough year. Most everyone remembers it as a weird, confusing, and upsetting time. We were isolated, sad, and scared of a novel disease wreaking havoc across the globe. On top of that, there were massive protests across the country in the wake of the horrific murder of George Floyd. People were angry and afraid. It was a lot to process then and it is still a lot to process now. With Eddington, writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Beau is Afraid) takes us back to that time in an attempt to work through its wreckage—with mixed results. Over the 2 hour and 30 minute runtime, Aster tries to tackle big themes and big issues—some successfully, and some in a way that seems just as confused and uncertain about that time as the rest of us. Trying to make a cohesive, feature-length statement about what happened in 2020 is basically a fool’s errand. Still, if anyone was going to tackle this messy subject, Aster was the guy to do it.

Eddington has widely been referred to as a “modern western” as it focuses on the misadventures of a small-town sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) in the fictional location of Eddington, New Mexico. When we meet Cross, he’s having a rough go of it. The pandemic just started, his wife (Emma Stone) is repulsed by his touch, his police department is dwindling, his conspiracy-theorist mother-in-law is living with him, and he refuses to wear his mask (he has asthma). Also, he hates the beloved, mask-wearing town mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) and decides to run against him in the next mayoral election. 

This is put against the backdrop of the constant, chaotic internet doom-scrolling that defined the early pandemic days: onscreen, we see content about the Black Lives Matter movement flip to TikTok dances in a matter of seconds. The inner chaos of Cross’ life is juxtaposed nicely with the outer chaos of everything going on in the world at that time. Cross can’t find peace anywhere and it quickly starts to eat at him. His unraveling is as entertaining as it is inevitable, a car crash you can’t look away from that Aster makes the most of.

While the first half of the movie succeeds in darkly satirizes the ways we tried to cope (and didn’t) with the pandemic, the second half of the film struggles to maintain the insightful and comedic momentum as it pivots into something like an over-the-top action-western a la No Country for Old Men. Whereas No Country for Old Men justifies its intense violence by offering it up with a riveting, airtight cat and mouse story, Eddington seems to use its violence as a crutch when it runs out of meaningful things to say. Around the halfway point, the film unfortunately narrows its view to focus on the inevitable downfall of its increasingly pathetic protagonist. With his mayoral campaign against Garcia floundering and his homelife falling apart, Joe Cross has fully lost touch with himself and the world around him, becoming a violent agent of chaos. We lose the soul of the movie with this jarring shift. 

While Phoenix excels at playing the bumbling, unraveling sheriff, Eddington would have done well to spend more time with the other just as interesting characters. Emma Stone is captivating as Cross’ artist wife who is processing sexual abuse she experienced earlier in life. Austin Butler is equally as good as a charismatic cult leader whose radical politics captivate Cross’s wife and mother-in-law, in a very convincing portrayal of exploiting and capitalizing on people’s isolation. Aster writes these fascinating side characters with such rich back stories and motivations, it's disappointing to see him shunt them off to the side in order to focus on Phoenix blundering his way through his own battles. 

Eddington is at its best when focusing on the conflicting ideologies that came out during the pandemic and how they clashed up against each other. 2020 was a time fraught with political turmoil and civil unrest. There were very real, very big problems surrounding our government as well as a renewed focus on ongoing police brutality in America. Aster tackles these big issues by showing how they can trickle down into small town America. Eddington's protesting, sheltered teens have mostly good intentions but are often naive in their execution of social justice. One of the funnier scenes of the movie takes place when Joe Cross squares off with the town kids holding their BLM protest in the empty streets. Neither of the two parties know fully what they’re talking about, but both have such conviction in their beliefs that it turns into a ridiculous unsolvable argument like what’d you see in a Facebook comments section. It’s as entertaining as it is frustrating—much like most of Eddington. 

Ultimately, Eddington works up to a point. If Aster had found a more compelling way to draw together the loose ends set up in the beginning of the film, he could have crafted a more satisfying and cohesive story. Instead, he introduces us to a series of very interesting characters and storylines that end up side-lined in favor of a big shoot-out—which doesn’t really say much about what the pandemic was really all about and how it affected us. Still, this movie feels like it was made to be polarizing and how you feel about it will come down to personal preference. Aster takes on so many different ideas and tones in this movie that it’s bound to find an audience who appreciates it for its madcap energy. I respect his ambition and his vision, but I was still left wanting more.