'Eddington' review: Ari Aster's inventive satire plays the pandemic for laughs
Joaquin Phoenix, left, as Joe Cross and Pedro Pascal as Ted Garcia in "Eddington," written and directed by Ari Aster. Credit: A24 Films
PLOT During the pandemic, a feud between small-town officials spirals out of control.
CAST Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal
RATED R (brief but extreme bloodshed)
LENGTH 2:28
WHERE Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE An inventive satire about an infuriating cultural moment.
Would you like to revisit the COVID-19 pandemic? I didn’t think so. If you’re like me, any work of fiction set in that wretched era — be it a movie, series, novel or play — is thoroughly unwelcome. Who wants to reengage with soul-crushing boredom, chronic fear and one of the most hateful political climates in living memory?
I’m stunned, then, to be recommending Ari Aster’s "Eddington," which sucks us right back into 2020. Aster is an artful horror-filmmaker known for his back-to-back traumatizers "Hereditary" (2018) and "Midsommar" (2019), but this is something else entirely: a satirical neo-Western with several helpings of gore. It’s nothing if not original. If you’ve got a taste for the absurd and a strong stomach, "Eddington" might be the first film about the deeply unfunny pandemic that will make you laugh out loud.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the bumbling but stubbornly maskless sheriff of little Eddington, New Mexico (the filmmaker’s home state). It has become the kind of place where a supermarket clerk can deny entry to an unmasked old man and get a storewide round of applause. Appalled, Joe runs for mayor against Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the town’s virtue-signaler-in-chief. But there’s a personal feud here, too, involving Joe’s wife, Louise, an emotionally unstable artist played by an eerily impassive Emma Stone.
As if that weren’t enough, here comes the Black Lives Matter movement, led by a rhetoric-shrieking high schooler named Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle). She’s joined by Brian (Cameron Mann), a lovesick drip who’ll adopt any pose to impress her. Naturally, they’re both white, and so ashamed of it their eyes fill with tears. Joe can barely stand to listen to them. "You can always tell when someone’s learned something new in social studies," he mutters.
"Eddington" is filled with so many fun-house distortions of familiar types (uh-oh, is that you?) that it gradually loses control of its narrative. Austin Butler even shows up as a charismatic cult leader named Vernon Jefferson Peak, an amusing if needless addition. Undaunted, Aster throws in a heinous act by Joe, a shockingly well-funded Antifa (the theories are true!) and a nod to vigilantism (think "Taxi Driver," but with social media), and ends up painting a pretty good picture of an America gone insane. Whatever side of the political fence you’re on, "Eddington" should keep you entertained right up to its blood-soaked, irony-drenched end.
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