Eddington is perhaps the most nuanced and genuinely satirical take on the COVID-19 pandemic and Americans’ response that we will ever see put to film… largely undercut by Ari Aster’s penchant for sensationalism. It is sure to piss off basically everyone on the political spectrum, and I suspect that’s part of the point. The real point, however, is one of opportunistic greed and the corruptive nature of power, one that most Americans can agree on. Which is why I find it a shame that the film shakes off its provocative-yet-grounded roots for a full-on hyperbolic ending. Obviously there will be [spoilers] in this post; if you’ve ever enjoyed an Aster film, I highly recommend seeing it before reading this. Love it or hate it, it is one of the most thought-provoking movies of the year.
The “Whats” vs “Whys” of the COVID-19 Response
I really struggled with Act I of Eddington; the first 45-minutes or so is all about the “whats” of Summer 2020 rather than the “whys.” People are standing 6 feet apart, stores are insisting mask-wearing, people ostracize those who don’t comply. The Black Lives Matter movement arrives at the small town of Eddington before there is obvious police abuse of power and racially-charged violence locally. Sheriff Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) points out the hysteria of the situation, and to me the audience (at first, at least) is meant to somewhat sympathize with his point of view. After all, there are no cases of Covid in Eddington, and some of the measures are presented by the film as extreme and performative.
It’s only in the second act where the “whys” start to creep in, and consequences start coming for Joe Cross and his town. Suddenly the asthmatic Cross catches Covid due to being completely careless about masking. Cross also abuses his station as Sheriff to kill his political rival and frame his black deputy, Michael (Michael Ward) – almost precisely the type of power abuse being protested. Suddenly the “extreme measures” of the first act don’t look so extreme, as they were meant to prevent the exact situation the characters and town now find themselves in.
Unfortunately, this is the dead-end for this particular thematic line, as the film takes a turn for the dramatic (and violent) at this point. It’s a shame though, because I found this to be a nuanced (and far from surface-level) take on the pandemic and police brutality response. Yes, one could make an argument that some parts of the response went too far, but it was in reaction to (and an act of prevention of) dire dangers and injustices. This is a very difficult and specific theme to convey in narrative, and I doubt anyone will be quick to attempt it again.
“The Turn” of Ari Aster Films
I think everyone who has seen this movie has likely seen all of Ari Aster’s filmography (Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau is Afraid). I’ll be including some [spoilers] from each here.
Every Aster movie has what I think of as “the turn,” a moment where the narrative takes an abrupt and dramatic shift of no return. Up until that point, you were watching one movie, and then suddenly you’re in something completely different.
- Hereditary has the most obvious of these; the film starts as an unsettling horror movie, but takes a true shift into grief and the supernatural once Charlie is decapitated.
- Midsommar is disturbing and eerie throughout, but things really take a turn towards violence once an elderly couple are euthanized by walking off a cliff naked.
- Beau is Afraid has a number of candidates, but I’d say the real turn comes late, once Elaine (Parker Posey) dies mid-coital and Beau’s mom is revealed to still be alive.
I would argue that all three of these moments work for those movies; Hereditary and Midsommar are both horror films where things have been very “off” from the get-go; this is just an escalation. And Beau is a surreal fever dream from start to finish, and there’s nothing too wild to break that reality.
Eddington is completely different, however. It’s billed as a neo-western, but the first half of the film is set in a world only barely exaggerated from the actual events of 2020. Cross makes a number of dumb decisions driven by self-righteousness and ego that you could picture a real person making, from running for mayor, to not focusing on his own job, to neglecting, then exploiting, then driving away his wife Louise (Emma Stone). All of these are self-destructive acts that real people do all the time.
The turn in Eddington comes when Cross takes it one step further and murders Mayor Garcia (Pedro Pascal) and his son (Matt Gomez Hidaka). You could argue it’s the murder of the homeless man a scene earlier, but even that seems like something a Cross-like sheriff might be capable of. Those cold-blooded murders, while genuinely shocking, take the film into a much more heightened reality where satire is lost in favor of symbolism.
And the film only becomes more heightened from there. The final shootout between Cross and the “Antifa” false-flaggers is something out of a Tarantino, Coen, or PTA movie. It’s a movie that I would definitely see and enjoy, but it’s a completely different one than the grounded film Eddington has established itself as. Ultimately it discards the “whats and whys of 2020 behavior” in favor of the largest point that Aster intends to make.
Everyone’s an Opportunist (but the wealthy always win)
The theme that recurs again and again in Eddington is one of opportunism. Characters are constantly taking advantage of actual problems of other people, twisting them for their own personal gain. Cross is the most obvious of these; he’ll eschew Covid restrictions in one scene, then ask that Garcia stay six feet away in another. He runs for the mayor’s office and cry “corruption” while ignoring the problems in the sheriff’s office. He’s quick to exploit his wife’s trauma as a way to politically damage his rival without consulting her or, seemingly, even caring whether it’s the truth. He uses the BLM movement to attempt to frame his coworker and friend.
However, nearly every character takes advantage of someone else’s situation in some way. Garcia tries to enforce the states’ mandates, but is a hypocrite in his own gatherings and prone to corruption with regards to the data center in his backyard. Vernon (Austin Butler) is a cult leader who claims to be traumatized seemingly to take advantage of those who actually were abused as children. And of course, the climax comes when the wealthy (presumably someone associated with the data center) take advantage of the genuine fear and anger over COVID and BLM to sow violence in the community and make it easier to accomplish their ends.
Ultimately that’s what the film’s coda is all about as well. Cross’s mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdra O’Connell), who has hated Cross from the beginning, now lives with him in a mansion, taking advantage of the now paraplegic victim of a terrorist attack. She seems to be pulling the strings politically using Cross as a face. But even her conspiracy theories have been completely co-opted, as the biggest of big fish (the investors in the new data center) use Dawn to accomplish their own goals. In the end, Eddington remains roughly in the same shape it was at the start, but now with a giant computing farm poised to suck the natural resources from the community. The system of oppression is so engrained that even protests against it can be twisted to further serve its goals.
While I largely agree with the “opportunist” message that Aster is hammering, I felt let down by Joe Cross’s fate. After spending most of the movie against mask mandates and protests, he both catches COVID and abuses his power as sheriff. And yet… ultimately his fate is decided by a nameless, faceless terrorist group in a hyperbolic shootout that belongs in a screw-ball comedy or large-scale action western. To me, a much more poetic ending would be one where Joe dies (or nearly dies) from COVID complications, having infected the entire town as a superspreader and becoming exactly the “bad cop” he swears he isn’t. This is a much more ironic and earned ending for a character that has sowed his own demise from minute one, and one that is in keeping with how events might plausibly play out in reality.
Eddington is a film with huge ideas and big swings, but ultimately falls short on the whole by pursuing too many of them at once. And yet, it’s still easily one of the most provocative films of the year; I doubt anyone will deny that.
Backseat Directing 