Eddington

Writer/director Ari Aster felt it wasn't too early to relive the early days of the COVID pandemic and he wasn't wrong, but this year's EDDINGTON is so unfocused and shambolic I came away from it disappointed and weary.  What a blown opportunity.  The premise of a sheriff and mayor squaring off in a small town as the Coronavirus begins seemed ripe for a potent social and political satire.  If only Aster's eyes hadn't wandered so far.

 

May, 2020. Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is the Sheriff of Eddington, New Mexico.  Clearly conservative, and frustrated by pandemic mandates at the state level.  "There's no COVID here!" he cries when everyone, including Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), tells him to put on his damned mask already.  There's a history between these men that is discussed but never confirmed.  Hearsay rants that Cross will use in his campaign when he decides to run against Garcia in the next election.  Joe will allege that Ted got his wife Louise (Emma Stone) pregnant and forced an abortion twenty years before, when she was only sixteen.  A charge denied by both parties, though aggressively insisted upon by Louise's mother Dawn (Deidre O'Connell)

Meanwhile, the town youth organize Black Lives Matter protests that turn violent and destructive.  And of course constantly record everything with their phones, as when Joe gets rough with a vagrant who disrupts a bar.  

Things will get progressively worse for Joe as EDDINGTON plays on.  Mostly of his own doing.  Honestly, things don't go well for anybody in this grim tale, its small town of a microcosm of the entire country.  The points are there, but not articulated with any nuance. Hammered home.  This is not a particularly smart movie.  Aster crams plenty of 2020 zeitgeist into this dark comedy cum Western, but it's all so tediously rendered, so disorganized.  Nothing is developed to satisfaction.  Plot threads dangle.

I think Aster should've kept the emphasis on Joe vs. Ted, and how COVID engineered their fight. There's a great scene early on, as the men approach each other in a standoff, as if in a Sergio Leone picture.  What should have been the introduction of a tight, intense battle of wits that could've encompassed broader ideas without creating busy, tangential plotting.  Instead, the film introduces so many other elements the film goes off the rails.  Such as the character of Vernon (Austin Butler), a cult leader who becomes a YouTube sensation.  And the entrance of Antifa, here depicted as a very well funded militia that have their own private jet.  Would've been more plausible if they were seen as a disparate, rag tag collective ala the French 75 in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER.   

Joaquin is good, and at least he doesn't mumble this time.   Maybe mugs a bit.  The rest of the cast is adequate.  Pascal, in his twentieth screen appearance this year, is underused.  Stone's role is essentially insignificant and could've been excised without too much disruption.  

Much has been written about the film's third act, when events turn really ugly. I didn't think it worked all that well.  Seemed a bit desperate.  The satire is thick during the film's prologue, but just felt mean spirited rather than truly insightful about an era that perhaps changed society irrevocably.