Let's see if I can write this review without getting too political.
Ari Aster's latest film, "Eddington" reminds me an awful lot of his last one, "Beau is Afraid." Not only is Joaquin Phoenix returning to star as Sheriff Joe Cross, but the whole film takes place in a heightened version of reality where Joe's deepest fears and insecurities seem to be amplified. However, this time the film's reality is closer to our own. "Eddington" takes place in a small New Mexico town in 2020, right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
This isn't the first film to try and address the conspiracy and paranoia that ran rampant in the United States thanks to the pandemic and social media, but this is probably the most ambitious in its scope to date. A dark satire of the culture wars and political polarization, Aster uses "Eddington" to take aim at just about everybody. Joe refuses to wear a mask, for reasons he can't ever seem to articulate, but the dislike seems to be tied to his distrust of the government, embodied by Eddington's mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Buzzword-spouting Ted is the ex-boyfriend of Joe's mentally fragile, perpetually ailing wife Louise (Emma Stone). After a few clashes with Ted, Joe decides to run for mayor himself, enlisting the help of his underlings Guy (Luke Grimes) and Michael (Michael Ward), the only black officer in town. Tensions escalate when the BLM protests hit Eddington, led by Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), a social justice influencer. Conspiracy theories are everywhere, many of them being parroted by Joe's hostile mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell), and a cult leader, Vernon Peak (Austin Butler), who Louise becomes infatuated with.
The first half of the film is everything that Aster does well - putting together these incredibly anxiety-ridden scenarios, ratcheting up the tension scene by scene, and creating plenty of terrible people for us to alternately laugh at and despair of. I love all the little details of the worldbuilding, from hardly anybody wearing a mask correctly, to somebody always filming in every public space, to the new data center Ted is trying to get built having a ridiculous name that is both a Reddit and a "Pokemon" reference. I could argue that Ari Aster is unfairly mean to the BLM protesters, who are a bunch of annoying white kids whose idea of discourse amounts to a lot of self-flagellation and unhelpful theatrics, except that the film goes on to prove them mostly right. I really enjoyed when Joe started taking matters into his own hands, revealing his own biases and blind spots. However, this is where "Eddington" started going off the rails.
Up until the third act I was on board with how Aster was treating the politics - trying to represent all viewpoints and concerns, showing the absurdity of everyone's behavior, and taking the opportunity to clap back against some of the most ridiculous antics. However, past a certain point he tips completely over into conspiracy fantasy in order to raise the stakes and set up a big action finale. This derails the more interesting examination of Joe as an increasingly troubled, morally compromised man, and sticks us in pure genre territory for almost the entirety of the rest of the film. The big action finale also winds up being kind of a dud, because the cinematography becomes unreasonably dark and difficult to see. Sorry Darius Khondji, but I had to read the Wikipedia summary afterwards to figure out what happened. "Eddington" is also very long in the tooth at 149 minutes. It's not as long as "Beau is Afraid," but there are a lot of unnecessary digressions and rambly dialogue-heavy scenes that wore on my patience. And a few good retorts aside ("You're white!"), the pitch black humor wasn't to my taste.
Still, I admire what Ari Aster accomplished here, successfully addressing difficult material and blending satire, paranoid thriller, and character study. The use of social media as a storytelling device is handled very well. The assembled cast is impressive all around, with Joaquin Phoenix continuing his streak of playing hapless, incoherent men struggling in vain against an uncaring universe. Joe is a fairly sympathetic picture of someone who falls prey to conspiratorial thinking and develops a persecution complex, though his flaws are always very clear and his comeuppance is well deserved. I also want to highlight a few performers new to me, including Michael Ward, Amelie Hoeferle, and William Belleau as a Pueblo officer who shows up in the second half.
However, with current events unfolding the way that they are, "Eddington" can't help feeling premature as an examination of the COVID era. The more I think about some of its treatment of the various players, the more tone deaf the film comes across, even if you take all the events that unfold as being from Joe's very subjective and biased point of view. The shaky existential underpinnings of "Eddington" don't help matters, leaving too much open to interpretation. I expect that that the conspiracy theorists will inevitably totally misread and embrace the film's narrow, cynical POV as justification for their own beliefs, instead of taking its timely warnings to heart.
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