Some of have billed director Ari Aster's Eddington as a Neo-western, possibly because it takes place in a small New Mexican town and hinges on a conflict between the town's sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and its mayor (Pedro Pascal).
Unlike his deputies, Phoenix's Joe Cross wears jeans and a sizable white cowboy hat, a look that suggests cowboy as channeled through central casting. But Eddington seems less a Neo-western than an ambitious, if misguided, attempt to capture the warped essence of current American experience.
To accomplish this, Aster returns to May of 2020, a time of heightened uncertainty and fear. The town of Eddington can't quite adjust to the demands of the recently arrived Covid pandemic.
A trip to the supermarket can set shoppers against one another, spurring conflicts between the masked and unmasked. The sheriff sees such requirements, supported by the mayor, as community-wrecking intrusions that violate personal liberties.
Working in broad, on-the-nose strokes, Aster depicts the fractious nature of a country full of dueling perceptions about what matters. It's arguable that you could get the same impression from 20 minutes of channel switching among cable news outlets, but that doesn't make the observation less disturbing.
Aster, who grew up in New Mexico, populates a mixture of comedy and eruptive tension with a variety of characters. A down-to-earth guy, Sheriff Cross suspects that Mayor Garcia is a pretentious, self-serving liberal. He's not entirely wrong, but he's not entirely right, either.
Cross's world includes his wife Louise (a badly underutilized Emma Stone), a troubled woman who seems to have fallen into lethargic despair. His mother-in-law (Deirdre O'Connell) occupies herself culling conspiracy theories from the internet.
The townsfolk include Brian (Cameron Mann), a teenager who's swept away by the activism of Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), a kid who's animated by the Black Lives Matter frenzy that erupts after the George Floyd shooting. Scenes involving protests draw from a comedy well in which people avidly decry what they know only from online reports and perhaps television news, white kids screaming about white privilege.
Luke Grimes and Michael Ward portray Cross's deputies. The protesters see Ward, who's Black, as a sellout and his colleagues eventually view him with suspicion -- for reasons best discovered in a theater.
Looking compellingly ragged, Austin Butler turns up as a kind of wandering guru who captures Louise's attention and turns her into an acolyte. He rants about the horrors of pedophilia. Everyone seems to have a rant of some sort.
Much of what the movie offers as satire tends to illustrate already-familiar ideas, the main one being that the country has lost its marbles. A homeless alcoholic mumbles his way through the streets, another signal that nothing makes sense.
Upset about a perceived loss of freedom and his wife's resistance to physical contact, Cross decides to run for mayor. He stages meager political rallies that verge on the preposterous. Joe wants to save the town or restore it to a romanticized version of what it once was.
Meanwhile, a corporate invader is planning to build a massive data center outside of town, a sure sign that a digital empire ultimately will conquer all sides -- or something like that.
Aster's filmography includes Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau is Afraid (2023). Phoenix gave a commanding performance in Beau is Afraid. He doesn't disappoint here. Always courageous in his choices, Phoenix finds a character who's equally likable and odious.
It's impossible to write about how this conflict is brought to a boil without spoilers, but I had trouble buying the movie's shift to thriller territory, especially when it began dishing out ample amounts of gunfire and bloodshed.
I think I was supposed to have a strong reaction to Eddington. I was struck by its feverishness, its flirtations with chaos, and its display of wanton absurdity. But Eddington remains sketchy. It loses its way as it spends 148 minutes trying to show a world that has lost its mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment