Director: Ari Aster
Writer: Ari Aster
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone
Synopsis: In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.
When Beau is Afraid was released two years ago, I called Ari Aster a master manipulator—his eerily prescient grip on the audience felt like a cinematic Ludovico technique, eyes pried open à la A Clockwork Orange. Many directors wish they could have these kinds of powers of deceiving and capturing the audience; Aster and his jet-black comedic panderings are an inseparable pair and one of a kind. With each feature, the Midsommar director has been getting more provocative and darker, the fine line between stirring and bothersome, self-indulgence and introspective, being walked on a tightrope hanging a hundred feet above ground. It feels that during his latest walk, Aster managed to slip, unfortunately, for the first time, falling into the side of being groan-inducing and pompous.
Eddington (screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival), a western-dark comedy hybrid about the pandemic and the hysteria that ensued during it, socially, psychologically, and politically, is both precise in its analysis of what occurred during those dark times in the early 2020s and a complete farce. It is something I didn’t know was possible to achieve, yet, Aster, the unique filmmaker he is, managed to do it. With Beau is Afraid, he teamed up with Joaquin Phoenix to create the definitive film about Freud’s Oedipus Complex, where dread, disappointment, and overbearing mothers were just the tip of the surrealistic iceberg. Aster sets out to do the same with Eddington, but with the effects of the pandemic in America.
Phoenix switches from the anxious and ever-suffering Beau Wasserman to County Sheriff Joe Cross, who encapsulates everything that went wrong at the time. The two films are born from the director’s greatest fears. Aster stated in the post-premiere press conference in Cannes that he’d written Eddington in fear, worried about what America has become. Similar to Beau is Afraid, where he took his nightmares and anxieties to craft a film he has longed to make. However, some aspects deviate from his previous—the provocation and indulgence. Beau contains such in spaces (even I, a fan of said movie, admits it), yet it is part of the experience rather than the whole thing. His latest film is provocation and indulgence, becoming a rather frustrating watch, with Aster feeling the unnecessary need to one-up himself.
Set in the fictional town of Eddington, home to nearly 2,400 people, in May 2020, Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross is introduced to us by being pulled over by Officer Butterfly Jiminez (William Belleau) for entering his jurisdiction without a face mask. Joe says that, because of his asthma, he can’t breathe with his mask on. This leads to a bad example and places him at odds with the kind, compliant mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is up for re-election in the coming elections. Sheriff Joe Cross and Mayor Ted Garcia clash heads repeatedly during the film’s runtime, much like the cowboys and outlaws in classic Westerns do to build tension for a final shootout, which Eddington slowly builds towards in unconventional, absurdist ways.
This is no High Noon or The Searchers; this is Ari Aster’s version of a Western, so don’t expect the classic tropes and expect twist, turns, and shrewd violence. Heroes and villains are difficult to find here, as you sympathize with none of the characters, nor does Aster want you to do so. A new AI data center is one of Ted’s moves to polish his re-election. He believes it will help Eddington, both the town and its people, but many residents are against it. The data center will consume many of their limited resources, especially since a lengthy drought has minimized the water supply in the desert town. This is one of the first moves that makes the people go against Ted and his policies.
After other circumstances arise, Joe runs against Garcia for mayor, causing mayhem in this political debate. From the mention of AI and the pandemic setting, the film is rooted in America’s urgent contemporary anxieties. While the idea of Eddington might have occurred to Aster a while ago, the film’s aim has changed through the years and become a different project overall, commenting on everything that has happened (and is occurring) in the U.S. at this very moment. There’s a bit of everything here—an overstuffed encapsulation of America—and that’s part of the problem. Aster talks about gun-control debates, Black Lives Matter protests, Antifa, TikTok absurdities, and media hysteria. The result is less a coherent satire than thematic mush—thrown into a mincer and drained of its thematic nutritional value.
The experience changes from an engaging portrait to a hindrance in a matter of minutes; it removes the satire and reaches a level of farcical behavior that includes some funny gags here and there, but, ultimately, lacks the inward-looking element that Beau is Afraid, even with its pretension and baggage, had in its core. A series of side characters–Emma Stone’s Louise, Joe’s desperate wife, and Austin Butler’s cult-leader Vernon, both of whom get limited screen time–provide the film with some of its best moments and appear on screen to heighten the aforementioned scenarios and dilemmas. Aster delves with precision into the pandemic hysteria and political madness, taking digs at the drowning sensation we all felt inside our rooms. At the same time, everything collapsed, staring out the window and seeing the world burst into flames.
In such moments, you get the stress and fear that you had five years ago. However, the palpable feeling dissipates when placed alongside the multiple plot strands. And even so, to this point, there have been so many films, comedy specials, SNL sketches, podcasts, and more about that time and place that you don’t get anything from Eddington. Maybe Ari Aster’s point is that, after five years, we have remained the same, yet each time, America feels more like a farce than a properly running country. Politicians remain ignorant and keep on making things worse. The world is crumbling as the rich and powerful get their way. Aster’s nightmares are turning into a reality. But he does not provide a witty enough satirical conceptualization in the mise-en-scène, dedicating his time to building exaggeration rather than thoughtfulness or humanity. You can feel Aster’s anger and urgency in interviews, but on screen, that passion translates into excess, not insight.
