Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal star in the controversial drama opening July 18 in theaters nationwide.
Eddington, New Mexico. It was such a quiet, friendly town. But in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began — triggering lockdowns, masking, and six-foot separations — some folks went … well, a little crazy.
That’s the intriguing premise of Eddington, an engrossing and unsettling new film described by writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary) as a modern-day western where everyone in the fictional town of the title is “very media-literate.” Which, all things considered, maybe isn’t such a good thing.
Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line) stars as Joe Cross, the local sheriff who impulsively decides to run for mayor right in the middle of the pandemic partly because he thinks mandated masking is an infringement on his personal freedom — and partly because of his long-standing animosity toward the incumbent, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).
Years earlier, Ted dated Louise (Emma Stone), Joe’s emotionally fragile wife, and Joe can’t help suspecting their relationship went past the hand-holding stage. But he’s not quite as paranoid — initially, at least — as his mother-in-law, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), who obsessively scours the internet for “proof” to back up her many and varied conspiracy theories and prints out the most incendiary articles for her daughter and son-in-law to read. They’re something of a captive audience for Dawn — she’s living with them during the lockdown.
Other folks in town — especially, but not exclusively, the impressionable (and, yes, aimless) young people — are monitoring their laptops and cellphones for news about the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis and the Black Lives Matter protests all over America. A motley crew of teens and older “activists” launch their own BLM protests in Eddington. And while their hearts may be in the right place, maybe, just maybe, they’re engaging in performative acts because there’s really nothing more interesting to do.
Joe also is monitoring the local and national protests, as are his deputies, Guy (C&I reader favorite Luke Grimes) and Michael (Micheal O’Connell), and wondering whether his department will have the chance to use their nifty riot gear. Trouble is, Joe and his men are singularly awkward when it comes to keeping the peace in a peaceful manner. And that, unfortunately, ramps up Joe’s simmering rage even more.
There are other complications. Many locals are greatly pleased that a tech giant named solidgoldmagikarp plans to construct a massive data center just outside of town. But other Eddingtonites complain the new center will be a drain on water and other resources. Joe appears ambivalent about the relentless incursion of progress in his small town and insists that he and others should work toward restoring traditional values of mutual respect and neighborliness. On the other hand, he’s quick to embrace social media for his mayoral campaign.
And whenever else it may serve his purpose.
To paraphrase the advertising tagline for director Tony Richardson’s 1965 film adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel The Loved One, Eddington is a movie with something to offend everyone. And that’s a large part of what makes it so discomfortingly but undeniably exhilarating.
As Austin-based critic Rocco T. Thompson notes on the Slant website: “Eddington is especially pointed in the way that it views our online connectedness as a social cancer rather than an engine for progress. Aster asserts that, even in spite of increasing awareness of social media as a form of self-surveillance, people are behaving worse than ever before, and, in the director’s version of 2020, there are no good-faith actors. Everything across the spectrum of politics and rationality, from support for the Black Lives Matter protests to the need to speak out against satanic cabals of child-traffickers, is exposed as coming from a mercenary desire or unresolved trauma rather than stated principles or genuine conviction.”
Nobody gets off easy here.
“Those seeking a political screed that toes the Democratic party line or crusades against the supposed sins of woke culture should look elsewhere,” Thompson says. “Aster is more interested in the ugly urges and personal dramas that define our outlook and deform us into the worst versions of ourselves for consumption on the nightly news or audiences of millions on TikTok.”
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Ari Aster about Eddington. Here are some highlights from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
The Lockdown as a Cultural Inflection Point
Cowboys & Indians: Eddington has been described by many people — including yourself — as a western. But wouldn’t you say it’s also a western, a film noir, and a ’70s paranoid thriller all bunched together in one awesome package?
Ari Aster: Sure. I would certainly say paranoid thriller — but I would say a 2020s paranoid thriller. Sort of an update on maybe the 1970s paranoid thriller, given that — I mean, obviously I’m being literal here — it’s set in the 2020s. But it’s also inflected by a modern realism, which is another way of saying that all the characters in the film are living on the internet. And so I think it is changed by that new reality and that fracturing of reality.
C&I: You have referred to the COVID lockdown as sort of an inflection point. Maybe not the beginning or end of something, but definitely a turning point. During the lockdown, maybe we were left alone with our thoughts too much? And maybe being left alone with your thoughts is the equivalent of hanging out with bad company?
Aster: Yeah, well, I think we’re all kind of living in our heads these days. And I think at that time, yes, we were living with our own thoughts. But we were also having our thoughts guided. And we’re all kind of living in a system right now that’s based on feedback — which is another way of saying that we are kind of stuck in place. There’s a stasis and a constant regurgitation and feeding on the same stuff.
The Role of Video and Surveillance
C&I: Just about everybody in your movie is recording on their phones — everything from an impromptu campaign speech to a riot or a mini-riot. Are we in an age now where it isn’t considered real unless it’s captured on video?
Aster: Yeah, I think we’re really living in a very weird time, and the human capacity for adaptation is amazing. So anything becomes normal once it becomes ambient. We make plans now so that we can memorialize anything and turn it into a memory, and that alone changes how we engage with the world. And I think a big part of this movie is about how the virtual makes reality fake. All of these people — they’re always on their phones, they’re sort of receiving these messages from this other realm. And that changes us.
Truth, Mistrust, and Media in the Internet Age
C&I: Parallel to what’s going on in the town of Eddington, you depict the national reaction to the George Floyd killing, and how that eventually elicits reactions from your characters. Now, there’s a case where people might not have believed that happened had it not been captured on video. So I guess you could make the argument that there are some things you should want captured on video. On the other hand, there are other times you should be very wary of where a video came from — or who might have manipulated it.
Aster: That’s absolutely right. And even at the time, despite the video evidence, people found ways to have arguments about whether that was murder or not. And I would say that was a more innocent time, because it came before AI-generated imagery and audio and video. This age of distrust that we’re living in just became much, much more dangerous because we are now in a place where nothing we see online is to be trusted. And I don’t know what that’s going to do to us, given the fact that we do live online — which is something that began once we could carry it on our person. But, yeah. Can you imagine what that would’ve been like if [the George Floyd video] surfaced today?
C&I: Exactly. You would not be able to get many people to believe it was real — that it wasn’t AI.
Aster: Yeah.
“I think we’re really living in a very weird time, and the human capacity for adaptation is amazing.” — Eddington writer-director Ai Aster
A Western for the Digital Age
C&I: Why was it important for this story to be told within the confines of a small town — and specifically a Western small town?
Aster: Well, I’m from New Mexico. I’ve always wanted to make a film in New Mexico, or just to make a film about the Southwest. It’s the region that I know best, and that landscape kind of befits that genre. But I also find the western very interesting because it’s sort of the national genre. It’s about the building of America. It’s about law versus lawlessness. It’s about borders.
And it felt appropriate to this moment because we’re sort of living through the collapse of something, and we’re also on the cusp of something. So we’re standing on the edge of a new frontier. And I was interested in updating the genre for this moment.
Isolation and Escalation
C&I: Your movie suggests that these fissures in our society were already there before the lockdown started, before COVID started. But again, during the lockdown, many of us were cut off from day-to-day activities and left alone with ourselves — and the internet. Would you agree that maybe COVID brought out the worst in many of us?
Aster: Absolutely. I think COVID brought out the worst in many of us. I think it created a space for some very cynical, manipulative people to provide answers to very urgent questions. And I think a lot of charlatans seized the moment, and it was a moment where we were all very lost. We all knew something very bad was happening — something was wrong. And given the nature of the internet and these algorithms we’ve been kind of locked into, everybody kind of had a different answer as to what that thing was.
And that’s what this movie is about. It’s about a bunch of people who are living in a different reality from their neighbor. And so it’s about a community that is not a community. It’s people living in the same rooms but not on the same plane. And it’s about what happens when those people start to bump up against each other. And it’s about the logic that comes out of that, that grips them all and pushes them deeper into their paranoia and conviction. And about how that leads to violence.
Playing With Expectations
C&I: One of the many things that intrigued me about this film is — well, I guess it would not be accurate to call them fake-outs, but there are moments where you think, OK, we’re being set up for something here, and then it either doesn’t pay off or doesn’t pay off the way you expect it to. I don’t want to give any spoilers here, but like the moment when somebody realizes they recognize someone else’s handwriting. The moment when somebody coughs for the first time while disposing of an inconvenient corpse. Or when there’s a fleeting mention of murder hornets. Were you consciously thinking something like, OK, I’m putting this here, and people are going to think it’s going to lead to something else, but this isn’t Chekhov’s gun?
Aster: Chekhov is somebody I’m always thinking about, because I think what’s brilliant about Chekhov is that he’ll set up a familiar situation and he’ll end that story the way that life tends to go. So he’s sort of the king of — well, I’m not sure if it’s the anticlimax or the ambiguous climax, but he leaves you with more complications than where you began.
I find genres very interesting because people come in with expectations. It’s a set language that everybody understands, and I find it fun to sort of upend those things — or maybe leave a question hanging. I find that, just as a viewer, more interesting. And so it’s what I try to do in my work. This is a movie about disconnected realities, and we have many different characters who are on very different paths, and so it’s kind of deliberately unresolved in a lot of different ways.
The Film Belongs to the Audience Now
C&I: One last question. I’ve talked about this with directors ranging from Clint Eastwood to Alan Rudolph — the idea that it’s your movie until the first time you show it to an audience. And then it’s their movie. They decide who really did what, who really lived happily ever after, and so on. I’ve already read some interpretations of your movie that are kind of counter to mine. Like — again, I’m trying to avoid spoilers — who should we believe: Ted or Joe, regarding an incident in the past? Are you amused by this? Are you looking at some reviews or analysis and going, “Boy, they got that one wrong”? Or, “Well, yeah, but I can see how they may have thought that”?
Aster: I would be more amused if I weren’t so scared about the path we’re on. I’m kind of living in a state of dread right now. I wrote the script in a state of dread. I made the film in a state of dread. And now I’m releasing it into a world that I think is kind of gripped by dread, and I’m with them. But Eddington is a film that’s about polarization, and we were expecting a polarized response. The worst thing that we could get on a film like this would be a shrug.
But it is true that whenever you release a film, it leaves you. And it’s always a very disorienting experience for me. No matter how the film is received — whether it’s widely embraced or met with maybe a more complicated response — there’s something heartbreaking about it. It leaves you, because for so long you’re just working with your collaborators and you’re kind of living in the world of the film, and you’re getting it as close as you can to what feels just right. And then it leaves you, and it’s no longer yours.
At this point, that’s a platitude. Every filmmaker has said this in one way or another. But it is true. It’s not mine anymore. It’s yours.
