{"id":69785,"date":"2025-07-17T11:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T11:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/69785\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T11:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T11:42:09","slug":"eddington-review-joaquin-phoenix-sprays-bullets-and-lies-in-ari-asters-latest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/69785\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Eddington’ review: Joaquin Phoenix sprays bullets and lies in Ari Aster’s latest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ari Aster\u2019s<\/a> \u201cEddington\u201d is such a superb social satire about contemporary America that I want to bury it in the desert for 20 years. More distance will make it easier to laugh.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a modern western set in New Mexico \u2014 Aster\u2019s home state \u2014 where trash blows like tumbleweeds as Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) stalks across the street to confront Eddington\u2019s mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), whom he is campaigning to unseat. It\u2019s May of 2020, that hot and twitchy early stretch of the COVID pandemic when reality seemed to disintegrate, and Joe is ticked off about the new mask mandate. He has asthma, and he can\u2019t understand anyone who has their mouth covered.<\/p>\n

Joe and Ted have old bad blood between them that\u2019s flowed down from Joe\u2019s fragile wife Louise, a.k.a. Rabbit (Emma Stone), a stunted woman-child who stubbornly paints creepy dolls, and his mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O\u2019Connell), a raving conspiracist who believes the Titanic sinking was no accident. Dawn is jazzed to decode the cause of this global shutdown; there\u2019s comfort in believing everything happens for a reason. Her mania proves contagious.<\/p>\n

Bad things are happening in Eddington and have been for decades, not just broken shop windows. Joe wears a white hat and clearly considers himself the story\u2019s hero, although he\u2019s not up to the job. If you squint real hard, you can see his perspective that he\u2019s a champion for the underdog. Joe gets his guts in a twist when a maskless elder is kicked out of the local grocery store as the other shoppers applaud. \u201cPublic shaming,\u201d Joe spits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no COVID in Eddington,\u201d Joe claims in his candidacy announcement video, urging his fellow citizens that \u201cwe need to free our hearts.\u201d His earnestness is comic and sweet and dangerous. You can hear every fact he\u2019s leaving out. His rival\u2019s commercials promote a fantastical utopia where Ted is playing piano on the sidewalk and elbow-bumping more Black people in 15 seconds than we see in the rest of the movie. Ted also swears that permitting a tech behemoth named SolidGoldMagikarp to build a controversial giant data center on the outskirts of the county won\u2019t suck precious resources \u2014 it\u2019ll transform this nowheresville into a hub for jobs. Elections are a measure of public opinion: Which fibber would you trust?<\/p>\n

Danger is coming and like in \u201cHigh Noon,\u201d<\/a> this uneasy town will tear itself apart before it arrives. Aster is so good at scrupulously capturing the tiny, fearful COVID behaviors we\u2019ve done our best to forget that it\u2019s a shame (and a relief) that the script isn\u2019t really about the epidemic. Another disease has infected Eddington: Social media has made everyone brain sick. <\/p>\n

The film is teeming with viral headlines \u2014 serious, frivolous or false \u2014 jumbled together on computer screens screaming for attention in the same all-caps font. (Remember the collective decision that no one had the bandwidth to care about murder hornets<\/a>?) Influencers and phonies and maybe even the occasional real journalist prattle on in the backgrounds of scenes telling people what to think and do, often making things worse. Joe loves his wife dearly. We see him privately watching a YouTuber explain how he can convince droopy Louise to have children. Alas, he spends his nights in their marital bed chastely doomscrolling.<\/p>\n

Every character in \u201cEddington\u201d is lonely and looking for connection. One person\u2019s humiliating nadir comes during a painful tracking shot at an outdoor party where they\u2019re shunned like they have the plague. Phones dominate their interactions: The camera is always there in somebody\u2019s hand, live streaming or recording, flattening life into a reality show and every conversation into a performance.<\/p>\n

The script expands to include Joe\u2019s deputies, aggro Guy (Luke Grimes<\/a>) and Bitcoin-obsessed Michael (Micheal Ward<\/a>), plus a cop from the neighboring tribal reservation, Officer Butterfly Jimenez (William Belleau) and a handful of bored, identity-seeking teens. They\u2019ll all wind up at odds even though they\u2019re united by the shared need to be correct, to have purpose, to belong. When George Floyd is killed six states away, these young do-gooders rush into the streets, excited to have a reason to get together and yell. The protesters aren\u2019t insincere about the cause. But it\u2019s head-scrambling to watch blonde Sarah (Am\u00e9lie Hoeferle) lecture her ex-boyfriend Michael, who is Black and a cop, about how he should feel. Meanwhile Brian (Cameron Mann), who is white and one of the most fascinating characters to track, is so desperate for Sarah\u2019s attention that he delivers a hilarious slogan-addled meltdown: \u201cMy job is to sit down and listen! As soon as I finish this speech! Which I have no right to make!\u201d<\/p>\n

The words come fast and furious and flummoxing. Aster has crowded more pointed zingers and visual gags into each scene than our eyes can take in. His dialogue is laden with vile innuendos \u2014 \u201cdeep state,\u201d \u201csexual predator,\u201d \u201cantifa\u201d \u2014 and can feel like getting pummeled. When a smooth-talking guru named Vernon (Austin Butler<\/a>) slithers into the plot, he regales Joe\u2019s family with an incredulous tale of persecution that, as he admits, \u201csounds insane just to hear coming out of my mouth.\u201d Well, yeah. Aster wants us to feel exhausted sorting fact from fiction.<\/p>\n

The verbal barrage builds to a scene in which Joe and Dawn sputter nonsense at each other in a cross-talking non-conversation where both sound like they\u2019re high on cocaine. They are, quite literally, internet junkies.<\/p>\n

This is the bleakest of black humor. There\u2019s even an actual dumpster fire. Aster\u2019s breakout debut, \u201cHereditary,\u201d<\/a> gave him an overnight pedigree as the princeling of highbrow horror films about trauma. But really, he\u2019s a cringe comedian who exaggerates his anxieties like a tragic clown. Even in \u201cMidsommar,\u201d<\/a> Aster\u2019s most coherent film, his star Florence Pugh<\/a> doesn\u2019t merely cry \u2014 she howls like she could swallow the earth. It wouldn\u2019t be surprising to hear that when Aster catches himself getting maudlin, he forces himself to actively wallow in self-pity until it feels like a joke. Making the tragic ridiculous is a useful tool. (I once got through a breakup by watching \u201cThe Notebook\u201d on repeat.)<\/p>\n

With \u201cBeau Is Afraid,\u201d<\/a> Aster\u2019s previous film with Phoenix, focusing that approach on one man felt too punishing. \u201cEddington\u201d is hysterical group therapy. I suspect that Aster knows that if we read a news article about a guy like Joe, we wouldn\u2019t have any sympathy for him at all. Instead, Aster essentially handcuffs us to Joe\u2019s point of view and sends us off on this tangled and bitterly funny adventure, in which rattling snakes spice up a humming, whining score by the Haxan Cloak<\/a> and Daniel Pemberton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not every plot twist works. Joe\u2019s sharpest pivot is so inward and incomprehensible that the film feels compelled to signpost it by having a passing driver yell, \u201cYou\u2019re going the wrong way!\u201d By the toxic finale, we\u2019re certain only that Phoenix plays pathetic better than anyone these days. From \u201cHer\u201d<\/a> to \u201cJoker\u201d<\/a> to \u201cNapoleon\u201d<\/a> to \u201cInherent Vice,\u201d<\/a> he\u2019s constantly finding new wrinkles in his sad sacks. \u201cEddington\u2019s\u201d design teams have taken care to fill Joe\u2019s home with dreary clutter and outfit him in sagging jeans. By contrast, Pascal\u2019s wealthier Ted is the strutting embodiment of cowboy chic. He\u2019s even selfishly hoarded toilet paper in his fancy adobe estate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s humanistic when \u201cEddington\u201d notes that everyone in town is a bit of a sinner. The problem is that they\u2019re all eager to throw stones and point out what the others are doing wrong to get a quick fix of moral superiority. So many yellow cards get stacked up against everyone that you come to accept that we\u2019re all flawed, but most of us are doing our best.<\/p>\n

Joe isn\u2019t going to make Eddington great again. He never has a handle on any of the conspiracies, and when he grabs a machine gun, he\u2019s got no aim. Aster\u2019s feistiest move is that he refuses to reveal the truth. When you step back at the end to take in the full landscape, you can put most of the story together. (Watch \u201cEddington\u201d once, talk it out over margaritas and then watch it again.) Aster makes the viewer say their theories out loud afterwards, and when you do, you sound just as unhinged as everyone else in the movie. I dig that kind of culpability: a film that doesn\u2019t point sanctimonious fingers but insists we\u2019re all to blame.<\/p>\n

But there are winners and losers and winners who feel like losers and schemers who get away with their misdeeds scot-free. Five years after the events of this movie, we\u2019re still standing in the ashes of the aggrieved. But at least if we\u2019re cackling at ourselves together in the theater, we\u2019re less alone.<\/p>\n

‘Eddington’<\/p>\n

Rated:<\/b> R, for strong violence, some grisly images, language and graphic nudity<\/p>\n

Running time:<\/b> 2 hours, 29 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing:<\/b> In wide release Friday, July 18<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ari Aster\u2019s \u201cEddington\u201d is such a superb social satire about contemporary America that I want to bury it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[49202,5229,29983,5643,1587,49204,19635,48380,1020,49203,47408,8042,33783,3196,7702,1589,27751,9260,49201,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-69785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-aggro-guy","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-ari-aster","11":"tag-arizona","12":"tag-az","13":"tag-bad-thing","14":"tag-disease","15":"tag-eddington","16":"tag-film","17":"tag-home-state","18":"tag-joaquin-phoenix","19":"tag-job","20":"tag-joe","21":"tag-movie","22":"tag-pedro-pascal","23":"tag-phoenix","24":"tag-reality","25":"tag-scene","26":"tag-ted-garcia","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-united-states-of-america","29":"tag-unitedstates","30":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","31":"tag-us","32":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114868397228094753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}