Film Review: Ari Aster Fills ‘Eddington’ with Too Many of His Worst Impulses

I’m starting to think that Ari Aster might just not be for me. He may simply be joining Wes Anderson in that pool of filmmakers whose work largely bounces off of me. I say this since, aside from Midsommar, I’m always on the lower end with his films. Hereditary is good, not great, while Beau is Afraid (as I got into here), is one of the more unwatchable movies to come out in the past decade. So, even with that, I went into Eddington with an open mind. The cast is great, I’m a sucker for a political story. The elements are here for it to work, and for about the first third of the flick, it largely did. Then, things began to take a turn, and they just kept sinking lower and lower. By the end, I was mostly just annoyed by what I’d seen. There’s some good here, but there’s plenty of bad, too. The nicest thing I can say without any reservation? This isn’t Beau is Afraid.

Eddington has Aster sharing all of his impulses and thoughts with us again, instead of this time, the neurosis isn’t centered on anxiety in general, but on COVID-era political ones. For a little bit, it works, too, since there’s no shortage of targets to be had in that regard, no matter your politics. Then, he ops to make a narrative choice that I saw coming, yet hoped would be avoided. It’s obvious and simplistic, something a film with less on its mind would do. From there, things just devolve, as subplot after subplot come in, consistently drawing focus away from any of what we were supposed to care about previously. By the time the credits roll, after two and a half hours, you’re just exhausted and happy for the release of an ending. By making a western with some comedic elements, Aster has tried something new, though with similarly frustrating results.

In May of 2020, the town of Eddington, New Mexico, is about to become a powder keg. Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) the sheriff of the small town is at loggerheads with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Not only do they disagree with the COVID mask mandates instituted by the Governor, with Joe claiming his asthma prevents him from masking, he believes that Ted took advantage of his wife Louise (Emma Stone) when she was younger. Louise’s conspiracy theory nut mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell) lives with her and Joe, blathering on day and night about all manner of 2020 lunacies. When one particular encounter between Joe and Ted gets filmed and some of the more conservative townsfolk show support to Joe, he impetuously launches a campaign to unseat the incumbent Mayor.

As the standoff between Joe and Ted escalates, the town begins turning against each other, with the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as a high profile murder, taking center stage. While Joe is tasked with solving the crime, all while running his election campaign, his world continuously becomes more and more surreal. Louise is falling under the spell of cult leader Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), Eddington is getting more and more radical, and some mysterious troublemakers have arrived on the scene. In short, everything people screamed about in May of 2020 is happening in the town, all at once.

Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal are very good here, even though the screenplay rarely works in their best interests. Phoenix is very much the central player and does manage to show some of the sympathetic elements of his character. To be sure, he’s wrong about a lot (unless you’re particularly conservative, in one interest) and not particularly bright, but until he goes too far, you kind of root for him. The back end of the film takes that away, even though he takes even more of a center stage, which just makes that part all the more of a slog. Pascal makes the most of his role, which never quite gets to the next level. The few scenes of him without Phoenix show some fascinating sides to his character, though Aster doesn’t explore that much. Deirdre O’Connell ends up being one of the more interesting characters by the end, which you never would guess at the outset, though she’s offscreen for big chunks as well. Austin Butler and Emma Stone are wasted, so just consider them mostly cameos. Supporting players here include William Belleau, Clifton Collins Jr., Matt Gomez Hidaka, Luke Grimes, Amélie Hoeferle, Micheal Ward (done dirty by his subplot), and more. Of this group, only really Grimes and Ward get much to do, though the script reduces them to the least interesting section of the movie.

Writer/director Ari Aster makes films that only he would be making, that much is undeniable. The thing is, between this and Beau is Afraid, he’s begun indulging in all of his worst filmmaking impulses. Both movies are bloated, pretentious yet also ridiculous, and indulgent. The more grounded satire here does work at times, though for every legitimately funny moment Eddington has, there’s another satirical point that just falls flat. The film runs about a half hour too long, doesn’t know when to end, and once it reaches its final scenes, it raises far more questions than it has any interest in even pretending to answer. Head scratching will be in abundance when the credits roll, and this is coming as the follow-up from an auteur (which he most certainly is) who brought in a giant penis monster to the third act of his last effort.

Eddington is better than Beau is Afraid, to be sure, though I’m also very much damning with faint praise. That being said, I do understand how the specificity of his prior film could really hit with some folks. Here, I think most people won’t want to live 2020 over again. It’s not a COVID film in the sense of it being shot on Zoom, and for that we can all praise the cinema gods, but it evokes all of the most frustrating feelings of that time. It’s intentional by Aster, of course, but it doesn’t make for a satisfying motion picture. Any chance he’ll try a horror movie again? Please?

SCORE: ★★