Set in the fraught early days of the pandemic and riding the emotional chaos of the Black Lives Matter protests and some ever hardening culture wars, Eddington revolves around a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and a progressive mayor (Pedro Pascal) in Eddington, New Mexico in May 2020 as lockdown tensions rise and misinformation swirls.
This premise have been a fertile narrative canvas with themes that are ever so topical still but instead of insight, we get a conveyor belt of vaguely “edgy” jokes that feel written to elicit some smug chuckles from A24 bros. The targets are obvious, the punchlines toothless, and the whole affair reeks of that particular brand of ironic detachment without actually ever daring any truly controversial or bold narrative development that might challenge the audience.
Relaying these charged times, the director offers no compelling perspective, more interested in poking fun at the excess of "both sides", from some of the most ridiculous and seemingly arbitrary lockdown rules to the brain rot of conspiracy theorists. It all feels very hollow and cynical, there is no empathy and human curiosity to delve into the reasons why everyone lost the plot a bit in these unprecedented times. Talking at the press conference the day after the screening, the director went into a "can we not all get on" tirade that only made the film's "message" or lack of worse in retrospect.
Phoenix’s sheriff is an especially baffling creation, a poorly defined character context whose sole aim is to provoke liberals by not wearing a mask indoor and the actor looks lost trying to grapple with it. Pedro Pascal is barely given any scenes and and only Emma Stone, in a frustratingly brief role, manages to carve out something real giving her character some depth, a little bit of mystery even and is the only one to actually feel like a real character as opposed to a statement of intention. Her scenes carry a flicker of humanity and tension, precisely what the rest of the film lacks.
In its final act the film abandons whatever half-hearted social critique it had going and lunges into a violent, quasi-surreal farce like a cheap Coen brothers imitation. As uneven as Ari Aster's previous film Beau is Afraid it, at least it has some ambitions and a real vision. In comparison, Eddington is a tedious, smug and empty spectacle of ironic smirks, a bloated, self-indulgent misfire.
Review by Laurent de Alberti.
Star rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Official Selection, In Competition
Eddington. Directed by Ari Aster. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone...
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