movie review: eddington

Review by Jeff DeRouen

The question of how to use Covid and the reality of those “lockdown” days in entertainment has plagued the industry and artists since our collective masks came off. How do you portray a miserable time in everyone’s life where each day brought a new catastrophe in the world, a fresh social media battle, and hours of Andrew Cuomo talking out loud to no one on CNN. How do you begin to explore what all of that was and what it means now?

If you’re Ari Aster, one of our greatest living filmmakers, you make Eddington, the story of a tiny town during the Covid epidemic and use that town as an allegory to show us exactly how insane we all really were and, sadly, still are. Aster’s brilliant new movie is hilarious, shocking, and guaranteed to join the ranks of great American satires like Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Altman’s Nashville.

Joaquin Phoenix embodies Joe Cross, the Sherrif, who runs for mayor against his arch enemy and incumbent, Ted Garcia, played pitch perfectly by Pedro Pascal. Sheriff Cross is anti-mask where Mayor Garcia and the majority of folks in Eddington (who are not afraid to shame the maskless in public) want the mandates enforced. Add Black Lives Matter protests and performative white people to the mix and you get a VERY funny movie that no one knows if they should laugh with (you absolutely should).

The movie feels and is shot like a modern western with echoes of legendary director John Ford and action maestro John Woo. After films like Hereditary, Midsommar, and the criminally underseen and appreciated dark comedy masterpiece, Beau is Afraid, Aster has become a master storyteller and changes the stakes of the film constantly.

He keeps us on our toes trying to figure out who’s good and who’s bad or who’s right and who’s wrong: the answer is no one and everyone. The heat under the narrative gets turned up slowly until all the worst parts of ourselves and the conspiracies we believe and promote play out for us in the delightful third act that can only be described as “full blown bat shit”.

We always say, “Hollywood needs to make more original movies” and here is one to support. I absolutely adore Eddington, but I understand it may not be everyone’s bowl of chilli. You may not like it (and that’s ok!) or even understand it, but you will not deny that Eddington is wildly imaginative, unpredictable and, good or bad, will have folks talking – the way good art is supposed to.

And I just want to end this review by mentioning the magnificent Deirdre O’Connel who plays Joe’s mother-in-law. She was recently seen on HBO in a sensational performance as the Penguin’s mother and she does stellar work here as Joe’s mother-in-law, a delusional (maybe?) conspiracy believer. Go see this movie.