I like all of Ari Aster’s movies, but I have never wanted to watch any of them a second time, until Eddington. Aster’s work is unnerving and often unpleasant to watch (by design, I believe). He is capable of striking a tone in his work that I don’t want to revisit even though I can appreciate how effective it is. When I saw the first trailer for his Covid film, Eddington, I assumed it would be more of the same: fascinating and thought-provoking, but the recreation of the shitshow the world devolved into at the time (and still) would be miserable to sit through. But a funny thing happened as the credits rolled on Eddington: I wanted to immediately watch it again.
So what, right? A movie doesn’t have to be rewatchable to be good, but for someone like me, it’s a big deal. If a film creates a story or world that I want to visit again and again, then the filmmakers have done something right.
It’s not that the world of Eddington is one I want to live in. For one thing, we all lived through that world and continue to do so. But it’s such an amusing (slight) exaggeration of that time that it makes me feel a little better about the world, even though that does not seem to be the goal of the film. It’s just nice to have this document that sums up our world better than I ever could.
What first drew me into Eddington is the nonstop barrage of shit that comes at Joaquin Phoenix, a lot of which is his own doing. So many things are going on, like a mask mandate, and a tumultuous history with the mayor (Pedro Pascal), and a QAnon-type cult leader (Austin Butler) recruiting his wife (Emma Stone), and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the constant conflict with the Native American police, and the data center a shadowy corporation wants to build, and fucking social media, and fuck! Before anyone can even get all the details of the newest issue, another one pops up. It’s whac-a-mole, but with human suffering and mental illness.
Phoenix’s character and performance holds it all together, even though he can’t hold anything together. He never really explodes when you think he might, and he has this oddly laid back line delivery that always feels accurately defeated. He can’t seem to finish his thoughts and sentences without drifting into other thoughts and sentences. He is very much the personification of doomscrolling. It’s a snippet about one issue, then it’s off to the next before you can even form a thought about the previous one. Most of the other characters are the opposite, but no less troubled. They are laser-focused on one issue and blind to all others.
This has been happening for a long time, but the pandemic seemed to fasttrack our psychological demise as a species. Aster’s ability to recreate this isn’t all that impressive. It’s not that hard to throw a bunch of crazy shit at a character, especially when a lot of it really happened. What makes Eddington special is that it’s a fun watch.
Though I am guilty of doomscrolling and feeling overwhelmed by the world at large like anyone else, I feel like I’ve done a decent job of being mindful of it from time to time and stepping away from it. Watching movies and writing meandering articles about them helps. And being a parent and no longer dealing with any kind of shutdown or anything has kept me distracted enough to think the world has reached some form of normal, or at least I’ve been conditioned enough to find it normal.
So when I see this version of 2020 boiled down into one fucked-up small town that can also serve as a reminder of the country’s fucked up history with the native population, it’s oddly funny and comforting. Yeah, shit’s bad, but it’s not Eddington bad. And like Ed Tom tells Wendell in No Country for Old Men about laughing at a gruesome story: “That’s all right. I laugh myself sometimes. Ain’t a whole lot else you can do.”
Finding the humor in Eddington is the key to enjoying it. There is no real message to the film; at least, I didn’t come away with a message aside from: we’re fucked. If you go into this wanting to find your opinions on all the polarizing issues of the time vindicated, then you’ll end up more annoyed than entertained. Everyone comes across as a bit crazy here, and yes, just calling everyone crazy is a false equivalency. But if you’re looking honestly at the world in a condensed form like a movie, then people, even if they are mostly right, are going to look crazy.
This movie is not a condemnation of mask mandates or BLM protests or QAnon conspiracy theories, but it’s not an endorsement of them, either. Any major social issue is going to be two-sided, and each side will have people who take things too far. Of course, there are degrees to this. A person wearing a mask for a Zoom meeting is taking things too far, but it’s not hurting anyone; but a person who decides to take a rifle to a protest in the hopes of possibly legally shooting someone sure as fuck is.
Eddington isn’t about which side is worse or “right” or anything like that. We have our algorithms to feed us content to tell us we’re right. This is a movie that looks at that boiling point in our history and says, “Fuck it, let’s at least have a little fun with this.” Let’s have some silly, stupid people yell at each other and make a mess of their world, and let’s finish it all off with a big action set piece.
At one point, Phoenix tells an underling, “Just don’t make me think. Post it.” It’s a great line that sums up social media, and the internet in general, but it also encapsulated my viewing experience. Whether it’s trying to or not, Eddington didn’t make me think about any of the specific issues it portrays. It just gave me the world at large, and at that distance, it became entertaining instead of disheartening. I never would have pegged Aster as the filmmaker to accomplish that, but he did, and I plan on watching Eddington a third time soon.
Random Thoughts
I feel like this whole article consisted of my random thoughts, but I’ll add a few strays here, I guess.
“My job is to sit down and listen, which is what I plan to do after making this speech, which I have no right to make!” As a white dude liberal, this one hit home, but I still find it to be the funniest line in the movie.
Deirdre O’Connell never-ending drone of conspiracy theories makes her a human doomscroll.
Is it lame to use the term “doomscroll”? I’ve only recently used it a few times, and if I’m using a relatively new word, then it probably means it’s lame.
The spelling errors on the campaign materials was a nice touch.
Always nice to Clifton Collins, Jr., even if he is a Covid monster in this.
This makes for a good double feature with Lone Star. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years, and then I stumbled across it on Tubi literally a couple days after watching this. I’m surprised it’s not brought up more as an inspiration or at least a very similar film.
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