Warning: Some Spoilers (But honestly, you won’t notice).
Ari Aster has said that, in a nutshell, Eddington is about a data center being built: one called SolidGoldMagikarp–a very strange phrase that’ll send you down a crypto, conspiracy, astrological wormhole if you search it online, which is honestly not far off the bizarre turn of events of Eddington.
Of course, Eddington isn’t really about that at all, it’s a town feud western like Fistful of Dollars, or RIo Bravo, or Warlock, or (my favourite) They Call Me Trinity. The only difference is that it’s set in Trump’s America. So instead of a band of bandits rolling into town, it’s Antifa. Instead of a crooked mayor selling the town’s land for a pretty penny, it’s Pedro Pascal building a data center. In fact, the best inversion of this trope is the drifter wandering into town. Instead of Clint Eastwood or Terrence Hill, it’s a mangy, rambling hobo (who may be played perfectly by Clifton Collins Jr., but it’s hard to tell). He’s angry, shouting, twitchy menace, but a minor one, yet he sets off the chaotic events of the film.
The chaos follows a handful of characters who come in and out of focus in unexpected ways– like the mother-in-law begins as a background character, but overtakes the wife by the end. The cast has a nice handful of famous faces– Pedro, Emma Stone, and Austin Butler (who’s so perfect in this role, you almost wish he was the protagonist (or antagonist)). Yet everything revolves around Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe Cross, an ineffectual, submissive, and doughy sheriff that’s not far off Phoenix’s Beau in Beau Is Afraid. His acting, as always, is phenomenal, and it’s impossible to see Cross as anything other than a fully-realised person. He’s a shlub. Not all that likeable, he’s no hero, he’s not even good at his job, and he needs a damn hair cut, but he’s not bad. You feel for the guy, and when tensions rise, you want to see him kick some ass and chew bubblegum.
Beau Is Afraid didn’t really deliver on this– the ass-kicking–it’s a great trip, weird and unique, but it’s not satisfying in that elemental, exciting, car crash kind of way. You spend Eddington half hoping it’ll turn out peacefully, despite the odds, and half waiting for that good gun fight. This has that good gun fight. It’s ultra-tense, realtime, and even funny too. It’s gruesome, but in a good way– unlike his other movies, which are gruesome in a horrific way– and it’s too good to spoil.
As much as the movie is about politics, it’s not interested in taking sides. It only wants to capture a hyperreal slice of the American disease– the America of Fox News headlines and crisis. And it gets crazy. More than killing people, there are strange layers of evil coming and and out of focus that keeps you in a perpetual state of skepticism and concern– Epstein-like underground cults are one of many strange elements that snake their way in.
You’re watching a quaint and quirky town get swept up in the chaos of the everything-is-everywhere era of data overload. It’s a six-car pile up that turns into a city-block fireball and you can’t look away. You just stand there, elbow-to-elbow with the people who caused it, watching the flames. In that sense, it’s a masterpiece. A condensed feeling of a time and place that never really existed anywhere except in our minds. It’s one of the few movies that feels like a movie set today, or in the culture of today– isn’t it strange that iPhones are so rarely seen doing anything more than texting or calling in films? The average person spends 4.5 hours on their phone a day, and it isn’t calling.
Despite being a film trying to capture a feeling, there are a few clever thoughts that it leaves you with. For me, I resonated with the idea that even good people can be corrupted by the chaos when they’re surrounded by it. Cross’s deputy Michael is one of the best characters in the film. He’s competent moral, and doesn’t get drawn into the people trying to radicalise him. He just wants to be an officer of the law, to keep the peace. Yet he’s also our protagonist’s deputy, so he’s drawn into the fire and brimstone of American politics, and the reckoning that follows.
Now that’s not to say that I’m the type that gets caught up in all the drama of the modern news cycle. I don’t think that the world’s all that bad, or at least it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, so maybe I’m not the Eddington demographic. But I loved Eddington. I’d like to see it again, and I’d like to see it flourish at the box office. If you’re on the fence about it, it’s the most original film this year, and it’s a spectacle on the big screen. Get some popcorn, put on a cowboy hat, sit down and enjoy the ride. It’s a big scary, silly, fun western in a way that old-timey westerns don’t capture anymore. It’s an event.