The action takes place at the beginning of tha pandemic, namely in the year 2000. Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is the Latin mayor of the fictional country of Eddington, a small town in the arid flatlands of New Mexico. He’s a popular politician seeking reelection. His campaigning platform consists basically of continuity, without making any particularly fiery ideological statements. Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phioenix) decides to join the race as his biggest opponent. The justice officer indeed gets easily crossed: he’s a trigger happy anti-vaxxer and conspiracy terrorist. He confronts the entire population and indeed a state mandate by not wearing a mask. Despite purporting to uphold the law, he finds most pleasure in breaking it.
With a massive duration of nearly two hours and a half, Eddington sets out to dissect and to mock the rhetoric and the obsessions of the extreme ends of the American left and right without taking sides. Aster’s political ambiguity is not particularly new. The Jewish filmmaker has never expressed any views or opinions on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, remaining firmly neutral instead. His false equivalences thus come as no surprise.
Despite no allusions to the two main political parties of the United States, even a toddler can join the dots. Garcia represents the Democrats, while Cross is a proxy for the Republicans. It is no coincidence that their campaigns posters are splashed in blue and red, respectively. Both sides are portrayed as goofy and superficial. The left is embodied by a group of Black Lives Matter activists (George Floyd was murdered in May that year), particularly their leader Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle). She reads Angela Davis, and confronts black police officer Michael (Micheal Ward) with a discourse he can barely comprehend. Brian (Cameron Mann) joins the group primarily because he wants to lay Sarah, and is soon parroting Davis to his perplexed parents. Both Sarah and Brian ascertain that they are on “stolen land” and that they don’t have the “right to speech” because of their white privilege. The self-defeating contradiction speaks for itself. There is no doubt that Aster intends to ridicule their ready-made disquisitions.
The 38-year-old director also seeks to deride the right wing. The entire film is dotted with the most absurd conspiracy theories: masks encourage child snatching, vaccines were never tested, as well as the most bizarrely confected “facts” and figures. There is a connection between conspiracy and coincidence, right wing pundits immediately capitalising on numeric serendipities. Cross’s campaign is splashed with a large “YOUR BEING MANIPULATED” sign, suggesting a connection between conspiracy leanings and poor grammar/education.
What started out as a political comedy turns into a crime comedy roughly halfway through the story, before lapsing into banal bang-bang and showcasing the gruesome violence for which Aster is best remembered. The decapitation of Hereditary (2018) and the grisly mountain suicides of Midsommar (2019) give way to bodies blown into pieces and a skull cracked open by a knife. There is little doubt that Aster has set out to poke fun at political violence. Sadly, he falls in the trap he set out to avoid, and ends up celebrating it. Viewers are instructed to change their allegiance at least twice during the film, as our leads behave badly, only to be outshone by an even more unscrupulous and violent nemesis.
The outcome is unessential and unfunny. A movie with large pretences and few achievements, other than the eye-popping murders and the flat jokes.
Eddington premiered in the Official Competition of the 78th Festival de Cannes, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas on Friday, August 22nd. On VoD on Monday, November 17th.
