★★½ (2½ out of 4)
A western set during the Covid-19 pandemic? What’s up with that? We’re used to writer-director Ari Aster dishing out batshit crazy stuff, whether in horror (“Hereditary,” “Midsommer”) or surreal nightmare (“Beau is Afraid”). And Aster hasn’t changed his spots for “Eddington,” now in theaters where it intends to turn heads around six ways from Sunday. Mission accomplished.
Aster’s freak flag flies when Joaquin Phoenix (aces as usual), the Oscar-winning “Joker,” shows up hard-selling law and order as Joe Cross, the sheriff of Eddington, a small fictional town in New Mexico. Joe plans to run for mayor against Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, does he ever rest?), the incumbent who wants to—boo! hiss!—build a data center for artificial intelligence right here in town.
"'Eddington’ filmmaker Ari Aster’s anxieties about himself and a broken world are his stock in trade. His therapy is to laugh them into submission. His gift as an artist is to invite us to join him. Count me in.”
The tension culminates on main street in a thunderbolt of a scene set to Katy Perry’s “Firework” that brings out the bristling best in Phoenix and Pascal. Ted accuses the sheriff of civil disobedience for not wearing a mask in public. And, with attack dog deputies Michael (Michael Ward) and Guy (Luke Grimes) by his side, Joe denounces Ted on video for raping and impregnating his wife, Louise (Emma Stone), and then arranging her abortion.
Nothing but denials from Louise, who’s taken up with a sleazy cult leader (Austin Butler, acting below his pay grade). Louise would take the title as the film’s most unhinged character (she crafts creepy dolls) until her mother, Dawn (Deidre O’Connell), spouts conspiracy theories about the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter that beat Louise at her nutso game.
As the hate-on between the two candidate escalates, violence erupts in the graphic Aster style. Rest assured that his kink for head trauma manifests itself here as bodies pile up and Aster goes gonzo with betrayals, murders and ass-saving political cover-ups.
Couldn’t John Wayne or Clint Eastwood have played the sheriff a century ago? Hell, no. I doubt those macho legends ever took on a character who sought mental-health advice to deal with rage and crippling dread. Aster’s anxieties about himself and the world are his stock in trade. His therapy is to laugh them into submission. His gift as an artist is to invite us to join him.
Count me in. Even when “Eddington” goes off the deep end (and it does) in its portrait of a broken country, Aster is a genuine provocateur, using the pandemic to define a new civil war with battle lines drawn over what is and isn’t woke. No one is spared. Not the teen white liberals whose understanding of complex issues runs skin deep. And not the entrenched one-percenters ready to sacrifice any ideal for a price.
Aster takes his time (two-and-a-half hours) shifting “Eddington” to a climax that plays like a Marx Brothers’ farce in which both sides divide to conquer in a pile up of bodies and homicidal impulses. He’s using the sting of satire to help us see more clearly. Does Aster go too far? No doubt. Repetition may dull Aster’s more cogent arguments against the way we live now. “Eddington” is not a perfect movie. But it is a movie that matters.