No Country for Smart Men: Aster Satirizes the Obvious
It would seem all is actually for naught in Eddington, Ari Aster’s sprawling, meandering fourth and least inspired feature to date. While previously a forerunner of the elevated horror era, Aster branches off from the warped Homeric motherhood trauma of Beau Is Afraid (2023) to reunite once more with Joaquin Phoenix, playing a simpleton serving as the sheriff in a small New Mexico town at the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic. Rather than being a case of pandemic fatigue, Aster’s latest fails to articulate much of anything through shards of narrative which seemingly satirize the onset of a new age of regression and delusion. Except his microcosm of small-town USA conveying the widespread corruption and disruption which reverberated louder than ever thanks to a perfect storm of events is all surface parody, a string of events slopped together like a series of Naked Gun gags atop Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935).
Sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix) is having a hard time adapting to pandemic era restrictions, and finds the enforcement of these rules to be prohibitive. On a lark, he decides he will run for mayor, rivaling Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is otherwise a shoe-in for re-election. However, many residents are concerned about Garcia having paved the way for a new data center development which will greatly drain their energy resources. But Joe’s campaign is immediately thwarted by protestors, singling out the Sheriff and his deputies (Micheal Ward and Luke Grimes) as perpetrators of the patriarchy in the nationwide rally demanding an end to police brutality. Soon, Joe hits a breaking point when it appears his authority is no longer (and likely never was) respected. His wife Louise (Emma Stone), who had a much rumored relationship with Ted Garcia before marrying Joe, decides to leave him for an alluring cult leader (Austin Butler) when her husband uses her as a campaign tool. A vagrant who wandered into their midst (portrayed as something like a creature fresh off The Island of Dr. Moreau), spreading COVID and vandalizing the local bar, is the first to inspire Joe’s wrath.
Eddington opens with an awkwardly promising set-up, with Phoenix playing yet another affable incompetent whose heart might be in the right place but clearly won’t ever be budged out of his moronic pursuit of obliviousness. Pedro Pascal’s residing mayor, currently up for re-election, is clearly his rival, and Joe’s flaccid bid to run against him suggests “A Face in the Crowd,” (1957) kind of treatment, where the cult of personality would allow for the least qualified candidate to assume the throne of power. Quickly, this rivalry feels about as banal as the Jon Stewart election movie Irresistible (2020), which was released around the period this was set.
Aster then turns to violence, and Eddington promises to heat up again, as the civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder seeps into and suddenly radicalizes the town’s youth (but mostly, it seems, because two young men are trying to court the romantic interests of a staunchly liberal young white woman). With three people suddenly brutally murdered and the scene staged to blame the BLM protestors, the narrative suddenly shifts into Jim Thompson territory, reminiscent of Betrand Tavernier’s adaptation of Pop. 1280, the masterful “Coup de Torchon ,”(1981), and throw in some shades of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) as if directed by Robert Altman a la “The Player,” (1992). The references seem imperative as a way to deduce where Aster is going with all this, especially as it unleashes a stream of Grand Guignol in the third act before it sails into a smug finale.
What’s most curious, overall, is how absolutely flat everything seems, especially compared to Aster’s own body of work, customarily crafting show stopping characters for his lead cast members. Phoenix might be the perfect catch for playing a schlubby idiot, but Pascal has little to do other than minor griping. Stone, who seems as if she’s playing a character from a fourth segment of “Kinds of Kindness,” (2024), is a boring neurotic who makes creepy dolls and finds herself whisked away by Butler as a popular conspiracy theorist amassing a cult following with his Charles Manson-like charm. Even Deirdre O’Connell, playing a crazed mother-in-law, a plum role which should have been a scene-stealing supporting role, has no pulse.
Strangely, only the film’s ‘innocents’ resemble anything relating to an actual human experience, those being Micheal Ward as Phoenix’s demeaned deputy, and William Belleau, an officer from the American Indian reservation sharing a border and crime scene with Eddington. It’s a considerable misfire coming from the likes of Aster as Eddington feels like a Coen Bros. script directed by George Clooney.
Reviewed on May 16th at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival (78th edition) – Competition. 148 Mins
★★½/☆☆☆☆☆
