Eddington

2020, a pivotal year in recent American history, also reached Eddington, a small town in New Mexico on the edge of an Indian reservation. Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), running for re-election, does everything he can to ensure anti-COVID regulations are followed. Meanwhile, the town’s sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), refuses to wear a mask, claiming he suffers from asthma and insisting that “there’s no virus in Eddington.” The disagreement between the two escalates that Cross, frustrated, decides to run against Garcia in the mayoral race. Their rivalry, however, goes back much further than the start of the pandemic.

Many residents of Eddington whisper about a murky relationship between Ted and Joe’s wife, Louise (Emma Stone). As the BLM movement arrives in town, tensions continue to build like wood thrown on a fire until the conflict between Ted and Joe erupts into violence. At the heart of Ari Aster’s film is the absurdity of the positions taken by those living in rural America, far from where things happen, who are left to consume filtered news and imitate what they see online. Eddington, a microcosm of American society, is divided along political, cultural, and demographic lines. This divide is immediately evident in the sources of information the characters rely on. Dawn, Louise’s mother, spends her days reading conspiracy blogs. Joe gets his news from Facebook. Ted tries to stick to official government sources, while Eric, Ted’s son, follows Twitter religiously. Everyone ends up listening to Dawn, whose rumours only intensify the rivalry between Ted and Joe.

The lack of direct knowledge traps Eddington’s citizens in an echo chamber that distorts every message coming from the outside. Aster’s trademark narrative style tells a story in which fundamentalism, hypocrisy, and inconsistency (all hallmarks of the American political landscape) are ever-present and constantly mocked. We laugh at Louise, who believes everything she reads online. We laugh at Sarah for taking BLM positions to absurd extremes. We laugh even more at Eric, who adopts an ideology just to impress a girl. The second half of the film pokes fun at how the American right envisions the Antifa movement (labelled a terrorist organisation by the Trump administration).

And finally, we arrive at a grotesque and symbolic ending, one that perfectly captures the moral confusion and hypocrisy of modern American society.

by Tommaso Vanni