Eddington ★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 4 minutes ago
- 4 min read
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Killer Without a Cause
Ari Aster’s star-studded farce holds promise, and it has a lot in common with one of the best films of last year, “One Battle After Another.” Like Paul Thomas Anderson’s blockbuster, it pits right against left, police against protesters, screwed-up enforcers against naïve students in the streets. Tellingly, it’s set in a different cultural moment. “Eddington” opens in the midst of the 2020 Covid shutdown with a stand-off—to mask or not to mask—between small town New Mexico mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) and county sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix).
The sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix), left, and the mayor (Pedro Pascal)
engage in a classic Western stand-off, in this case over masks.
At least we think it’s supposed to be farce. Phoenix, always worth watching, plays the sheriff as a bumbler, more or less on the right, especially on the subject of masks (though the right is relatively undeveloped—a weakness in the narrative). Cross lacks the gravitas of Leonardo DiCaprio’s marijuana-impaired ex-hippie in “One Battle…,” a similarly humorous take on serious subjects. As the sheriff devolves into a man with a gun, he joins a dubious list of unrepentant assassins who are supposed to be funny, or at least sympathetic: the laid-off paper company manager in the recent “No Other Choice”; Iranian Jafar Panahi’s protagonist in last year’s “It Was Just an Accident”; and Glen Powell’s professor-turned-assassin in “Hit Man” (2023). Aster is known for pushing the horror/killing envelope (“Midsommar” 2019). But here, that turn of character seems especially senseless; it does not make the sheriff—an enigmatic portrayal by Phoenix—an endearing hero or welcome anti-hero.
The sheriff joins a dubious list of unrepentant assassins who are supposed to be funny, or at least sympathetic.
Six years out from the beginning of Covid, we should be ready for exploring and laughing at that period’s excesses—extreme precaution on one side, rebellion and conspiracy theories on the other. Mirroring the national stand-off between woke culture on the left and reactionary politics on the right, Eddington is destabilized by polarization. The divisiveness follows years of economic decline that are to be solved by the building of a giant data center in the desert. Can we laugh at what all seems too close to actuality? Sure. The woke left in Eddington is protesting the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and doing so with over-the-top declarations of white guilt and privilege. Funny? Yes. But less so today, after the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, than when filming wrapped. And not off-the-charts farcical enough to create a psychic space for the bloodbath to come. Phoenix’s sheriff lacks sufficient motivation.
The sheriff (Phoenix, center) and his only 2 deputies (Micheal Ward left, and Luke Grimes, right) prepare to take on demonstrators in the center of town.
Like Anderson, Aster throws a lot of recognizable ideas into his script. The town is divided not just by right and left, but physically, between city and county, between town and Indian-controlled territory, between municipal land and “stolen land.” Conspiracies and attempts to join or combat them abound. Joe’s wife is the mentally unstable Louise (Emma Stone is wasted in a 2-dimensional role), who may or may not have been raped by the mayor when they were students. Austin Butler is a puzzling (if believable) diversion as a radical cult leader with theories of pedophilia and child trafficking (maybe not so conspiratorial or laughable after the extensive Epstein revelations).
Racism comes to the fore in the attempt to frame the only Black person in town, one of the sheriff’s deputies. He survives, but the rush to get him looks discomfortingly like lynching. Again, how risible is politicians’ racism after the President promotes a meme of the Obamas as apes?
"Eddington” uses comedy to make us ponder that bizarre, stressful, and deadly Covid moment and our weakening collective civic sense.
We could give “Eddington” some grace, and say it comes close to being a decent film. It uses comedy to make us ponder that bizarre, stressful, and deadly Covid moment and our weakening collective civic sense. Incompetent police can produce meaningful ideas (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” 2017). The polarization of our country is a curse that deserves exploring, especially with levity.
Emma Stone as the sheriff's wife, who suffers mental distress from having been sexually abused as a young woman.
Both Stone's character and
the theme are underdeveloped.
Aster, unfortunately, does not know where the line lies between humor and tastelessness, between farce and idiocy, between moral conduct and crude, gratuitous, and inexplicable violence. Despite a lot of social touchstones, comic lines here and there, a valiant effort by Phoenix, a sympathetic Pascal, and evocative cinematography, almost nothing about “Eddington” works. There’s no truth to be had, in Eddington or “Eddington.” Nihilism reigns.
She says: Sketch comedy done badly (though that’s a bit harsh).
He says: An ill-conceived project.
Date: 2025
Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Micheal Ward, Luke Grimes
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 148 minutes
Other Nominations: 1 win and 10 other nominations, including for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.