Eddington (2025)
Written & directed by Ari Aster
There’s a meme currently doing the rounds of social media regarding Ari Aster and the text goes something like this. “Hereditary – don’t watch with your mother; Midsommar – don’t watch with your girlfriend; Eddington – don’t watch”. For me, social media telling me not to watch something is like a red rag to a bull, and strangely plays into this incredible, messy, fever dream of a movie. After seeing it earlier today, my prediction is that Eddington will be one of the most divisive movies of the year.
The film is set in the small New Mexico town of Eddington in that most uncertain year of 2020. Social media plays an important role here, with a global pandemic, disaffected youth, the black lives matter movement and homelessness mixing it with conspiracy theorists, corporate interests and anti-vax/anti-mask rhetoric. Add in the world’s need to upload everything live to Instagram and things get very muddled very quickly. The town sheriff, (superbly played by Joachim Phoenix) is at loggerheads with the mayor (portrayed by the always excellent Pedro Pascal) and the tension builds quickly.
Without spoiling anything, in my opinion there are many things wrong with this film. First, at two and a half hours, it’s way too long and the last hour drags dreadfully. Second, I felt like Aster was trying to do too much within the confines of a single feature film – there are literally too many stories crammed in here and it seemed he only scratched the surface with most of them. This means we only see glimpses of characters who had untapped and doubtless fascinating stories, especially Emma Stone as the sheriff’s wife, Louise, William Belleau as Butterfly Jimenez and Micheal Ward as Deputy Michael Cooke.
On the other hand, there are some wonderful things about this movie. The anxiety Aster builds is stellar, my friends and I were on the edge of our seats for a good deal of the film. The cinematography, framing and lighting are exceptionally good, DoP Darius Khondji did an excellent job. Similarly, the original music by Bobby Krlic and Daniel Pemberton is absolutely on point and doesn’t get in the way. There are some truly lovely satiric touches throughout, both verbal and visual blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gems that are worth seeing. The cast are uniformly solid, though as mentioned above, often underused. But above all, Joachim Phoenix is absolutely wonderful as the increasingly paranoid, perplexed and out of his depth sheriff, Joe Cross. If nothing else, it’s worth seeing Eddington for his incredible performance.
In conclusion, Eddington (like all films) won’t be everyone’s cup of tea and it really is very messy but if that’s accidental or by design is up for debate. Despite what I consider a failure, I can see what Aster was aiming for and I think he has to be applauded for trying what most directors wouldn’t dare attempt. I honestly cannot say any of us enjoyed this movie but my friends and I had to indulge in a lengthy lunch afterwards to debrief, so there’s another bonus! Make of that what you will, but anytime a film generates discussion like this is a good thing in my opinion.
Eddington is currently in wide cinema release globally. Please let me know if you see it and what you think of it.
Debra Manskey 