Wow. A lot to process and unpack. _Eddington_ received rapturous applause and huge moments of laughter at Sydney Film Festival. It’s chaotic, freewheeling and incredibly funny. Yes - it is Aster’s best film. Aster has made an unhinged social satire on the culture wars - the division, virtue signalling and general disingenuousness. And he does so with sub-machine gun precision, much like the one that appears in the final act. Aster’s is a scattershot approach, rife with motif and self-aware savagery. No one is safe - right-wingers get both barrels, but the resulting shrapnel hits a lot of attention-seeking privileged white kids. Ideologies fester in the microcosm of the small titular New Mexican town, the fever and sweats mirrored by the Covid that slowly takes hold of our main character. Someone once said “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and certainly proves true in this bleak comedy. We’re not completely through the chaos satirised in Aster’s fourth feature. Not by a very long shot. But this neo-Western, with assured insanity, turns a mirror to our modern war of shouting-over-listening, and poses the question, “Guys, what the fuck are we doing?”

Some would say – and quite astutely at that – there’s plenty of madness to go around these days, and they’d be right. But where and when did this begin? A good place to start looking would be the COVID-19 Pandemic, a time when fear was ratcheted up, conspiracy theories ran amok, “protective” measures slid into excessive overreach, neighbors routinely spied on (and often made unsupported accusations about) neighbors, and people’s imaginations were let loose without restraint. What began as an alleged but widely legitimized public health crisis soon spilled over into myriad other areas of life as tempers, paranoia and disinformation flared to new heights. So why did this happen? As we look back now with the benefit of hindsight, it’s gradually become clearer what unfolded, although many of us still don’t acknowledge it or discuss it much. Thankfully, this is where writer-director Ari Aster has stepped in, gobsmacking us out of our indifference, denial and complacency with his fourth feature outing, a no-holds-barred cinematic essay on that time of profound and rampant insanity in May 2020 as depicted through the lives of the citizens of the fictional small desert town of Eddington, New Mexico. This cross-genre blend of comedy, drama, modern-day Western and social satire shoves its content squarely in our faces, forcing us to take a critical look at it, no matter how much many of us would rather not do so. The result is an incisive, insightful, incendiary multifaceted examination of what can happen when all sense of reason is recklessly cast to the winds. While the film covers a wide range of material and numerous story threads, its primary plotline follows the simmering feud between longtime well-liked mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), a by-the-book supporter of community welfare and official public health and safety policies, and sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), a commonsense law enforcement professional who urges the public to assess their circumstances realistically and with an acute degree of discernment. But that’s just the beginning: when matters grow increasingly heated and inherently more unpredictable between them, Cross challenges Garcia in the upcoming mayoral race in which the incumbent had been running unopposed. And, as tensions mount in the wake of the stress caused by both the COVID outbreak, the local political discord and the emergence of inflamed social disturbances (such as the protests that broke out nationwide, including in Eddington, in the wake of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis), conditions erode further, going from bad to worse, reaching an eventual breaking point, both for Garcia and Cross, as well as the entire local population. The filmmaker employs an intriguing approach in telling this epic saga, examining the prevailing conditions without judgment but pointedly depicting all of them with equal degrees of inspired and unfiltered lunacy, incorporating a narrative style that in some ways recalls the work of director Yorgos Lanthimos. In accomplishing this, the picture maximizes its impact through skillful cinematography and film editing, bitingly scathing writing, and an excellent ensemble including both leads and a host of colorful supporting performances from the likes of Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Deirdre O’Connell, Michael Ward, Cameron Mann, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Luke Grimes, Amèlie Hoeferle and William Belieau, among others. While the film’s final act is admittedly somewhat overlong and periodically unhinged, the finished product overall nevertheless represents quite an accomplished work of filmmaking. To be sure, this offering won’t appeal to everyone and is likely to generate divisive reactions among both avid cinephiles and casual moviegoers. But, for those unafraid of confronting issues that have largely been swept under the rug, this one is right up your alley. As Mark Twain once wisely observed, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled,” and Aster draws on that sentiment frequently throughout this work. No matter what one may believe about the events of five years ago, the director skillfully spotlights the chaos of that time and how it often manifested as an exercise in deception, control and a loss of common sense in so many areas of everyday life. Let’s sincerely hope we learn our lesson from this film so that we needn’t go through an experience like that ever again.

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://movieswetextedabout.com/eddington-movie-review-from-covid-satire-to-blood-soaked-western-noir/ "Eddington is an intense portrait of pandemic-era life and its social repercussions, exploring themes of leadership, polarization, and community collapse, anchored by a standout Joaquin Phoenix performance as a man slowly unraveling. Ari Aster takes risks by fusing genres and radically shifting from sociopolitical satire to violent, chaotic thriller midway through - a choice that both energizes and fragments the story. Even so, the combination of formal ambition, thematic relevance, and strong performances makes it a provocative, memorable work." Rating: B

Whilst Joaquin Phoenix delivers one of his usually characterful efforts here, the rest of this film is a fairly muddled attempt at a western with a fairly weak underpinning story. He’s the bronchially-challenged sheriff “Cross” who is at odds with the town’s mayor “Ted” (the rapidly becoming ubiquitous in 2025 Pedro Pascal) in a small New Mexican town. It’s election time, and the latter man is standing for another term when an incident in their town that is rapidly becoming under-policed encourages “Cross” to stand for office, too. Over the next couple of hours, we discover just what the source of this long-standing grudge is all set against a background of COVID safety precautions, his unhappy marriage with “Lou” (Emma Stone) and a barely tolerant one with mother-in-law “Dawn” (Deirdre O’Connell) that explains much of the attitudes of a lawman coasting through life. Big business is coming the town’s way. There are plans to build one of those colossal great data centres bringing jobs and prosperity to the town - well that’s what it says on the tin, but will it deliver in it’s promise for the local community? The ramifications of the recent Minneapolis killing of George Floyd is sending further ripples of dissent through their township - and he has neither the physical nor intellectual resources to deal with these issues. With tensions mounting and him reaching the end of his tether, is he going to snap? Perhaps this might resonate more with an American small-town mentality, and it does have the odd scenario that presents some dark humour - usually in the form of questioning the whole mask-wearing culture or the right to protest in the middle of the street, but it only really comes alive in the last ten minutes and by then I must confess to not being especially bothered about any of these people, nor their predicament. It takes a swipe provincial politics but not in an especially innovate fashion and it takes far too long to get off the ground. Pascal is master of the less-is-more style of presentation, but here he brings very little to a lacklustre party that casts its net wide, but that has has too many holes as it depends on Phoenix to enliven something that I found largely uninteresting. Sorry, not for me.