With 'Eddington,' Ari Aster has crafted a dark, cynical fable about an America on the verge of collapse
Just as American cinema seemed to have lost its critical edge, Ari Aster has dived straight into the heart of the divide threatening the fabric of the nation – the specter of secession again looming over the bald eagle, the symbol of the United States. As part of a new wave of horror filmmakers (Hereditary in 2018, followed by Midsommar in 2019), the gifted 39-year-old protégé of the independent studio A24 has, with his fourth feature, revived the kind of skepticism that characterized New Hollywood in the 1970s/
With Eddington, Aster has continued the rejection of genre conventions that he began with Beau Is Afraid (2023), now moving toward a psychiatric fable of deep darkness conceived at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through a satire that spares no one, he channels a sense of contemporary nihilism, where grotesque excesses and enormity now bite into the horrifying Trump-era circus.
Eddington is a small town in New Mexico, introduced with a lingering shot of its municipal sign. In May 2020, public health measures deliver the final blow to a social contract and civil harmony already badly eroded. The main fault line runs between the sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) – a lackluster guardian of order, asthmatic and resistant to mask-wearing – and the mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), a classic liberal adept at public relations and political networking. As the elections approach, the sheriff launches a campaign against the mayor and his plan to build a predatory data center – a clash between patriotic common sense and a disconnected political elite.
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