It would be very easy to watch Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), at the peak of his madness, spray a belt-fed machine gun across the locked down New Mexico town and begin to wonder what’s the point in all of this? The answer is simple, really: Ari Aster wants to piss you off.

 

And boy does he succeed at that. Set in May, 2020, Eddington follows a Sheriff’s mayoral campaign incited by his grievances with his state’s mask mandate while he deals with his conspiracy theorist mother-in-law, his distant wife and his newly important social media presence. This film was always going to ruffle some feathers. It doesn’t just depict these characters either, it forces us to relive George Floyd’s death through their perspective where we’re made to view the Black Lives Matter protestors as social justice warriors causing issues for no reason. This empathy is uncomfortable, it makes us choose to be distant from these people and from this distance no one is free from the Aster’s cynicism. 

 

While the film begins with the town of Eddington moving like a snail, its locals waiting outside the supermarket social distancing to limit the risk of COVID, Eddington only gets destroyed more as the citizens’ anger gets unleashed. This is the point of the film. To reignite our anger and show us all the destruction it has caused.

 

Throughout the first act we see Joe Cross flagrantly ignore the expectations of inclusivity that most film festival goers align with (at one point he uses a homophobic slur). This makes the audience mad, but as the plot unravels the Sheriff is also getting mad and ironically a sort of broken empathy is created. 

 

We can tolerate Cross as he falsely accuses his rival, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) as being a pedophile or his intolerance of Officer Butterfly (William Belleau), a native American, because it is all stemming from the same emotion we are feeling. Intentionally this anger for the audience and the protagonist keeps escalating as we get angrier when Cross’ morality sinks lower and he gets madder at his escalating setbacks. 

 

That being said, don’t be fooled, there are times the film is truly funny and incredibly tense (which is what we’ve come to expect from Aster), I am focusing on this guttural fury shared across the political lines because it is the main cause of discourse and intention behind Eddington.

 

Which begs the question, why? 

 

Well, the film is undoubtedly cynical, but the specifics of Aster’s cynicism is what matters. He is understandably cynical about how social media controls our opinions, and the need to solve all our issues with violence but the film is never cynical of the character’s emotions. Aster has reverence for Cross’ frustration at an older man in his community being wrongfully vilified for not wearing a mask (Cross himself can empathise as he has asthma), there’s reverence for Brian’s (Cameron Mann) heartbreak as, his friend, Ted Garcia’s son woos the young activist, Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle) he had a crush on first and the film even makes traumatised Louise Cross (Emma Stone) seem reasonable as she falls for conspiracy nutjob Vernon (Austin Butler) who claims he was abducted and hunted as a child. How people feel is never pointed toward and laughed at, whether by our metrics they are crazy and making the world a worse place or not, Aster simply wants us to have some empathy for them.

 

It is the scenario these people have been put in that we should be cynical about. Would any of these people be driven to their chosen extremes if it weren’t for the pandemic and our reliance on Instagram? This is the question at the heart of Eddington and I believe Aster would say no and that is the tragedy of our modern circumstances.

 

With all this cultural commentary swirling in the air, Aster’s script never gets distracted. The central plot is strong and engaging, love him or hate him you will want to know what Joe Cross does next even when you know it’ll probably make you cringe. Simultaneously, Darius Khondji shoots the night as well as anyone ever has, The Haxan Cloak and Daniel Pemberton’s score keeps you on edge at all times and every actor embodies their character fully.

Overall, Eddington was always gonna bait festival goers into outrage. But Aster, like lots of the great provocative artists of the past, utilises his audience's rage as fuel for retrospection. With how fucked up the world is right now Eddington can’t offer a complete answer as to how it all got this way but it suggests that if we just put our anger aside and tried to empathise with our fellow man, maybe it’d be in a better position.