Coming just two years after his first non-horror film “Beau is Afraid,” director Ari Aster continues to wallow in the extreme dreamlike black comedy genre with “Eddington,” another film so depressing and moody it’s hard to even include the word “comedy” in its description. Unlike the Joaquin Phoenix vehicle “Beau is Afraid,” “Eddington” features a first act which sets up nicely as a possibly interesting film.
Directing from his own original screenplay, Aster’s latest yarn takes place in the small fictitious town of Eddington, New Mexico during the early pre-vaccine months of the Covid-19 crisis of 2020. Pedro Pascal, so great in the recent “Materialists,” plays Mayor Ted Garcia – by all accounts a popular figure who has followed the governor’s lead in implementing a public mask mandate and social distancing requirements. Joaquin Phoenix plays Sheriff Joe Cross, who refuses to wear a mask (or require them of his two deputies) because no one in Eddington has been infected with the virus… yet.
Meanwhile, the murder of George Floyd has recently occurred in Minneapolis, inciting anti-police protests all over the country – even in tiny Eddington. Sheriff Cross confronts the local crowd (and not in a mean-spirited manner) to explain that he agrees the actions of the Minneapolis Police Department during the Floyd murder are reprehensible; but that their anger should not be directed toward Eddington authorities, who had nothing to do with the Minnesota incident.
Smartly, Aster doesn’t take sides in these debates. His characters point out the flaws in both the progressive and conservative stances regarding Covid mandates and police brutality. Thus, “Eddington” establishes itself as a potentially compelling examination of recent history – particularly when Sheriff Joe decides to run for mayor against Garcia.
But oh my, does Aster screenplay go terribly wrong after about the first half hour! Bringing in characters who seemingly have nothing to do with the proceedings, and churning up backstories on the mayor and sheriff that detract from the urgency of the initial set-up, “Eddington” fails almost as surely and decisively as “Beau is Afraid.”
It turns out Sheriff Joe’s wife Louise – an underutilized Emma Stone – was raped by Mayor Ted years earlier, although she publicly denies knowing anything about the accusation. She (and her nut-job mother, played by character actress Dierdre O’Connell) turns out to be a radical conspiracy theorist, constantly glued to her cell phone in search of the latest machination. Louise and her mother are particularly fond of theories posited by Vernon Jefferson Peak, played by Austin Butler of “Elvis.” His hypotheses are often based on numerology, and are presented as so outlandish they don’t fit with the realism of the initial plot.
And the characters of both Mayor Ted and Sheriff Joe turn out to be so flawed that we find ourselves unable to root for either one. That’s too bad, considering both sides of the Covid and George Floyd protests have valid points to share.
Furthermore, Sheriff Joe must frequently deal with the escapades of a local transient named Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr.), who has a habit of breaking into the town watering hole to drink liquor directly from the bottles of alcohol. Right in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Suffice to say that a good half-hour could have been cut from the marathon 2.5-hour running time by excluding this character. And another half-hour could have been trimmed by making Sheriff Joe a bachelor, and simply eliminating the characters of his wife and mother-in-law.
The final act takes Sheriff Joe out of his well-established character to act as some kind of vigilante – bringing everyone to justice, but operating outside the boundaries of the law. So, what does this tell us about Joe? That he was never as trustworthy and upstanding as initially presented? And is this a commentary on those who (now) believe Covid-19 was a hoax and that the George Floyd murder was justified?
We’ll never know, because Aster strays so far from his original set-up that we’ve long forgotten any virtue Sheriff Joe may have had in the first place. Much as in “Beau is Afraid,” the ending is so over-the-top and so far removed from the opening that we simply cease to care. Plus the 2.5-hour run time seems longer than the 3.5-hour run times of “The Brutalist” or “Killers of the Flower Moon” – two vastly more interesting and entertaining films of recent years. As I’ve written many times, I’d much rather sit through a long, fascinating film than a short, dull one. Unfortunately, “Eddington” is both long and dull – a prescription for a disastrous result.
