Eddington ★★

André de Toth’s Riding Shotgun is a 1954 Western starring Randolph Scott as stagecoach guard Larry Delong. When his stagecoach is robbed, his two companions killed, and he survives, his hometown of Deep Water is convinced that he was part of that robbery. All the while, the actual gunmen – who only robbed the stagecoach to draw out a posse to allow them to rob the town bank – use the misdirection of Larry’s alleged complicity to execute their original plan of robbing the town. De Toth’s film is one of misunderstandings, manipulation, and fear. The town is ready to hang Larry, all while the threat actually comes from the outside and seeks to rob them blind. Partially a condemnation of mob violence with underlying political parallels that critique McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities Committee and partially a bitterly comedic and satirical look at the absurdity of the townspeople’s reaction, Riding Shotgun is a largely forgotten but nevertheless provocative and biting classic Western. It also shares plenty in common with writer and director Ari Aster’s Eddington.

As ever, Aster stands as master provocateur. Here, he takes aim at the year 2020. It is all COVID, George Floyd riots, ANTIFA false flag missions, doomscrolling, and misinformation. It is, as with Riding Shotgun, all about misunderstandings, manipulation, and fear. Eddington, New Mexico is about to be the battleground of a contentious mayoral race between current mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) and Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix). It is also a divided town. It is fearful about everything everybody was afraid of in 2020. The uncertainty. The creeping dread. The isolation. It has left this rather quaint town in tatters, turning neighbor against neighbor with this one-time peaceful Southwestern locale now turned into a powder keg ready to explode. Aster pokes and prods, eager to antagonize the viewer with satire lobbed across the political spectrum, using the same tools of misdirection and division that the real threat in Eddington is using on the town. Aster tips his hand in the opening scene with a vagrant (Clifton Collins Jr.) rambling as he walks along a road where a proposed data center is to be built. That real threat, the classic Western robbers who once upon a time may have held up a stagecoach in order to later rob the town bank is big technology, hoping to build a big new data center (working in artificial intelligence) on the outskirts of the town. A town turned against itself is rendered blind to the threat, all while the unseen machine works around them to create value for their shareholders.

Despite Aster’s thematic and atmospheric aggravations, Eddington’s socio-political themes are largely vapid. They exist mainly to anger and to create an emotional response. Aster has little to say about the movements and the pandemic that gripped the nation in 2020, draping the picture in the year’s iconography to draw the viewer into his web. He wants the viewer to be uncomfortable. But, it undercuts its own impact. It skewers the hypocrisy and the devolvement of society, but in offering no insight, it is simply our every day played back to us. It is an excuse to cheaply play on the real trauma of the audience, while pointing at the way people responded to incredible events and posturing about how silly they are for having an emotional response. It has more to say about politics and business, but with these obvious and unimaginative observations, they do little to bolster the film’s thematic scope.

Aster mostly uses the distraction created by its real-life events to layer in a familiar examination of the angst, isolation, insecurity, and anxiety of the modern man. This character study comes in the form of Joe Cross. Joe is a classic American man. He wants to have a family to have the American dream, but the American dream is long dead, thrown off a cliff, and driven into extinction. He longs for that sense of old school community that COVID further drives a spike into, now caught in a world where he has become isolated and distant from everybody around him. The actions and beliefs of those in town are entirely foreign to him, caught up in his own inner turmoil and feeling challenged as a man. Part of it is his perceived failures and part of it is the success achieved by Ted Garcia. He hates Ted not only because he is smarter, better looking, and more accomplished than him, but because Joe’s mother-in-law and rabid conspiracy theorist Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell) has convinced him that Ted once raped Joe’s wife Louise (Emma Stone). It is not true and Louise herself refutes it – Joe never bothered to ask her – but it is something that makes Joe feel insecure and emasculated around Ted. Louise not wanting to have a child with him further serves his emasculation, leaving Joe a frustrated and unsatisfied man seeking an outlet. The mayor’s race is his way of trying to act out (or, as he frames it, fight for his family and Louise), but it does little to satisfy with his own ineptitude and ignorance consistently getting in his way. 

Eddington can play like a modern spin on Falling Down, following a man suffering from isolation and loneliness – not only caused by COVID, but Joe’s home life is chilly and uninviting with Louise and he distant from one another while Dawn lives with them and challenges them with conspiracy theories all day long – with his mental health devolving and the existential pressures building within him until they need release. His eventual turn into violence is no surprise, all while Aster later turns him into a wild example of a modern Sheriff taking a classic Western stand in the film’s climactic and sprawling showdown in the town’s streets. However, Joe is no classic Western hero. He is not the noble and honorable stagecoach gunman played by Randolph Scott, falsely accused of crimes he did not commit. Joe joins the mob violence, laying the blame for his own sins wherever he can while letting his ignorance and resistance to change guide him at every turn. He is the modern Sheriff taking a stand, all while that which he defends already crumbled, in large part because of himself.

Eddington is an artfully created film with fantastic performances. Phoenix, Stone, the charismatic Pascal in a brief role, and a slimy Austin Butler (one wants more of his character Vernon Jefferson Peak, but aside from one scene, he is largely relegated to the background as this conspiracist cult leader), all have fantastic moments. The work of cinematographer Darius Khondji is great as always. The climactic shootout benefits from his mixture of point-of-view shots with deep focus, dim and eerie lighting, and tight framing that heightens the visual tension and the lurking dread in the threat posed by the assailants surrounding Joe. As with any Western, Khondji soaks in the scenery throughout with some nice long shots and aerials, especially around Ted’s house with the nearby Pueblo territory in the distance. It is a striking film and one that benefits from the town feeling especially lived-in, a vibe that Khondji helps as well as the strength of the overall mise en scene with great small-town details and Aster’s attention to detail in crafting the overall ecosystem of the town’s political and social hierarchy.

A messy picture, Eddington is one that often loses characters in the shuffle – Louise is a fascinating character, one rendered into the background and brief moments of pure acting from Emma Stone with her largely existing in relation to what Joe feels rather than what she feels – but nevertheless finds Aster right at home thematically when examining Joe. Its socio-political themes fall flat into empty realizations and basic conclusions with an air of smugness and self-indulgence that do the film no favors. Aster’s cruelty towards his characters and audience, coupled with nihilistic world-view often make Eddington as challenging to watch as Beau Is Afraid. But, it is a film that demands to be reckoned with and is hard to shake, rising above its flaws and antagonistic behavior to at least be interesting and in a time where films are trying to be so easily agreeable, Aster’s is at least commendable. But, is that enough in the end to make it a good film?