Eddington

Joaquin Phoenix is really one of our best actors. I am a fan of his work from films like "Inherent Vice", "Two Lovers", "Buffalo Soldiers", "Her", "Napoleon", "Irrational Man", "Gladiator", "Walk the Line", and "The Master". And of course he won the Oscar for best actor for "Joker".

Now he stars in a new movie called "Eddington" directed by Ari Aster. I know that Ari Aster previously directed the films "Hereditary", "Midsommer", and "Beau is Afraid". But I have not seen any of those.

The story takes place in the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico during May of 2020, the time of the coronavirus pandemic. It starts with people arguing about whether or not they should have to wear face masks to protect them from the virus.

Joaquin plays the local sheriff who clashes with the mayor, played by Pedro Pascal in a supporting role. Then Joaquin's character decides to run for mayor himself.

The story escalates into some violence but is never less than compelling and entertaining. This is one of the better movies I have seen this year. Also with an excellent supporting cast including Emma Stone and Austin Butler.

Also with good cinematography from Darius Khondji, who was nominated for "Bardo false chronicle of a handful of truths" and "Evita".

This film is very much worth seeing in a movie theater. A very good movie.

This movie reminds me of a real story of self awareness in light of the worlds ills. In the early 1900s, a newspaper reportedly asked a group of notable writers and thinkers to respond to the question, "What is wrong with the world today?" To which the famous theologian and thinker G. K. Chesterton is said to have replied with a characteristically witty and humble response "Dear Sirs, I am. Yours sincerely, G. K. Chesterton."

Ari Aster has made another horror film. This one is disguised as a modern day Western, Dark Comedy, but this is deep diving stuff that inserts us into a small New Mexico town in 2020 that is at the beginning stages of the COVID pandemic. Joaquin Phoenix is the tour guide - and the ride - who shows us something of what is wrong with the world.

Eddington took me back to feelings of despair that play on in our world. This is a most excellent tragic tale and definitely not a comedy, although the audience will probably laugh in the discomfort of seeing the true reflection of ourselves somewhere in this mirror of blame, conspiracy, narcissism, and social rage.

Somehow Aster keeps this from being preachy while giving us a scare at our own reflections. What wrong with Eddington? It's us.

So, what does dark comedy mean, exactly ... ?

"Eddington," which falls under that genre on the Internet Movie Database, isn't the first movie that's left me asking the question. It's just the most recent.

The film is also labeled a Contemporary Western, a concept easier to grasp.

Eddington is the name of a tiny, out-of-the-way New Mexico town, grappling - as the rest of the country was when the story opens in 2020 - with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.

You can't get much more contemporary than that.

Written and directed by Ari Aster, who has developed a cult following for leading audiences into scary sometimes gross places, its cast is heavy with Oscar winners and nominees. Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pablo Pascal, Dierdre O'Connell, Michael Ward and Austen Butler, for openers.

Phoenix plays Eddington's Sheriff Joe Cross, a sad-sack lawman who's got about as much as he can handle with his wife Louise (Stone) who doesn't love him ; her mother Dawn (O'Connell) whose favorite pastime is Googling conspiracy theories; and that Covid mask mandate that he's supposed to be enforcing.

Joe's got asthma, you see, which makes it hard for him to breathe whenever he tries to put the danged mask on.

Joe's not a political person, per se. The circumstances that lead him to run against incumbent Ted Garcia (Pascal) to become Eddington's mayor are more a matter of being pushed past his breaking point by one too many matters beyond his control.

There's the new AI data center that's been proposed for development that has local conservationists up in arms. There's the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis that's all over the news and has the town's teenage population rioting on Main Street. There's the loco crazy homeless guy, who always shows up to make matters worse. There are the rumors that the current mayor slept with Sheriff Joe's wife, before unceremoniously dumping her ... Aha, so maybe dark comedy is about trying to find the yuks in what Henry David Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation." That was the way Thoreau described "the mass of men" in his 1854 masterpiece "Walden." No one has summed things up better in the almost two centuries since.

Or maybe dark comedy is more a matter of dystopian satire, trying to whistle our way past the graveyard of civilization.

Whatever it's called, writer-director Aster clearly has a lot on his mind before he lets the action onscreen devolve into a hail of unholy gunfire, explosions and chaos in the third act.

Considering that they're both running for mayor, it's noteworthy what horrible communicators Sheriff Joe and incumbent Ted Garcia are. Joe has a habit of speaking his mind before his mind's made up. Ted is way better in TV commercials than in actuality. Both guys reveal the absence of anything like actual confidence every time they open their mouths.

The real powers in their world are behind the scenes, creating that water-sucking, resource-depleting high-tech data center, or infiltrating high-minded political demonstrations with false flag mercenaries Like an old-fashioned - as opposed to contemporary - Western, "Eddington's" setting is as much a character as the characters are. The saloon, church and wooden sidewalks may now be replaced with convenience marts, an historic Indian museum and a very convenient gun and ammo store, but there's still the sense of flimsy storefronts standing lonesome vigils a long way from the hills on the horizon on those windswept plains.

Likewise, Sheriff Joe's iPhone isn't in the credits, but it play a role as important as any character in the story. "Eddington" may be the first work of art made of misinformation. Social media is where that misinformation comes to life, festers and spreads like fungus. There's nothing like smart technology for making people stupid. Once you create artificial intelligence, actual intelligence is a flimsy defense indeed.

When it comes to polarized idiocy, filmmaker Aster doesn't take sides. The self-styled high-minded liberals are as gullible to online fictions as your standard garden-variety bigot. Some of the film's funniest scenes come when the teen demonstrators protesting the George Floyd killings tie themselves in moral knots trying to deny their own class and privilege. Aster's script suggests that actual pedophiles may far outnumber figments of conspiracy theory imagination - and may not be limited to one political party or another.

"Eddington" may be a work of genius. That's a saving grace, considering that none of its characters are particularly likable, it's disquieting to sit through, and its so-called humor hardly lightens the mood as you exit the theater into the actual dystopia waiting outside.

I can only tell this is gonna be a very polarising film, people are going to love the ambition from Aster or call it a convoluted mess.

Depending on your views during the 2020s will severely determined your outlook on this film. Are you able to laugh at the insanity or remain serious at the severity of events that transpired.

Eddington is ultimately a satire on the comedic ridiculousness and tumultuous times of the 2020's. Eddington in itself is the main character. It's a macrocosom of events that impacted the US but obviously ramps them up to 11.

I appreciate the craft and the film was at its best when it was reminiscent of the Coen's No Country For Old Men. The 2nd act elevated the implemented satire to a contemporary western crime thriller.

The film is hit or miss in its summary. I understand the message and themes but at some points the execution is lacking. I feel like it tried to juggle a lot of themes and messages. Maybe sticking to one or two would have made the film more tight and succinct.

Its thesis is clear. We're all hypocrites. How the old generation has a stick up their ***, too rigid to embrace meaningful change, while the younger generation-damned from birth by social screens, performs outrage on Instagram in hopes of sleeping with Sarah.

Ari Aster skewers each political perspective, which in turn makes up a large majority of unhappy letterboxd reviewers, ironically complementing the film's punchline. No matter where you stand, it's naive to believe stupidity is exclusive to one side.

All in all, it's a film less concerned with who's right and more obsessed with how dumb it all looks from a distance.