No actor commits to a role quite like Joaquin Phoenix, and writer/director Ari Aster (Hereditary & Midsommar) gives the actor a very wide canvas to ply his trade with Eddington. Tying in the runaway paranoia and rampant fake news cycle of the 2020 Covid era is just the start of this wild ride.
A lot of your enjoyment of Eddington will be based on how much you’ve recovered from that undeniably bleak period of time. The film successfully ties in so many elements of the wildness that swept the world then. These include conspiracy theories, government over governance and the big bad that lurks behind all unexplained plot points in films such as this. It’s an intoxicating medley.
Set in a small, downwardly mobile town in New Mexico, Eddington has seen better days. The current mayor, Ted Garcia, played against character by Pedro Pascal, has high hopes of bringing the town back to life by building a massive tech centre out in the scrub. His COVID mandates and the impact the centre will have on the community have divided the population. The uncertainty of the times has also created a militant attitude among the local teens.
The film mines so many of the extremes of that period of time, it would seem to struggle to have a unified theme, but as things progress, it trades sense for overkill and just gets more and more extreme. This gives Phoenix the platform to do what he does best and match the mania, note for note. The ironic ending when it lands feels just about right, filtered through the sensibilities of our current state of the world.
Rob Hudson
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