‘Eddington’ Enters Quarantine

Cinema | July 21st, 2025

By Greg Carlson

Ari Aster’s political satire “Eddington” premiered in competition for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, where Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” received the prize. A frequently laborious mash-up of genres including flashes of the filmmaker’s horror comfort zone (“Hereditary” and “Midsommar” remain the best films he has made) and slow-burn American Western/noir touches that aspire to the blending of violence and comedy that the Coens perfected, “Eddington” sees Aster taking some narrative risks, even if not every choice pays off. The nearly two-and-a-half hour length, exacerbated by somnolent pacing until at least the first shocking turning point, works against Aster by sorely testing the patience of even the most curious viewers.

Joaquin Phoenix, who led Aster’s previous feature “Beau Is Afraid,” plays the sheriff of the title New Mexico township. Pedro Pascal portrays the mayor. The rivals form two sides of a scalene triangle with Emma Stone, in which Phoenix’s Joe > Pascal’s Ted > Stone’s Louise, at least in terms of significant screen time. The diminished presence of Stone is just one of the movie’s disappointments. Her character, lost in the fog of the world during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, is married to Joe but was previously involved with Ted. Aster clearly enjoys manipulating the chess pieces of his sprawling ensemble cast, which also includes Austin Butler in a glorified cameo as a strange cult leader, Deirdre O’Connell as Louise’s mother, Luke Grimes and Micheal Ward as law enforcement officers working under Joe and William Belleau as an Indigenous policeman with jurisdiction in the adjacent tribal lands.

Aster also introduces a group of young Black Lives Matter and social justice protesters, linking the historical events that occurred in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to the fictional catastrophes unfolding in Eddington. The filmmaker’s ambitious recipe, which addresses not only BLM, but Antifa, mask mandates, anti-vax conspiracies, corruption and racism and brutality in policing, the environmental impact of data farms, white privilege and the avalanche of disinformation made worse by the pastime of doom-scrolling, cooks up into a stew that can be difficult to swallow. Even as Aster boldly introduces all manner of Trump-era malaise, “Eddington” is deliberately opaque.

In her thoughtful and incisive NPR review for “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” Aisha Harris puts her finger on one of Aster’s shortcomings: “Eddington” reduces its Black and Indigenous characters to symbols, doubling-down on what Harris identifies as the movie’s status as a “cynical simulacrum.” And while it is certainly fair to argue that “Eddington” is not a character-driven story, Aster’s lack of investment in his array of inhabitants spills over into something like contempt. And it doesn’t matter whether a figure is identified with the right or the left, everyone just bumbles and stumbles along making awful decisions.

Perhaps the most American thing about the particular kind of America depicted in “Eddington” is the feverish commitment to gun violence (and violence in general). Even the trailer revels in the sights and sounds of Joe unloading a high-capacity magazine when all hell breaks loose on the streets of his otherwise sleepy town. We understand that Aster intends a kind of absurdist and comical mockery of our worst impulses as a society, but the “both sides are equally bad” insinuation that progressives and fascists all deserve to be ridiculed — and lumped in together — is a massive false equivalency.

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