Eddington: Sympathy for The White Man Before Extinction

Ari Aster is a destroyer of worlds. As a filmmaker and an auteur, he has this immaculate ability to create worlds out of vacuum, only to destroy them afterward. In Beau is Afraid, Beau’s world crumbles, deteriorates, as does his masculinity. In Midsommar, Dani’s world is turned upside down as she is faced to confront her mental illness, and the sunshine-laden nightmare she and her friends have set their sails in. In Hereditary, the family structure crumbles, as the sinister nature of the relationship between its members gets revealed one after the other.

Eddington is a very American movie, but it’s also universal, because societal decay exists everywhere. Especially during a divisive time as 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak. This is an outsider’s review and yet the film doesn’t alienate non-Americans but draws them to compare worlds and circumstances.

Proper introductions first, Aster once again uses Joaquin Phoenix as the center of his tormented fantasies and bizarre kink of destroying worlds. In this story, Joe Cross is a sheriff running for mayor. He’s the least likeable character of the film, no one seems to like him –Aster is a master of creating unlikeable characters on film, whether within their realms of their fictional worlds, or to us viewers- not even his emotionally suppressed, traumatized wife –Emma Stone in a polarizing small role- nor his annoying, conspiracy theory-obsessed stepmother (Deidre O’Connell).

Enter Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), everyone’s favorite mayor who is running against Joe to be reelected. Ted is no better than Joe; there are no heroes or villains in this town. The small part it plays on the larger map of America is one of its most frustrating aspects. Everyone is getting on everyone’s nerves. Ted might be the face of a modern, socially conscious authority, promoting social distancing and face masks, but he preaches what he doesn’t believe in by using his own son in his mayoral campaign.

The Pandemic Through the Lens of Ari Aster

So, what better time to destroy worlds than during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the year that triggered the events leading to present global chaos—2020? Aster uses this sensitive period in world history to criticize everything he encounters; from people following mandates to those stubbornly rejecting them, vexers and anti-vaxxers, internet social activists, and online theorists on their way to becoming future cult leaders.

The film is filled with starkly accurate portrayals of what made 2020 a nightmare, a traumatic memory for many, including this reviewer—covering face masks, social distancing, beds turning into workspaces, and doomscrolling, as fear and anger fueled internet rants.

One of the strongest aspects of Eddington is its character interactions, rather than the development of its plot. Joe infantilizes his wife, treating her like a child rather than attempting to understand the gravity of her trauma. The abundance of her photos on his cell phone and laptop screens emphasizes his irrational infatuation with her, beyond understanding her pain and her unhealed wounds.

Louise is trapped in her own realm, unable to reveal the big scary truth of her past. Her eerie paintings and dolls are a reflection of her burdened mental state. Stone plays her vulnerability and her embryonic body language with such subtlety and wounded unhealed psyche, that it feels as if she’s leaning in on herself.

Austin Butler Steals the Show in a Few Scenes

Enter the prince of darkness, Austin Butler playing one of his stunning creepy characters as usual. Vernon is an oddball, the kind of character difficult to decipher, his motives and intentions unclear, even though his trauma and his rage against the world raw and unflinching. Butler plays Vernon with such darkness and rabid intensity that it feels strange to be scared of him even when he’s opening his heart out to talk about the depth of his traumas.

His connection with Louise is something I empathize with and hopefully wish to see more of (not that Aster has announced he’s writing a sequel for Eddington). Butler always shines in even the smallest of roles, and Vernon solidifies him as the top talent of this generation of young Hollywood actors. He and Stone are the top acting games of this film.

How Eddington Hits Raw and Deep without Seeking Viewers’ Approval

What I love about Aster is that he doesn’t seek understanding or emotional connection with his films. His tales exist in a non-judgmental space, even though they’re charged with characters having sharp, dogma-like points of view. The more one sympathizes with the character, the less the other seems like a perpetrator. The disdain I have had for Ted has remained large throughout the film until the operatic, 180 turn of events.

The real hero of the story, though, is Joaquin Phoenix and he represents the saddest aspect of it all. The dying White man, an emblem of the past, a decaying memory of what was once an acceptable image of manhood and machismo. In more than one instant, Joe is presented as a joke, his attempts to save everything; his image, his online presence, the mayor position, his marriage, and his sanity, are all rooted in the scary fact that he is missing the times. He is going to be left behind and the world will move forward, progressing without him having any actual presence or placement in it.

Sympathy for the Dying Traditional White Man

Ari Aster’s Eddington is claustrophobic and oppressive, a modern Greek tragedy of decaying small towns. Man is no longer at odds with the gods. Those are godless times and godless lands. And what man is up against is the void, the internet caricatures of what humanity is supposed to look and feel like.

It doesn’t feel like Ari has made a movie for people to love or hate, but rather to observe passively and neutrally, hopefully without finding themselves in any of its tragic protagonists. It may not be on my top list of favorite movies of the year, but it’s one of the most exciting films of a (so far) not very exciting year for movies.