Sarah reviewed for the Sunday Star Times until 2019. After a career change to secondary school teaching, she now she works in alternative education with our most disadvantaged rangatahi.
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Joaquin Phoenix as Sheriff Joe Cross vs. Pedro Pascal as Mayor Ted Garcia. Photo / Supplied
Joaquin Phoenix as Sheriff Joe Cross vs. Pedro Pascal as Mayor Ted Garcia. Photo / Supplied
Eddington, directed by Ari Aster, is in cinemas now.
This pandemic-era American political satire comes from horror wunderkind Ari Aster, who was acclaimed for head-chopper Hereditary and cult-thriller Midsommar, then disappointed with his depressing Beau is Afraid.
Beau star Joaquin Phoenix returns in Eddington, set in the titular fictional NewMexico town during the first American summer of the Covid era. It’s a long, involved black comedy that skewers and dissects contemporary American life. But thanks to superb performances and a propulsive narrative, it’s a gripping watch.
Phoenix disappears into yet another riveting character as Sheriff Joe Cross, whose enmity for Eddington’s Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) causes Joe to defy lockdown rules and mask regulations as the pandemic creeps across the country.
Joe isn’t anti-authority, he says, he’s merely looking for a sane approach to the demands placed on Eddington’s citizens. So he throws his hat into the ring as a mayoral candidate, emblazoning his sheriff’s truck with misspelt slogans (“Your being manipulated!”) but soon descending into madness as bureaucracy and the desert heat sap his energy.
At the heart of the story is the rivalry between Joe and Ted. These characters are nuanced and flawed, both corrupt but well-meaning, and the performances so straight-faced and real that the batshit action gains extraordinary truth.
Joe has other problems, too: a distant wife (Emma Stone), a live-in conspiracy-theorist mother-in-law and white, privileged college students who descend upon Eddington to protest about freedom, police brutality and other issues that Aster’s clever script sends up as “woke”: masks versus no masks, child abuse, social media, selfish teens and “Blacks Lives Matter” [sic]. Nothing is spared.
Aster isn’t making a statement about Covid – he’s simply taking the mickey out of America (and the world), and the inherent absurdity of being a human being.
