I\u2019ve spent much of the past five years complaining about the ways in which, with a few noteworthy exceptions (mostly small indies like Stress Positions <\/em>and Sharp Stick<\/em>), moviemakers chose to ignore the pandemic entirely. The most typical excuse \u2014 that it was a traumatic event, and moviegoers wanted to escape it rather than see reminders of it \u2014 certainly won\u2019t be refuted by Eddington<\/em>, which deftly captures the mix of dread, paranoia, and claustrophobia that permeated the national character at that specific moment. And whatever my issues with the result (and we\u2019ll get to those presently), writer\/director Aster aptly captures how that whole summer felt like a slow fuse burning, between the lockdowns, the friction over them, the George Floyd murder, and its subsequent protests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His central conceit, of using this one small town as a microcosm for all of America, is a good one, and not only from a conceptual standpoint; it\u2019s a fine illustration of how, in that moment of simultaneous physical isolation and digital connection, everything seemed to be happening everywhere. (It\u2019s one of the few films I\u2019ve seen that accurately dramatizes how much of our lives we spend on our phones.) Phoenix\u2019s Sheriff Cross represents the MAGA blowhards, refusing to mask up (he blames his asthma), railing about the fake pandemic, regurgitating talking points he\u2019s picked up, mostly by osmosis, from his conspiracy theorist live-in mother-in-law (Deirdre O\u2019Connell), who says things like \u201cI encouraged her to do her own research.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve gone far enough into the abyss that it\u2019s worth recalling the loaded political implications of simple consideration, and that\u2019s the perspective represented by Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), Eddington\u2019s mayor, currently running for re-election. He and Cross clash over masking and lockdowns, but they have their own peculiar personal history as well, and that conflict fuels Cross to announce his own candidacy for mayor \u2014 in, of course, a Facebook video shot on his phone from the driver\u2019s seat of his pick-up truck. (His improvised slogan, \u201cWe need to free each other\u2019s hearts,\u201d is exactly the kind of nonsense you expect to hear in a front-seat video.) Soon that truck is covered in a mixture of campaign signage and anti-lockdown rhetoric; the sign reading \u201cYOUR BEING MANIPULATED\u201d is an obvious touch, but what the hell, it works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, Ted Garcia isn\u2019t a \u201cgood guy,\u201d because there are no good guys in Aster\u2019s world, and it is sort of admirable (and uncommercial) for him to refuse to present a single fully sympathetic character to lock in with. But there\u2019s also something wildly disingenuous about his screenplay\u2019s bothsides-ism; try as he might, Aster can\u2019t quite manage to correlate the sins of Garcia and the other left\/liberal characters (performative social protest, ideological inconsistency) with the institutional racism, police corruption, and worse of Cross and his ilk \u2014 especially after the dark turn the story takes around the 90-minute mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pascal doesn\u2019t have much of a character to play, but his inherent charisma is so strong that you barely notice. Emma Stone isn\u2019t so lucky; the writing is so thin, and her character so plain Jane dull, that this force-of-nature barely makes an impression. Phoenix, however, is doing some of his best recent work here, using all of his tools to convey, in scene after scene, what and how his character is thinking (and, more often than not, flailing). He has a lot of good moments, but the best of them is the way he snaps \u201cJust don\u2019t make me think. Post it!\u201d after recording a particularly ill-advised rant at a poorly-attended campaign event. Austin Butler appears too briefly as a Qanon-ish influencer type, but he\u2019s got this guy down cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the longer Eddington <\/em>goes (and boy, it goes and goes, clocking in at two-and-a-half hours but feeling much longer), the more its false equivalencies and narrative aimlessness do it in. The anti-liberal material feels strained because it\u2019s just so toothless, and Aster ultimately has to abandon reality entirely and surrender to right-wing fantasy bullshit in order to construct an ending that feels \u201cbalanced.\u201d (Said ending, as is becoming an unfortunate habit with his work, is also endless.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eddington<\/em> can\u2019t be discounted, because it feels so specific and accurate about the way people think, talk, and live, then and ever since. It\u2019s ugly and upsetting, and so is everything around us, so there\u2019s something to be said for the mere attempt to wrap all of that together into a feel-bad package. But by the picture’s end, as Phoenix is running around town with a machine gun in an extended sequence whose very relationship to reality is frustratingly unclear, it’s obvious that Aster has basically given up, and I was inclined to do the same. It\u2019s hard to recall a picture that I\u2019ve simultaneously admired and loathed, in such equal proportion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Eddington” is in theaters Friday. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/eddington2-1024x512.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nC<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n