Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025)

[therewillbeblus]

First look at Joaquin Phoenix in Ari Aster's Eddington

[brundlefly]

Teaser

[Never Cursed]

For those looking forward to Ari Aster's Eddington, be warned that what purports to be a draft script for the film has leaked and is being discussed elsewhere on the internet

[brundlefly]

Teasing Ari Aster's Eddington.

Trailer.

[therewillbeblus]

I usually struggle to write about films that annoy me. But Eddington, which is is fine, is also incredibly irritating. It starts with being very disappointing coming from Aster, whose last ambitious project utilized painfully-gradual pacing to service its themes well, while this simply feels slow for slow's sake at times. It's trying to ratchet up tension, but Aster struggles to build this feeling until his last act - its mood simmers in the same place for much of its runtime, which would work a lot better if Aster was able to locate the target in this admittedly-challenging, limited tonal range more frequently. There's a moment when Butler (a scene-stealer who's severely underutilized, as is Stone, who piques interest before any opportunity for growth is squashed by the narrative design) tells a horrifying story, and the camera placement on Phoenix's face given his unique perspective of the situation gives way to this sensation of deeply-uncomfortable dry humor. It's absolutely brilliant. But Aster tries and fails to hit his mark across the film as he experiments with different modes of dark comedy, sometimes venturing to the most obvious social commentary as if it's fresh, and other times knowingly and cleverly. It's just inconsistent. Also, the film doesn't succeed as either a noir or a western. This isn't the promised genre exercise - whatever it once 'was' is now in full service of being no more than a snapshot of our times.

And that's where the film succeeds! In its depiction of a nation of people on the ground level, divided. The sloppily-executed tone effectively mirrors our insurmountable dread, not only during 2020 but today, more than ever. The first act and the last work on different angles of this idea, and I could see revisits being kind to its valley of a structure. But I don't know if I could sit through this film's long middle section again. And that's due to perhaps the film's most glaring fault: its utter predictability. I found myself guessing what was going to happen next almost 100% of the time, including

Spoiler

that Phoenix would obviously both be nearly-killed and win the election as sheriff

It doesn't work to create suspense and unease when your script goes to the exact places it points to each and every time. Maybe Aster is here to show us how banal evil really is, but if he is, he's subverting catharsis in an even bolder way than he did in Beau is Afraid.. by subverting entertainment and stimulation itself. I feel like this is partially intentional, but not all the way. The film isn't about full measures.

[Chillybeam]

Totally get this Aster aiming for dread through banality is bold, but it often just feels dull instead of deliberate. Brilliant moments peek through, but they’re buried in a muddled, overlong middle.

[Mr Sausage]

I really don’t know what I think of Eddington. It’s such a packed, complicated, messy thing. It’s at once a satire of the age—seemingly the entirety of it— a ‘this town’s too big for the both of us’ western, and an apocalyptic movie. There’s so much in it I have a hard time figuring out what was successful and what wasn’t, and whether that even mattered. I’ve loved all Aster’s previous work, including his last overstuffed mess starting Phoenix. This one, tho’, left me perplexed. There are so many different movies crammed in here—or a season’s worth of tv all stuffed into 2.5 hours. Is any of it coherent? What is even the film’s perspective? Its politics? I can’t even call it ‘a ride’ like I could Beau is Afraid because the thing tamps down its narrative energy while also giving the audience no room to breathe.

[therewillbeblus]

Exactly. I really want to know what Aster's early script for the western-noir looked like, because this film has been morphed so profusely by our era's social politics that it feels like the impetus for its existence has been lost. Which is a really weird feeling when it's acting like a sharpened pencil drawing a picture of exactly what it wants to show us about our times. I suspect Aster reworked the same document repeatedly when starting from scratch may have served him better.

[pianocrash]

Aster mentioned on the A24 podcast with Bill Hader that the original script was completed eight years prior, but despite attempting to sell it as his debut picture, he could never quite figure out a hook with the material, and COVID was that hook. Too bad for us!

Eddington has lots of stress induction powder stuffed into all of it's corners, but for what purpose? The expose of showing jilted love triangles wherein no hope could have remained? Abuse of power comes at no surprise? It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always wins? The crowbar of the COVID-era feels excessively like a novelty when the politics of it are presented as non-satirically as possible (because that's America!), but also because that's America? Aster doesn't seem to have a rationale behind why people even want to see his movies (at least not in the pleasurable sense, not the A24 market value), which is a great through line for filmmakers of this era, all of whom seem to have impeccable taste/knowledge in the history of movies, but all lack the real, human experience of living outside of a shell of nerd entitlement and/or smelling their own farts. Frankly, I'd rather smell Otto Preminger's farts, but still... Aster's sense of humor just isn't my thing, and that was the one notion I couldn't latch onto for Beau Is Afraid, and I adore movies that are total bummers in every sense of the word. But for those keeping score at home:

Spoiler

Clifton Collins Jr. was a highlight as (basically?) the primary antagonist that erupts the whole beginning of the end for a majority of the characters, but that he has to exist as a footnote in an Ari Aster production is kinda criminal.

This is the second Aster film in which a character ends up in a wheelchair as a punishment for their deeds, which says more about the writer, I suppose.

Why anyone is calling this a western is kind of ridiculous (it's barely a movie worth examining, and not a tumbleweed in sight!), but I suppose we all want to be No Country For Old Men when we can't even be Arizona Dream.

I laughed hard seeing Daniel Clowes & his wife Erica cameo onstage during the Big Snake footage toward the end, which was a real Ghost World satanists moment if ever there could be (Aster & Clowes are longtime friends, so I should have known better).

Still Hereditary: A Time 2 Pay, Mon would be a great road trippin' Jamaican beach comedy if this one doesn't fare well, right? Right.

[black&huge]

I'm one of the very few people even 2 years later who absolutely loved and loves Beau is Afraid. When I first watched it I had no trouble taking in all of the material as literal as possible. It worked that way for me. It really blew me away. I am pretty lukewarm on Eddington but what I can't understand the most is: fans and nonfans alike were dreading that Aster decided to backdrop this film during the pandemic. I don't see what's not interesting about that and why that is even a problem. It's a fairly recent event that we're still feeling the effects from and will probably continue to for at least a decade more or so. How is this different from Chaplin making The Great Dictator while WWII was still going on? Both were/are major world events. Do I think a movie centered around COVID was needed? maybe not but do I tnink it's good someone made one? absolutely.

I just don't see the problem with that actual subject matter. What I do echo from other uses here is that there is A LOT crammed in but it's not too hard to figure out it's as much a commentary about social media politics as it is real world politics which have become more synonymous than even just 5 years ago. What I actually wanted to discuss and ask was how was everyone's theater attendance demographic? I saw this on Thursday night and one notable thing:

I had bought tickets in advance to have the desried seats for my partner and I. About 20 minutes before the showtime two people had reserved seats right next to us when there were other seats available all around the place. I thought this was very odd since it wasn't a packed theater affair. So we get there and here's my description of the two people who reserved those seats next to us: two white males possibly in their mid-twenties dressed like your typical hick/workwear wearing loudmouths. One had a completely shaved head and was wearing suspenders not unlike a skinhead. The other wore a beat up looking work jacket with work boots and a worn down flat billed hat. These two weren't a major distraction they mumbled a few times throughout the movie and made borderline insensitive comments whenever BLM was mentioned onscreen but they seemed to be the type of not quite MAGA edgelords this movie would poke fun of but also would want to show up to theater for. But the funny thing is they went quiet when

Spoiler

Pedro Pascal got shot then tried to laugh their way out of the shock only to become quiet again when the son is shot right after. The skinhead also kept repeating "haha he said retard" when the Dad scolded his son at the dinner table. I'm a POC and my partner is not. At moments during the film they seemed utterly confused that we were laughing when Phoenix records his speech essentially painting Pascal as a pedophile and when Phoenix accidentally calls his Son a f*ggot into the microphone.

I got the impression they must have thought we were gonna be liberal blowhards that might start a fight over their behvaior and likewise I made the assumption they only showed up to try and enrage any potential theatergoers with them loudly enjoying the parts that would be considered rage bait to laugh at i.e. the aforementioned BLM mentions. Well whatever their intent was especially by buying seats next to two people they don't know it didn't seem to work all that well.

I will say the one thing I don't feel good about is that we did not sit in the seats I reserved. We sat a set of seats away so we wouldn't have to be next to whoever. I will also bring up an interesting thing I saw on a reddit thread discussing the movie. Someone somewhere saw a screening where apparently another audience member they did not know approached them aftef the movie to ask what they thought of it. While the poster did not mention what they said they did mention what the person who approached them said:

Spoiler

that the person was rooting for Phoenix's character and what he was about and even for the killing of Pascal's character but then they said that person began to question rooting for Phoenix once he shot the kid.

I think this movie is doing something right because it's challenging people who have no idea what the hell they actually believe. They seem to not be able to react to this movie the way they actually want to. "Haha let's laugh off George Floyd but oh my god people are getting killed in this movie!"

[therewillbeblus]

I keep thinking about Austin Butler and Emma Stone's characters, because they clearly serve an integral purpose for Phoenix's story but are also heavily excised from the narrative, which I suppose is kinda 'his' narrative. I think this reflects Joe's lack of a hold on his wife and a deep-seated powerlessness in concocting his own preferred narrative in his life.

Spoiler

Vernon exists to pose another existential threat to Joe, and specifically as someone who is swaying his wife away from him that he’s powerless over. Vernon is the real threat, not Pascal's Ted. But Joe is impotent to do anything about it because he doesn’t feel able to shut down anything Louise is interested in due to her recent breakdown, making it a cringe-inducing cyclical problem. Vernon serves as the “true” opposite to Joe, rather than pro-mask people, etc. that he lashes out at, creating a sense of irony. Vernon is also meant to function as a satirical figure at face value; a vehicle for showing how couples grew apart during the pandemic, ironically as they grew closer to learning who they ‘are’ individually. So Aster is simultaneously showing people who are more in touch with themselves and owning their truth as healthy on the one hand, and also considering the ill effects - mainly the commodification of Vernon’s cult and that it consequentially perpetuates the ‘divide’ by individualizing away from collectivism. People like Joe are perpetually fucked by focusing and acting out in the wrong places, the 'easier' places, and not where effort would matter, in part because he's vulnerable and helpless in those areas - leading to more fury implemented in the tangible, vulnerable targets he displaces his pent-up emotions onto.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

I saw Vernon and Joe as more alike than anything. Joe is controlling, pushy, and self-centred in his marriage. I mean we start off with him watching a video on how to persuade someone to get pregnant, which comes off pretty badly considering the state his wife's in when we meet her. And we see him consistently throughout the movie use his wife for his own agendas without consulting her. He is, frankly, little different than a cult leader in those respects--he's just worse at it. Vernon's more successful because he seduces, he offers people something they want (here, identity and community and a sense of regaining power). Joe forces those things onto people, trying to make the world the way he wants whether they like it or not. Vernon is like Joe's dark double I guess, a more successful, seductive, and self-assured version of Joe, someone who is able to construct coherent narratives for himself and his world, where Joe spins around in emotional confusion trying to impose various semi-coherent versions of order.

It feels like the core of the movie ought've been the Joe, Ted, Vernon, and Joe's wife all being drawn closer and closer in a dramatic net. But oddly the interpersonal drama is pushed to the side to accommodate all the satire and social commentary. So one crucial element, Vernon and Joe's wife, are oddly absent, so much so that it makes the drama kinda incoherent (maybe).

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, by ‘true opposite’ I meant alike but successfully so, but I really enjoyed reading you parse out how.

I didn’t read the whole piece, but The Boston Globe seems to be arguing that the film is ultimately more about social media than anything else, and I’ve got to chew on that for a bit. It might explain partially why I think the film’s a failure

[The Narrator Returns]

To that point (which I probably agree with and feel more positively about than you, I’ve found myself thinking on it when I scroll Instagram), the thread with Vernon that I find really interesting is the juxtaposition of Stone’s conspiracy-poisoning with her mother’s.

Spoiler

So often Butler Pizzagate types are lumped in with boomers getting fed vile misinformation on Facebook as the same problem, but the conflict between the two isn’t just that it turns Stone against the authority figures she’s made to believe abused her, it’s that Stone’s poison demands drastic action while the mom’s offers no pretend solution and just asks to continue living in constant rage and paranoia. “The world is fucked and I alone know how to fix it” versus “the world is fucked and I’m gonna yell about it”, which lead them both to places of power but are an uncrossable line in the sand to both of them. Irreparable division isn’t just protesters and cops or red and blue, it’s the far-gone burrowing into their own holes with no trust even in each other. Adam Nayman compared this to Lone Star, and while John Sayles is a much smarter dramatist, I can see Aster reaching for a common thesis in Sayles’ work, that no matter how easy it seems to overcome arbitrary separations like these, human nature, as much as the systems in place, may make it impossible.

As for the rest of the movie, I liked it more than you two (and it’s sat well enough I’m itching to see it again) while definitely having problems, some about the specific hackiness of some of the 2020 commentary (I probably looked like I was sucking on a lemon when she said “You should be here with us!” to Micheal Ward) but mostly problems I keep having with Aster even as I like this and Beau more than the first two. As his runtimes inflate, he can’t seem to make it so they’re not being dragged to the finish line after awhile, slowly draining of what kept them interesting (usually his sense of humor, which is responsible for all my favorite parts of this). Though neither this nor Beau made me as antsy in my seat as Midsommar’s long death crawl to the end.

[therewillbeblus]

I was talking with someone about this and they made a good point on the thesis/primary takeaway of the film: That there is simply no 'shared reality' anymore. I think that's where it becomes even more of a 2025 film than a 2020 one, and where the predictability of the film can offer something rich to chew on. The predictable plot changes are shifts that would be unpredictable not too long ago

[Mr Sausage]

I was talking with someone about this and they made a good point on the thesis/primary takeaway of the film: That there is simply no 'shared reality' anymore. I think that's where it becomes even more of a 2025 film than a 2020 one, and where the predictability of the film can offer something rich to chew on. The predictable plot changes are shifts that would be unpredictable not too long ago

My hesitation is that this reading and the one you posted from The Boston Globe are trying to organize Aster's bulk of material by reducing it down to one thing. And while I can't prove that Aster didn't have one overriding theme or perspective in mind, it still wasn't my experience of watching the movie. Those readings sound more like someone trying to get a handle on the movie's totality by paring way until it's small enough to grasp.

My feeling is that the seeming impossibility of taking Eddington in as a totality is, if not the key, then maybe the appropriate starting point. Because the chaos of competing value sets, narrative bunkers, socio-political crises, media forms, and generic elements seems unorganizable outside of some macro-level trope ala Pynchon's entropy. Pynchon was able to use a concept of universe-wide disintegration to structure the chaos of modernity into a slow crumble into decoherence events, where the great forces and movements of modernity come together only so that they'll fall apart rather than cohere. I'm not sure how else to approach Eddington except through some sort of natural force or scientific law that can contain the movements of our era. But what that might look like, I don't know, as Eddington seems to provide no conceptualizations.

Maybe Aster never hit on the right trope to allow him or us a better top-down view on our age. But I'm not convinced plucking a single thematic strand and declaring it the lynchpin is going to work.

[therewillbeblus]

I don't think the film can be reduced to anything either, nor should it (nor can any sociopolitical eras - if there is a 'thesis', I think it's related to that), but I thought it was an interesting idea to explore the film's self-reflexive relationship to, and interest in predictability in behavior where the unpredictable has become predictable. I wasn't trying to use that as a lynchpin, and I also meant that in reflecting on the Globe's idea about the film being about social media, that perhaps the 'overuse' (not uniform) of that (one of many) idea tainted the film for me. I think these are interesting perspectives to utilize as jumping off points to explore topics, but not 'the core'. Perhaps I should be clearer in my writing

[Mr Sausage]

Oh, I didn’t think you were doing that. It’s obvious you were doing your usual accommodating various perspectives. I just noticed a tendency in who you were citing to talk as tho’ they’d found the main thread as opposed to one of the strands. Which is understandable, but speaks more to the interpretive difficulty of Eddington than anything. The movie is weird in that it’s very clear what it’s about and yet difficult to say what it all means.

[therewillbeblus]

I wonder if the film would've been more successful if Joe wasn't a kind of lynchpin character. I get that for a narrative that's built around such an intentional mess of jumbled ideas to work, a focal point is useful, and I also appreciate that Aster's brand of painful dry humor works best with a familiar antihero at its center, ineffectively engaging with his community. But that humor didn't really land with me as much as I think he meant it to, and I kept wanting to spend more time with the characters. Though this is also reflexive of Joe's experience - he wants to connect with his wife, his peers, with Ted even, but he just can't get out of his own way to do it right. Sometimes I wonder is Aster is as aware of how rich the intricacies of his work can be. Or at least Beau is Afraid and this. I can see this growing on me like his last film did.

[Red Screamer]

This film is a confirmation that Aster has a talent significantly beyond that of his peers (the repetitive, smirking Lanthimos; the clunky, uninspired Eggers) while also making me question if he’ll make any more films I truly enjoy as a whole. Midsommar is still his only fully formed work, because it carefully builds its rhythms from beginning to end and because he found the proper distance for his irony. Maybe that was thanks to working with his most generic material to date and to putting a sympathetic, emotionally grounded character at the center, while the anxious, cruel Aster men are merely counterpoint. His filmmaking style is potently subjective, which can be a limitation and a liability as much as a strength.

Eddington is a third of good set-up of ensemble drama at the beginning, a third of a very well-crafted grotesque action film at the end, and a middle that connects the two with a lot of awkward jumps and filler. I still found it compelling overall, but lacking in follow through on nearly any of its good moments and ideas. The leap from the first to the third section diminishes both, as the character drama is undercut by outrageous, facilely symbolic conclusions, while the anxious intensity of the climax is only given enough space to feel like a Hollywood concession to the horror crowd instead of a real nightmare like Beau is Afraid. (Then again, I thought that movie was great for about 30 minutes, until it exhausted its main idea and could only repeat itself, so maybe Aster realizes that this mode is not sustainable for very long.)

I don’t think Eddington is as guilty of both-sidesism in its portraiture as people on the internet are mad about, with the whole film something of a gauntlet of mostly self-inflicted humiliation for Phoenix’s character — and does it really need to be pointed out to you that being pretentious young white activists, even condescending, goofy ones like the movie scores quick points on, is not on the same plane as, like, exploiting survivors of assault or committing murder? I think Aster’s script actually does have a solid point of view while working overtime to avoid easy fingerpointing. Sometimes that’s with profit, as in the joke that whether it’s Facebook data centers or Bitcoin, the left and the right are both cluelessly getting used by big tech, and other times it results in egregious shortcuts, like how the town happens to have the least armed, manned, and funded police force in all of America, or how a feminist student is supposedly impressed with a young man next to her at a protest calling a woman with mental health problems a “crazy bitch.” Again, the scrutiny of this sort of nitpicking is opened up by the context of what’s set up for a lot of the movie as credible drama — until Aster throws it away and dazzles us.

Re: the Butler discussion…

Spoiler

Apologies if this reading is obvious, but no one has touched on one of the more compelling aspects of this thread yet. The movie implies that Stone was raped by her father when she was young and since her mother knew about it and still protects his legacy as a great man, it makes her QAnon tendencies little more than a projection. She’s upset that Stone has turned the anger onto her and her husband instead of onto shadowy government puppetmasters. What Butler is selling is blatant conspiratorial garbage, but it strikes a deep chord with Stone because it’s playing into her real, buried pain. In what I also think is a great pair of scenes, in concurrence with blus, Phoenix correctly sees through Butler right away but is too maladroit and self-involved to counter his seductive tactics, and makes the situation worse instead of trying to better understand what’s going on with his wife. He seems to realize Stone’s father was the one who impregnated her and tries to ask her about it as she’s falling asleep. Since she doesn’t respond, he instead invents a less disturbing, more useful lie for himself, covering up what he suspects by wrongly blaming it all on Pascal.

[Brian C]

Re: the Butler discussion…

Spoiler

Apologies if this reading is obvious, but no one has touched on one of the more compelling aspects of this thread yet. The movie implies that Stone was raped by her father when she was young and since her mother knew about it and still protects his legacy as a great man, it makes her QAnon tendencies little more than a projection. She’s upset that Stone has turned the anger onto her and her husband instead of onto shadowy government puppetmasters. What Butler is selling is blatant conspiratorial garbage, but it strikes a deep chord with Stone because it’s playing into her real, buried pain. In what I also think is a great pair of scenes, in concurrence with blus, Phoenix correctly sees through Butler right away but is too maladroit and self-involved to counter his seductive tactics, and makes the situation worse instead of trying to better understand what’s going on with his wife. He seems to realize Stone’s father was the one who impregnated her and tries to ask her about it as she’s falling asleep. Since she doesn’t respond, he instead invents a less disturbing, more useful lie for himself, covering up what he suspects by wrongly blaming it all on Pascal.

Spoiler

My interpretation was somewhat different. I agree that Louise was probably abused by her father with the knowledge of her mother, but I think it's more likely that Cross was the one who got her pregnant. In retrospect, Louise recognizes the parallels in her father's and Joe's behavior, and has come to see herself as a repeat victim: first of her father, and then as a teenager, of Joe, a much older man who took advantage of her and trapped her in this marriage. This would make Joe's question ("were you abused?") seem even more callous and manipulative to her, and his blaming Ted even more egregious, although I think Joe thinks Ted also slept with her and sees himself as having "rescued" her from him to a large degree.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

If Joe got her pregnant, it wouldn't make much sense that he's looking at videos on how to convince a woman to have a child when she doesn't want to. Seems more likely it was her father, souring her on the idea of having children with, as you say, another abuser.

[mfunk9786]

Spoiler

If Joe got her pregnant, it wouldn't make much sense that he's looking at videos on how to convince a woman to have a child when she doesn't want to.

Spoiler

Had it been Joe, it likely would have been consensual at the time (or however consensual a relationship between people a considerable distance apart in age could be). I think he just wants to have a 'normal life' with this woman now and has no idea how to access it.

[mfunk9786]

A24 announced 4K and Blu-ray releases today, with an October 21st street date. They’re claiming that the 4K release is “A24 exclusive,” though I’d be surprised if they don’t turn up at specialty retailers too based upon their track record. Blu-ray will be everywhere.

[domino harvey]

You presumably mean A24 not Arrow, right?