When writer/director Ari Aster stood up for the ovation after the Cannes premiere of his divisive 2020-set Western “Eddington” (July 16, A24), he said, “I feel very privileged to be here. This is a dream come true. Thank you so much for having me. And, I don’t know, sorry?”
Indeed, festival attendees have been fiercely divided by his 145-minute portrait of a fictional New Mexico town wracked by COVID, BLM, ACAB, you-name-it-2020-buzz-concept during the darkest season of American lives in recent memory. Joaquin Phoenix (Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid”) plays a conservative sheriff who decides to run against his Gavin Newsom-esque, pro-masks-and-testing adversary, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), in the local mayoral election.
Meanwhile, at home, Phoenix’s character Joe Cross is in a quarantine bubble with his hysteria-addled wife Louise (Emma Stone) and her far-right conspiracy-obsessed mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), the type for whom hydroxychloroquine was presumably a panacea. But Joe’s campaign is all anti-masks, anti-vax, with the threat of cult leader Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler) also posing a challenge to his political and personal life.
The film has sparked massive debates up and down the Croisette since premiering Friday night, with the starriest red carpet thus far and a press conference Saturday afternoon featuring Aster with his actors Phoenix, Pascal (in a sleeveless top), Stone (in a pixie haircut, her hair growing back presumably after shaving it off for Yorgos Lanthimos’ upcoming “Bugonia”), and Michael Ward, who plays Phoenix’s next-in-command. IndieWire has talked to people who loved or hated the film, with rarely any opinion in between and certainly never without a strong response of some kind from anyone — whether out of boredom or raptures over Aster’s in-your-face replay of our worst COVID-times memories.
“Eddington” could be a tough sell for audiences unwilling to be submersed again in summer 2020 and all the chaos and anxieties it erupted. Other pundits I’ve spoken to defend “Eddington” as a necessary social satire that mocks and derides the panic of that year, while encapsulating it all into one movie as never before. IndieWire critic David Ehrlich wrote in his rave review that “few other filmmakers would have the chutzpah required” to pull this movie off, “and we should probably all be grateful that none of them have tried.”
“It’s very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this,” Pascal said at the press conference. “It’s far too intimidating a question for me to address. I’m not informed enough. I want people to be safe and protective. I want very much to be on the right side of history.”
“Eddington” indeed takes shots at both sides of the aisle, roasting liberal posturing in the form of social justice youth like Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), who posts TikToks about James Baldwin and rants about having any position at all on “stolen land.” Phoenix’s sheriff character, meanwhile, could only be wrought from the era of Trump, as he rails against mask mandates and is suspicious of the George Floyd-inspired protests shaking up his community. At one point, he swaggers into a grocery store with the pompousness of Western’s most classic, gun-on-the-hip cowboys.
Pascal added, “I felt like [Aster] wrote something that was all our worst fears as that lockdown experience was already a fracturing society. This was building toward an untethered sense of reality. There is a point of not going back. I was overwhelmed by that fear, and it’s wonderful that it was confirmed by Ari.”
Aster, whose latest feature is a hairpin departure from the genre thrills and chills of films like “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” and is far from the spirit of intrusive-thought-induced weirdness of “Beau Is Afraid,” added, “I wrote this movie in a state of fear and anxiety. I wanted to try and pull back and show what it feels like to live in a world where nobody can agree on what is real anymore.” “Eddington” is his first feature to premiere at Cannes.
“I feel like we’re on a dangerous road, and we’re living in an experiment that hasn’t gone well,” Aster said (via Deadline) about his MAGA- and liberal-skewering Western. “I feel there is no way out of it… Mass liberal democracies always had this fundamental agreement we agree what we’re arguing about, that system was coming from power. So it’s not like suddenly there’s this bad power out there. It’s always been there, but right now it’s chaos.”
Stone, who connected with Aster amid his 2024 “Beau Is Afraid,” said that her research into the conspiracy theories that turn her character against her husband even ended up modifying her personal social media algorithms (via Variety).
“The only additional thing that scared me a little bit in the algorithm system was looking into some of the things that are in this film that haven’t been in my algorithm, unfortunately, added them to my algorithm,” she said. “Because once you start Googling it, you start seeing more and more things. So it’s a real rabbit hole, very quickly. Unfortunately, I’m still getting fed some crazy shit.”
“Eddington” is still the most conversation-starting Competition premiere at Cannes, with critics split over its social message and pacing (it’s currently at 63 on Metacritic, where you can find reviews all over the map). How A24 will market this movie — only one teaser has been released so far, showing Phoenix doom-scrolling through familiar images of the deepest COVID era — is an intriguing question in the lead-up to its July theatrical release.
Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” another post-COVID story of national conflict, did well for A24 last year, grossing more than $127 million by tapping into a fascination factor over a divided United States. Who will “Eddington” appeal to? Either way, it’s pitting Cannes audiences against each other — Screen Daily called it a “wan satire,” while Variety deemed it “brazenly provocative” — and will no doubt continue to stoke debate into the summer.
