Eddington

Gonna have a think on this one first lmao Edit: Keeping track of all the layers in this film is a LOT, but it may be my favorite thing about it. There’s so many to peel back. The longer I think about it, the more I unravel. I’m sure upon a second watch I will have even more to say, but here are my thoughts so far as a fan of movies and nothing more: Addressing the most common critique first, I do not think this film is centrist. I don’t think it’s even close. Ari Aster was not making fun of liberal kids supporting Black Lives Matter, he was critiquing the very loud and very wrong white kids who were constantly speaking over black voices online during the George Floyd protests. I thought this was made quite clear by the way that little white girl talked AT Michael, her black ex-boyfriend, without letting him get a word in edgewise.  Speaking of Michael— I also do not believe Aster was trying to get us to believe in ‘good cops’ when he wrote Michael being less openly opinionated than his co-workers, or even when he was framed. Did anyone else notice the hand-shaped bruise on his white teenaged ex-girlfriend’s arm? Not only was he predatory, he was abusive, like 40% of cops in the US. Aster said ACAB with his whole chest, and that was very clear to me early on in the film.  The George Soros plotline was a device to push through one of the main pillars of the film: conspiracy. Who would have guessed that Lou’s crackpot conspiracy theorist mother would be the puppet master behind all of the events in this film? Dawn created her own conspiracy 16 years prior, made up that Ted Garcia sexually assaulted her daughter so that she didn’t have to vilify Lou’s father. She pushed it so hard that she started to believe it herself. And with all conspiracy theorists, it gets to a point that arguing with logic, reality, and facts does absolutely nothing, because you can’t reason with someone who refuses to grasp the concept of reality. In the end, it’s the conspiracy theorist herself who ends up on top, and everyone succumbs to her conspiracy— hence the George Soros ‘paid protestors’ being the catalyst for her success.  Now that I’ve touched on that point, I’d like to talk about my favorite dynamic of the movie, the ‘rivalry’ between Joe and Ted. I was taught in college how to look at a film through a feminist lens, and this aspect looks particularly beautiful under the tint of my glasses. You have Joe, who is in all traditional senses of the word a ‘provider’ for his family. His wife can’t work and only sells a few works a year for cash, and his mother in law is jobless. He goes to work, makes the money, cooks dinner, yet he still isn’t able to provide stability in his own home.  Ted, on the other hand, is a soft little liberal. A single dad. His wife left him. In every traditional sense, he should be the one who feels emasculated. Yet he runs the town, is beloved by constituents, and has all the power.  Joe can’t stand it. The showcase of male ego and fragile masculinity is SO cathartic. The fundraiser scene was flawless. Katy Perry blasting, a pathetic showing by Joe, Ted slapping the shit out of an ARMED Sheriff? By all definitions Joe should have been the one with the upper hand, and yet he leaves with his tail between his legs. Then he kills Ted while his guard is down, in his own home, with the back of his head facing the barrel of his rifle. Even in conquering the biggest threat to his own masculinity, he’s still a coward and he knows it.  Throughout the entire film, an ominous, vague cloud in the shape of ‘big tech’ looms over the narrative. I kept thinking this company would be some sort of villain to unmask at the end, when really it was just there to drive the point home that social media exacerbated the political climate through COVID tenfold. Everyday it was there to push another narrative on the vulnerable, bring more bad news to an already hopeless nation, to prey on the most afraid, etc. Just as the small town of Eddington was wrecked by it, so was our country.  The hardest part about this film was how Aster made us stare straight in the face of how much worse marginalized people had it during the pandemic than anyone else. The unhoused man is an unfriendly reminder of this at the beginning of the film and again at the beginning of the penultimate sequence. Lou’s (palpable, btw, Emma Stone nailed it) helplessness stuck in a deranged household is another example of how the vulnerable were preyed on. Even Joe’s fate at the end, while deserved, leaves that bitter taste in your mouth when you recognize how the marginalized were exploited and it went WIDELY unchecked. Aside from ALL that, the cinematography was a masterclass. This is the first movie I’ve seen in a while that has made me feel so deeply, like I was right there in the middle of this all. I was stressed out, exhilarated, full of cringe in some parts, so extremely sad in others, laughing true belly laughs. It brought me right back to quarantine in my little shoebox studio apartment in downtown St.Paul Minnesota where I lived at the time. Joe’s COVID test email gave me actual, tangible anxiety I haven’t felt in years.  The scene with Joe’s breathing becoming more and more labored until there’s no other sound but his wheezes? That scene is what Oppenheimer’s 45 seconds of silence WISHES it was. It was so unpretentious and unpredictable. The lead up to it was so hectic that I didn’t even have time to think about it until it was already happening.  Lastly, Joaquin Phoenix impressed me to no end with his performance. I have to admit I haven’t seen a huge amount of his work, but this absolutely blew me away beyond anything I could have expected. I don’t remember the last time I watched a movie and the first thing I noted was how INCREDIBLE the acting was. I’m usually so focused on the story that I don’t think about it, but his portrayal was so insanely believable that I couldn’t help but to notice it.