Sure, there’s a new Marvel movie out this week. And sure, I do plan on seeing it. But this is one of those movies where my girlfriend also wants to see it, so I have to wait for her availability. In the meantime, there was another movie with Pedro Pascal that came out recently. I’ve liked 2/3 of writer/director Ari Aster’s filmography, mostly because I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Beau is Afraid. I was only vaguely aware of what his most recent movie was about, and that worked out pretty well with The Life of Chuck. Oh, and it had an early showing (9:30AM!), so I wouldn’t squander my whole day with it. Why not?
And God help me, but I saw Eddington…
Set mostly in May of 2020, the movie follows Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) as he decides to run for mayor of Eddington, New Mexico against incumbent mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Ted is a rather bland, milquetoast sort of politician, the only person in the movie who seems to neither believe or exploit the more extreme forms of rhetoric that are floating around aside from a masking policy during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Joe, an asthmatic, claims he can’t breathe with a mask on and often refuses to wear one. Without putting much thought into what he’s doing, Joe jumps into the mayoral race, driving around the small town in his police cruiser, the car covered with campaign signs with a prominent one having an obvious typo. His entire campaign crew consists of his two deputies, and his wife Louie (Emma Stone) isn’t very happy about Joe’s decision since she dated Ted back in high school, and her COVID-conspiracy theory-spouting mother (Deirdre O’Connell) doesn’t think too highly of the mayor as a result.
But things are heating up as a number of 2020-specific forces are hitting the town. There’s the anti-mask sentiment that Joe starts off with, a BLM movement where the mayor’s son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) and Eric’s best friend Brian (Cameron Mann) are both using the language of leftist types to try and get with an attractive activist (Amélie Hoeferle). One of Joe’s deputies, Guy (Luke Grimes), believes the more rightwing conspiracies about BLM and antifa, while his other deputy Michael (Michael Ward) is being pestered by those self-same activists to join their side since he’s black. And then Louise falls in with a QANON type theorist (Austin Butler), possibly because someone did something to her once that might have been her late father, Joe’s predecessor. It’s only a matter of time before something goes boom here.
Here’s the thing: for the first half of the movie, it’s rather slow, somewhat realistic, and may even do a good job of evoking that weird feeling of paranoia and anger that was all over 2020. You know, if you actually want to feel nostalgic for a year like that. Just about every character with a decent amount of screentime spends time checking their social media feeds. I said above that Pascal’s mayor might be the one person who isn’t peddling much in the way of conspiracy theories or exploiting language for his own benefit beyond the fact that he’s running for re-election, and that’s basically true. However, the first half of the movie is also incredibly boring. I was seriously considering doing something I never do and walk out (as did one of the other two guys in the theater with me). I mean, I sat through Megalopolis! What does that say about me? But around the halfway point, Joe makes a campaign speech where he makes some somewhat specific allegations, and from there, well, the movie sure isn’t boring.
It just gets even weirder, and that is not exactly an endorsement. The movie makes such a complete 180 degree turn that it was almost like the more realistic (if boring) movie that I was watching was replaced by something else, and neither half really works. I didn’t quite know what to make of Beau is Afraid when I saw it, but that one at least kept a consistent tone and style throughout the movie. Eddington can’t even accomplish that, and I don’t think anyone is going to do like a co-worker did for me with Beau is Afraid and explain what I was missing since, unlike my friend, I didn’t experience the sort of anxiety attacks that Beau apparently duplicated. Eddington is just something of a mess, and I think Aster would be better off going back to horror at this point. I actually like it when he does those.
Grade: D
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