Eddington (Photo – A24)
“We are at the center of history,” says Joaquin Phoenix, playing the mentally unraveling town sheriff, Joe Cross, at the end of Eddington, the new film by Ari Aster.
Eddington
Directed by Ari Aster – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
And according to Eddington, the center cannot hold.
It’s May 2020, the peak of the Covid outbreak, a perfect storm of social unrest, the murder of George Floyd, riots on TV, and a collective malaise, fueled and captured by cell phones. The film’s first half unfolds like an Altman-esque mosaic, with an almost constant background hum of voices from TV, computers, and phones. The music intensifies the growing sense of dread as we witness events unfold in the small town of Eddington, New Mexico.
Never one to embody emotional stability, Phoenix’s Joe Cross is weighed down by a failing marriage (his wife, played by Emma Stone, is suitably subdued as a sufferer of depression), a chaotic mother-in-law, and a town confused and agitated by the new COVID-19 masking regulations—regulations that Cross, a staunch opponent, refuses to support. His sudden decision to run for mayor—challenging the incumbent, played by Pedro Pascal, seems driven by jealousy, frustration, madness, and perhaps an undiagnosed case of COVID.
Eddington touches on a range of issues, public health, corporate interests, social justice, and white privilege, often with a dose of sharp satire.
But the humor fades in the final third, as Phoenix’s character goes full postal. In a way, this is unfortunate. Despite the visceral charge of gunplay, the elements that made the film compelling start to unravel, as bullets fly in increasingly improbable directions. It becomes hard to track who is shooting at whom, or why.
Much like Aster’s Midsommar, Eddington focuses on a single community whose seemingly tight-knit bonds mask a lurking violence. However, while the violence in Midsommar is part of a long-standing social order, in Eddington, it’s the disintegration of that order we witness.
Though set five years ago, the film’s concerns feel eerily relevant today, though in a transformed shape.
Ultimately, this is a film that holds a mirror up to our faces and asks, as Phoenix’s character does in an earlier scene, “How did we get here?”
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Paseo, IPIC Theaters, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, and Laemmle Glendale.
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