Eddington

The year is 2020. COVID is peaking. America is divided. And a racial disturbance isn't too far from opening conversations around police brutality. But in the sleepy Midwestern town of Eddington, a power struggle brews between an ambitious, gun-toting, antivaxxer sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and an equally ambitious, performatively woke, N95 mask-wearing mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).

Another genre mishmash from Ari Aster that's bound to divide audiences, much like the people of Eddington. Talk to any Letterboxd-addicted, A24-loving cinephile in today's day and age, and they're bound to sing praises of Ari Aster, the master storyteller with an inkling for Oedipal stories that creep up your spine and tingle your brain, be it his occult tales like Hereditary and Midsommar, or the chaotically brilliant odyssey, Beau is Afraid. Much like his previous trifecta, Eddington finds Aster taking on multiple genres. This might not be a full-fledged horror, but it boasts enough biting tension to keep you hooked, especially with its desert landscapes creating a desolate, tragic dystopia akin to cynical neo-Westerns like the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men. That quintessential Aster touch can still be felt with dark humor creeping up in the most random of moments. Brutal shootouts turn into comic set pieces, while QAnon conspiracy theories become absurdist banter.

And with an ensemble cast this good, even the dull moments can draw a chuckle or an occasional gasp. A grey-bearded Phoenix breaks typecast by not playing a mopey underdog this time but rather a mopey small-town sheriff. Pedro Pascal, who has been in almost everything this summer, shows his comedic chops here with some juvenile irritation projected at his Conservative nemesis. The banter between Phoenix and Pascal evolves from debates over getting tested for COVID to a full-blown playground fight soundtracked to an out-of-place Katy Perry pop number, 'Firework'. As the sheriff's unloving, quasi-spiritual wife, Emma Stone is effective even though Aster sadly reduces her role to an extended cameo. But despite limited runtime in a hullabaloo of zany townsfolk, Austin Butler stands out as a devilishly charming cult leader cut in the same cloth as Charles Manson. Taking on such character roles, the Elvis star is steadily proving that he's more than just a pretty face.

A provocative film for the worse or the better (mostly the better). When Eddington delves deeper into the tokenistic politics of "woke mobs" and the stubbornness of COVID-denying zealots, Aster knows that he has a provocative film in his hands. His quirky observations on pandemic-era society might not always land, such as his commentary on white Gen-Z-ers recognizing their white privilege in jargon-heavy discourses, or a thinly-veiled attempt at tapping into a black cop's moral dilemma after George Floyd's murder. Ultimately, what makes Eddington worth its bottom-numbing 2-and-a-half-hour runtime is Aster's sheer ambition to build a world of cartoonish loudmouth characters with darkly over-the-top violence, and yet still make it seem a bit too real with the pandemic setting. These times truly epitomised the phrase "stranger than fiction", when Tiger King topped Netflix charts, a mobile-shot murder finally woke some up to the value of black lives, and Trump fanatics stormed Capitol Hill.

Sure, Aster's madcap tragicomedy is a creaky, turbulent rollercoaster, but so has the world been post-pandemic. Eddington isn't entirely perfect and sometimes feels like a series of pandemic sketches rather than a coherent narrative. But by focusing more on the burning anarchy outside than our quarantined homes, Eddington stands above your average COVID drama, one that refuses to just fixate on the lockdown nostalgia but dares to tap deeper into the ideological divides and societal pressures that only intensified after 2020. Aster yet again proves that he's on the path to craft crowd-dividers instead of crowd-pleasers. Let's just hope he doesn't run out of steam until his next epic.