Flasz On Film

With the one-two combo of Hereditary and Midsommar, released just one year apart, Ari Aster has become one of the leading voices in the microtrend of elevated horror. However, I don’t think his mission in life has ever been to remain pigeonholed as one of those guys who makes entire movies out of singular emotions, like grief or abandonment.  

In fact, as he went on, Aster’s movies became progressively more ambitious, audacious and, by extension divisive. Whereas Hereditary and Midsommar engendered nearly unanimous acclaim from critics and audiences alike—with praise laid at the feet of their thematic complexity, intellectual acuity and visceral oomph—Beau Is Afraid divided opinion, perhaps owing to its length, structural ambition and occasional dips into the realm of impenetrable pop-surrealism some critics decoded as outright pomposity. It wasn’t a movie for everyone, and neither is his most recent effort, Eddington. 

Aster seems to have outgrown that moniker of “the elevated horror guy” quite rapidly by virtue of attempting to make movies that evaded being easily catalogued according to their genre. Beau Is Afraid was as much a horror as Darren Aronofsky’s mother! was; it is probably true to refer to it as such, but it requires a contextualization to make sense. In the same vein, Eddington is frequently referred to as a modern western—maybe even an elevated one—and although I’d be happy to say that this definition holds water because of its setting, some characterizations and elements of its tone, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to someone who enjoys westerns of the more familiar kind. Aster isn’t a genre guy despite starting out in this space. He’s a guy who uses genres as a springboard, which is precisely why his early movies slotted so well into that “elevated” space because all of his movies are elevated attempts that bounce off a genre and build something new and fresh and, most recently, decidedly satirical. Be it a possession horror (Hereditary), folk horror (Midsommar) or a western, as is the case with Eddington, an Ari Aster movie is a rather singular experience that probes just how far off the ground it can go without alienating a mainstream audience and yet it feels a bit more inspired than most movies you’d find playing at your local multiplex. 

Admittedly, Eddington presents itself as probably the most ambitious movie Aster attempted thus far, in that it tries to use its own satirical soap box to comment on the chaos of the early pandemic days and have the viewer recontextualize the sheer madness of that time. This is no longer a movie about one character’s mental state, like Beau Is Afraid, but rather a movie that pulls back to gain enough perspective to capture the entire society within its framing without losing character definition. It’s very much like a busy renaissance fresco, full of dramatic micro scenes, ideas and themes that all look like utter bedlam from a far-enough perspective. And for the purposes of the movie, the many ideas that characterized the time period when governments throughout the world told us all to stay at home, wear masks and trust absolutely nobody while clapping for the health workers every day at five o’clock, Aster reduced allegorically to singular characters. Thus, Eddington is a fish tank microcosm of what the society was like in 2020, scaled down to the size of a community in the middle of nowhere that is small enough to fit within the parameters of a simple story with a handful of main characters.  

Therefore, it is probably best to see the sheriff played by Joaquin Phoenix as a stand-in for a whole cohort of right-leaning mask sceptics who saw themselves as logic-driven and politically close to the center. You can see sheriff’s wife (Emma Stone) as equivalent to a middle-class female who finds her identity while processing suppressed traumas. You can see the mayor (Pedro Pascal) as a two-faced politician. You can see the local well-to-do youth organizing Black Lives Matter protests as corresponding to their prevalent lack of purpose and agency in life, allying themselves with minority causes. You will find snake oil salesmen, fake gurus, Facebook-addled pensioners, domestic terrorists importing mayhem to the town out of ill-conceived solidarity, racial tensions and the creeping approach of the AI revolution in the form of a data center being built on the outskirts of town while everyone seemed preoccupied with taking political stances on subjects they had no expertise in, signaling their virtues on social media and taking leave of their senses while limbic-hijacked by their social media keeping them in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight.  

Consequently, Eddington is like that fresco, a rather busy movie experience that is likely to alienate some viewers who might not be able to distinguish its many concurrent melodies from cacophonous noise. But at the same time, it is also a true-to-life depiction of what it was like to live through the mayhem of multipolar tribal warfare that was 2020—the year of COVID hysteria. What is more, Aster’s filmmaking, both his command of the script and control of what’s in the frame, serve to elevate the experience to what I expected from an Ari Aster movie having understood his trajectory as a filmmaker. He has retained some of his proclivities towards using flashes of truly shocking violence, frequently deployed with a clear slant towards comedy, while stuffing his other genre darlings into his pocket.  

Perhaps to his own detriment, Aster has managed thus to camouflage his style sufficiently to discombobulate those who came to watch Eddington bearing expectations extrapolated linearly from his previous work. A movie of this magnitude and this level of ambition would simply not work if it was constrained by genre-specific quirks. You can still make out the elements of style that make this movie an Aster movie, much like you can see that Nope is a Jordan Peele movie even though it has very little in common with Us or Get Out, but it requires the viewer to lean in and pay a bit more attention. Which is probably one of the reasons why it has divided opinion. It’s just not something you’d expect to see from an auteur who freaked you out three times over, upset you just as many times and at least once sent your eyebrows way up high in an expression of utter disbelief.  

But a movie that functions as a microcosm of so many angles and aspects and nuances that added up to the collected experience of living in a shut-in society blowing up with rage at numerous inequities, injustices and double standards simply needed its creative force to embrace the challenge this way and commit to what comes across as lurid quirkiness mixed in with blunt high-horse satirizing worthy of an Adam McKay movie… which is yet another reason why Eddington divides the room. The movie is lampooning absolutely everyone and everything, from mask-defiant alt-right podcasters and libertarian obstinados to insidious do-gooders and teenage useful idiots and everyone in between, so it’s bound to antagonize someone in the process.  

But if you are capable of withstanding being made fun of, and the likelihood that the movie will omit you is vanishingly small, you might see it as an incredibly accomplished piece of filmmaking that is funny, quirky, complex, thought-provoking and incisive in equal measures. You will find sheriff Cross’s domestic woes mixed in with life as he sees it spiraling out of control as full of wit, vigor and caustic sense of humor. You might be able to see the idea of transplanting faraway problems into the context of a small town just to be a part of something as completely topsy-turvy and maybe you will be able to see just how easily we all got manipulated by those tiny screens that live in our pockets and through which we communicate with each other and the outside world.  

Aster’s pandemic movie is an ambitious attempt at a McKay-esque satire that succeeds because it is as profound and enraged as it is funny and quirky. In fact, it might be a touch better than anything McKay had done before himself because Aster doesn’t seem to exude the kind of pompous smarminess McKay has been frequently (and occasionally rightly so) accused of. It’s a busy hodgepodge, sure. But it’s a busy hodgepodge that both happens to have a lot to say about the inverted pyramid of absurdity that was life during the pandemic (and it hasn’t gotten much better either) and it does so with enough razzmatazz to ensure an entertaining experience… assuming you don’t storm out with your arms crossed because the stinging satire got under your skin.  

And if anything, with its ambitious scale and highly tuned tonality, I think Eddington is a great piece of evidence supporting the notion that Ari Aster is no longer a genre fluke. In fact, he was never such a thing in the first place. He’s well on his way to becoming recognized as one of the foremost voices of his generation and I’m here for it.