“I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque” is a famous quote from Bugs Bunny cartoons, often said when he realises he’s made a wrong turn or is lost.
If he’d ended up in Eddington, New Mexico, he’d certainly make that statement. He had certainly made the wrong turn and is lost.
From writer-director Ari Aster comes a modern Western and paranoid thriller, EDDINGTON, set in the American Southwest during the tumultuous summer of 2020. Isolated and sheltered in place during a global pandemic, a town under pressure found itself sifting reality through the haze of social media and lost its collective mind.
Nothing so edifying this year has come close to an examination of a nation as EDDINGTON, ostensibly a standoff between a small-town sheriff, Joe Cross, played by Joaquin Phoenix and a small town mayor, Ted Garcia, portrayed by Pedro Pascal, an impasse that sparks a powder keg as neighbour is pitted against neighbour in Eddington, New Mexico.
Garcia attempts to drag the dusty desert town into the 21st century by attracting a new artificial-intelligence data centre. The apparent progressive politician is opposed by the conservative constabulary in the guise of Cross, a law enforcement officer who is finding it hard to enforce mask wearing. He is an asthmatic and doesn’t really see the need for the mandate.
Joe is married to Louise (Emma Stone) who share their home with Louise’s mother Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), both who have fallen into a miasma of Internet conspiracy theories. With lockdown in effect, Dawn is hard to avoid in the Cross’s overstuffed house as she wields strong and controversial opinions about what she encounters in her myriad rabbit holes. Her looming presence puts a heavy strain on an already tense relationship between mother and daughter, husband and wife.
While Sheriff Joe battles federal mandates, he determines to run against the incumbent for mayor, a knee jerk reaction to the allegation of perceived cuckoldry. Meanwhile, Louise and Dawn become obsessed with Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), a cult leader with an online following who claims to have been a victim of sex trafficking and offers his followers a performance of comfort and consolation.
EDDINGTON is a richly layered drama of contemporary America, a microcosm movie, recognising the racial division and class tensions between the Hispanics, the smaller Mexican community, the Native community and the White community, all of which had been a hallmark of the region, and the country at large.
Watching EDDINGTON is like watching one violent storm after another sweep across a landscape of extremes with strong and inflexible ideas attracting the stupid, the consequences tragically absurd.
Makes you want to cry out “What’s up, Doc?” Unmissable.
