EDDINGTON
Ari Aster Explores a Fractured America in Eddington
Presenting in Competition for the first time, Ari Aster with Eddington delivers a psychological western with accents of paranoia, rooted in an America on the verge of imploding. Three years after Beau is Afraid, the filmmaker reunites with Joaquin Phoenix and directs Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, and Austin Butler for the first time in an intense film blending community tensions, the pandemic climate, and the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
Praised in 2018 for Hereditary, Ari Aster quickly revealed himself to be one of the new masters of psychological horror. Teetering between family drama and black comedy, his visceral and specific style—often compared to Polanski’s or Kubrick’s—explores both intimate trauma as well as collective dysfunction. Eddington continues in this vein by tackling an America in a state of crisis, intersecting public health worries and social fractures.
The action takes place in May 2020, in a small town in New Mexico, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating tensions. Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the local sheriff, comes head-to-head with Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the charismatic mayor whose decisions will lead the community into chaos. With a backdrop of fake news and collective anxiety, Aster sketches a society on edge.
Filmed in Albuquerque, in the director’s home State, Eddington unfolds with tight, elliptical direction, replete with silences and narrative gaps, with the director playing carefully with light and sound. “It suits me to be seen as a horror movie director,” he admits in 2023, “but I know this label will be more difficult to apply to my future projects.” With Eddington, he delivers a transitional film, more philosophical than action-driven, where fear changes its face and becomes political.
