A Look Into Eddington

Major Spoiilers: Eddington
Minor Spoiilers: Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid

Eddington follows Joe Cross, the sheriff of Eddington, as he faces a changing America and the post-COVID-19 world in general.

There is an obvious and overt theme of progress trampling the world that many love (more commonly, those in small towns such as Eddington). But there are also rapid fire rounds aimed at a plethora of cultural conversations.

The film felt like Ari Aster’s answer to the question, “What happens when someone holds this many disturbing ideas in their mind?”

Joe Cross (which, I couldn’t stop hearing and reading as “Joe-Cr”-oss, given Joaquin Phoenix was playing the role) is troubled by a life-time’s worth of grievances. He wants to have a child while his wife has a mental health condition we eventually learn is related to “abuse”, though kept vague, that keeps her from being intimate beyond a simple touch or kiss. This further implies that Joe has never had sex with his wife as opposed to the couple not being able to produce children due to pregnancy-related medical concerns.

Joe, also, aims to preserve small-town-American life where (as he puts it) your neighbors are your family and you don’t choose sides (becoming ironic later in the film). He is troubled by a comically named data center that is moving into the area that, while it will bring jobs and infrastructure, emits notes of concerns from both Joe and other townsfolk concerning the impact on natural resources in the desert. Additionally, Ari Aster adds a cute note on the signage we see for the data center, which has a little blurb explaining what AI and LLMs are and why they are a good thing, further pushing the narrative of modernity and progress overriding the America Joe longs to protect. We’ll talk more about this aspect of the film in a moment.

Joe’s wife becomes obsessed with conspiracy theories (just like her mother – another Aster hallmark) and eventually joins a cult (though, it isn’t stated as a cult explicitly, the “vibes” are all there). Joe’s plans all seem to unravel in Job-like fashion, and, ultimately, the world that Joe fought to protect becomes overrun by social-media-fueled hatred, violence, and that darned data center.

The outside world creeps in with the eventual arrival of protesters that turn Eddington upside down – some hate Joe and everything he stands for and even harbor murderous intent while others want to empathetically appeal to him ad his deputies. All options disturb Joe as he doesn’t view Eddington as the forum in which these conversations should occur.

How one man can bear the weight of a world he believes is dying for no good reason while also believing his government wants to subvert his independence and forcibly poison him while also discovering his community hates him to the point of homicide for what his office as Sheriff represents while also losing his job, family, friends, and autonomy is answered for us in this film: That man goes insane.

On a more interesting note: I ultimately decided to write about Eddington because of it’s more subversive critiques on cultural discourse.

While there are very strong, political themes heavy-handedly placed throughout the story, I noticed a few that might not be as obvious to general audience members disinterested in subtext. This article is the result of those observations which I hope some who may not have noticed them while watching the film will find interesting.

1. The American Desensitization To Gun Violence

Eddington’s finale heavily features gun violence, much to my shock. The film begins as a culturally satirical dramedy, but ends – metaphorically and literally – with a bang.

In those final moments, we see several scenes that should strike us as comically out-of-place. In a small town like Eddington, violence is incredibly rare. Most of these townsfolk, including Sheriff Joe Cross, have never had a reason to draw a firearm in either aggression or self-defense. Until the end of the film, the only calls the police get are related to minor incidents and some exposition from Joe himself indicates Eddington is a safe place without much to offer by way of action or excitement.

Intentionally, the film makes us feel this way. When Joe shoots the homeless man and, subsequently, Mayor Ted Garcia and his son, the moment stuns you as, just that morning, Joe responded to a simple noise complaint at Ted’s and there had been no indication prior to this shooting that any major violence was going to occur at all in the film (unless you watched the spoiler-ridden second trailer, which is a different rant altogether).

By this point in the story, accepting that Joe has lost his mind isn’t a stretch. But, after this moment, the violence ratchets up so comically quickly that we rise from a moment of Joe maybe punching a protestor in the shoulder to the out-of-place crescendo of a moment in which militarized Antifa members film an explosion intended to kill three police officers on a drone for social media.

The absurdity only begins here, however. Joe enters a gun store and exits with a comedy-prop-sized machine gun which he flails wildly shooting in every direction his untrained arms will allow. He accidentally maims Officer Butterfly who is immediately finished off by a bullet, presumably from one of the Antifa shooters off-screen.

Joe’s style of using the machine gun could be described as “I’ve only ever done this in a video game”, which is likely true. This commentary is re-enforced by a character rushing an Antifa shooter with a pistol while holding his phone between himself and his victim, again, to capture the moment for social media. This tactic inevitably hampers his aim. When the film shows us the phone’s perspective, the shot looks exactly like a first-person shooter video game and, afterwards, the boy’s reaction to just having murdered someone and catching his own crime on camera is heroic excitement.

We see the boy one year after this incident, now considered an American hero by media outlets while his life seems to be going splendidly (though, this is perhaps an artifact of social media). These moments echo of the Kyle Rittenhouse story. The controversial story of Kyle Rittenhouse is beyond the scope of this article, but, suffice to say, if I was thinking of Kyle Rittenhouse during these scenes, it’s likely others were as well and it wasn’t an accident.

The sum of these moments deliberately inserts critique of the American attitude toward gun violence taking a pathological turn. Something that isn’t as overt as other themes in Eddington.

One more note on this before we move on: It isn’t stated directly, but the film gives us reason to believe that Joe is a virgin and because of his attitudes towards his wife, also a involuntary celibate (or, an “incel”). Pieces of his wife’s back story are strategically placed throughout the film. We hear she was very young when she met Ted and that she met Joe shortly after. We learn, as stated before, that she suffers from trauma that prevents her from being intimate. It isn’t a stretch to believe Joe’s wife was his first love and, since they have never had sex, Joe is a virgin. This doesn’t add much to the story overall, but it does remind me of the cultural narrative tying violence to the incel community. This is further evidenced by Joe’s murder of Ted which was for many reasons, though, one of those reasons is strongly implied to be that that Joe believed Ted was the only person to have ever had sex with his wife, albeit, forcibly.

2. Money Runs The Government

There are moments throughout the movie where a character named “Warren” is referenced. He is revealed to be a donor to Ted Garcia’s campaign and seems to have a general interest in the data center moving in to Eddington. Ted follows orders from Warren and the Governor of New Mexico (whose orders seem to be filtered through Warren) willingly, though, we never get the chance to learn if Ted is a “true believer” or just a patsy.

There is evidence for both:

• The evidence he is a “true believer” comes, in part, in the form of his dedication to following the Governor’s COVID guidelines, even behind closed doors (though, he violates the “6 feet” rule twice, in anger). In private, he lectures his son on the dangers of COVID’s viability in a way that seems sincere and he acts concerned for his son’s and his son’s friend’s health in a genuine way. This could be attributed to his fear that his son being caught violating the state’s mandates would reflect poorly on Ted, but that doesn’t appear to be Ted’s only motive.

• The evidence he is a patsy comes in the form of Warren himself who, depending on your perspective, mentors or controls Ted’s public actions. Also, Ted receives an engraved watch as a gift from The Governor. The engraving implies Ted has behaved as ordered.

No matter your perspective here, it is apparent that Warren plays a major role “behind the curtains” of Eddington’s and New Mexico’s politics as a whole.

The “twist” comes in one of the final scenes of the picture, in which we see that Warren is now, after the death of Ted, Joe’s benefactor. Joe, now a quadriplegic with no autonomy of his own, is elected mayor in what was certainly an unopposed campaign. With Warren at the helm, everything Joe fought to preserve is slowly dissolved and replaced by Warren’s interests. Warren just needs Joe to be a warm body with a face he can throw on campaign signs.

The critique is clear: Political office is a racket. That politician you voted for is a brain-dead photo-op while the real decisions are made by the “Warren"s of the world.

3. Racism

Now, I want to cover something overt throughout Eddington: The subject of racism.

While this is a heavy theme throughout the film, I suspect its scope isn’t as readily apparent.

Ted Garcia represents the future and progress while Joe Cross represents days-gone-by. At first, I didn’t think much of this outside of the fact that Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix are extraordinary actors and getting them both in a film must have been a series of exciting phone calls. However, later in the film, Joe is met face-to-face by a statue of a white man that bears the words “White Supremacy” across its chest. Joe seems surprised to be confronted by this, but he doesn’t seem confused. He looks around guiltily as if he hopes no one else is there to see him face this sinister totem. This moment is typical of Ari Aster, placing symbolic imagery meant for both the characters and the audience somewhere on screen – think of the “SATONY” inscription from Hereditary or the runes and blood eagle from Midsommar. That being said, this instance is much more heavy-handed than what we normally see from Aster, raising the question, “Why?”

We may never know for sure, but it could be as simple as “This movie is already 30 minutes too long and we need a sequence where Joe is forced to face the reality of the world he lives in.” No matter the actual reason, the totem and Joe’s reaction to it signify there is more at play here than Joe is just a nice guy who wants to preserve small-town-friendliness. His anger at Ted is based, at least in part, on the intertwining of both Ted’s success and his racial identity.

This is further evidenced by Joe’s ploy to frame Michael, his only black deputy and – based on some exposition from Joe himself – very likely the only black person the Sheriff knows closely. Framing Michael for Ted’s murder was easy: Michael is a talented long range shooter, he possesses motive for killing Brian (who previously taunted Michael after stealing his girlfriend, which is something Michael notably denies), and Joe’s second deputy (a white man) makes it very clear he has harbored racist thoughts about black people even though, until this moment, he had considered Michael “one of the good ones.” It is at least implied through this second deputy that Joe was aware framing Michael would be easier than white people in Eddington as others likely feelt similarly toward Michael and his race as Michael’s fellow deputy.

The “White Supremacy” statue Joe faces before meeting his gristly fate reveals he was self aware enough all along to have known, though he never expressed it openly, the racial identities of those around him played a role in his opinion of them.

Speaking of Michael, the lead social justice warrior of the plot, Sarah, who is a white woman trying to make up for America’s race-based inequities, is presented as a fool in the film. Her intentions seem noble, but she consistently tells Michael what to feel, what to think, where to stand, what to do, and why he should be doing everything she says, ironically stripping him of his own identity and autonomy. Sarah, further, preaches a radical idea of subverting white supremacy to a character who simply wants to sleep with her. He laps up and regurgitates everything Sarah says, clearly receiving it uncritically and half-heartedly agreeing, which results in the biggest laugh of the movie where this young man attempts to explain to his older parents how he now “feels” about the subject of white supremacy in America.

Sarah and this pseudo-social-justice character are seen making contradictory statements, such as the boy making a lengthy speech in which he says (paraphrasing) “It’s my job as a white person to sit down and listen, which is exactly what I plan to do after I finish my speech!” and Sarah explaining to Michael while chiding him that she has no right to explain anything to him at all and she should be listening to him (which she never does).

After the death of Brian, Sarah is confronted about her social media posts which include aggressive language such as “Arm yourselves. The revolution is coming” (paraphrased). When interrogated by police about her potential involvement in Brian’s death based on these posts, she immediately buckles and explains that she didn’t mean any of that literally. She breaks into babble about compromise and reality which completely contradicts her actions up until this moment.

Speaking of Brian’s death, Joe and his deputies have open contempt for the Indigenous tribe’s police force. While Officer Butterfly is probably the most competent investigator in the film, Joe and his deputies treat him as uselessly dumb while they taunt him about his silly alcoholic-related crimes occurring on his land in hopes Butterfly will let them handle Ted and Brian’s homicide scene without his intervention.

As mentioned previously, Joe shoots Butterfly who is then finished off by a bullet from a different shooter. This bullet pierces Butterfly’s head and removes the crown of his skull with in a way that resembles the practice of “scalping.” While this practice is typically associated with Indigenous people in our cultural education, the shooter who “scalps” Butterfly appears to be white.

4. Rapid Fire Thoughts

I want to conclude with a few rapid fire thoughts on some things I noticed.

• The Antifa shooters remain entirely anonymous and capable. This is reminiscent of aspects of “Beau Of Is Afraid”, also from Ari Aster, where the anxiety is built by the fact that someone is after you that you know is deadly but you have no idea who they are, why they are after you, or how to stop them. This echoes of the narrative I mentioned in my initial paragraphs concerning Joe’s character being unable to hold all of his uncertainty, fear, and doubt without going insane.

• As is typical of Ari Aster films, he presents characters that “finally find their community.” This is present, once again, as Emma Stone’s character finally finds a dysfunctional community that understands her and ultimately “cures” her of her trauma-induced, mental-health, pregnancy-related concerns.

• Social media is a prominent part of the film. Everything is recorded at every moment, often to the detriment of characters in the film. This “subplot” culminates in Michael – who presumably has discovered Joe tried to set him up – filming Joe’s normal, everyday life as an elected mayor. This implies Joe is humiliated by his status as an invalid. We see this humiliation amplified later when we learn that Joe’s care-takers are his Ex-Mother-In-Law and a live-in nurse that his Ex-Mother-In-Law is sleeping with. The twist? They sleep together in Joe’s own bed. Aster’s decision to humiliate Joe in the final scenes of the film points back to previous analysis about Joe’s flaws, including his racism, as it would be extreme to flay a character so morbidly just because he murdered the man who had sexually assaulted his wife (according to Joe – the film makes it clear Ted did not do this). This also echoes of th scene in Midsommar where Christian runs out of his orchestrated sexual encounter completely naked, in which the actor revealed in interviews was intended to shame and humiliate his character.

• There is a haunting moment near the end of the film when Michael is incapacitated in some way that is never revealed. We hear him screaming, through clenched teeth, something that sounds like (paraphrasing) “They said I can’t speak or move.” During this moment, Michael, who is black, has two police firearms drawn and aimed at his chest. At first, I thought this was pointing back to Sarah’s treatment of Michael, where she tries to be an ally by stripping Michael of his humanity. But, after some thought on the drive home, it dawned on me this is more likely a commentary on police violence towards black people in America. He is told “Be silent. Don’t Move.” which are orders he follows, while he is harmed either way.

• There is a mysterious subplot that is prematurely abandoned about Ted Garcia’s ex-wife. We are told this woman abandoned both Ted and their son Brian. There is a moment in the film where Ted is chastising Brian and we learn the day this happens is Brian’s mother’s birthday, implying they have some way to contact her, or, at the very least, she had a reason for leaving that allows Brian to empathize with her. I’m open to ideas on this, as I couldn’t fit that Square Peg into that round hole (see what I did there?). I concluded this was as simple as Joe needed some actual, evidentiary reason to believe that Ted might mistreat women.

• Ari Aster clearly has an awkward relationship with masculinity (see “Beau Is Afraid” for more on this). Throughout the film, the only character we get to know who truly cares about social justice is a woman – Sarah. Michael wants to stay out of the conversation (until he is forced to do otherwise) despite his implied relationship with Sarah and his racial identity relating to the issues at hand; Brian’s friend is trying to sleep with Sarah which pushes him down a path where he must pretend to care about what Sarah’s talking about at all times (we know he’s pretending because of his pride in murdering the Antifa shooter later in the film); Brian himself makes a comment about tricking Sarah into having sex with him by asking her to prove she is a racial “ally”. The message here is that Sarah has her own thoughts and ideas about America while the men in the film manipulate Sarah using her beliefs to have sex with her.

Ultimately, Eddington isn’t entertaining enough for a second or third watch. However, as is typical of Ari Aster, this film is painfully deliberate, wonderfully crafted, and ripe with opportunities for interpretation.

While it isn’t my favorite film of Aster’s, Eddington is, yet again, a glorious feat of story-telling. As Ari Aster has exited his “horror” phase and is now in his “anxiety” era, I expect this is not his final film I’ll feel is worthy on an analytical write-up.